Media Mentions

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. In 1924, Clarence Darrow represented Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, men accused of a senseless, thrill killing of a young man. The defendants were well off, raised in comfort; Leopold was about to enter Harvard Law School. They were 19 and 18, respectively, at the time of the homicide. The victim was Robert “Bobby” Franks, just 14 years old. Given the publicity, which was unheard of for the time, Darrow counselled his clients to plead guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the judge, rather than have a jury decide their fate. He conceded that he did this because he was afraid to submit the case to a jury. (Each received a sentence of life imprisonment plus 99 years.) Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not have that option. The federal death penalty statute that was reinstated in 1988 (and expanded in 1994) required a jury to decide the aggravating and mitigating factors that determine the death penalty. A defendant can waive the death penalty jury and go before a judge, as Darrow’s clients did, but only with the prosecutor’s agreement. The prosecutors in Tsarnaev’s case would not agree.

Last July, Harvard could seemingly breathe a sigh of relief. The University had just unveiled a new policy and set of procedures intended to centralize and revamp its approach to handling sexual harassment and to ensure compliance with the anti-sex discrimination law Title IX...But within days, the sense of ease faded, once again, into months-long controversy, criticism, and debate....Elizabeth Bartholet, a Law School professor who signed the Globe letter, said she wishes Harvard had taken more of a leadership role against the federal government, which she claims is pressuring universities to lead investigation processes that deny due process rights to the accused...Janet E. Halley, one of the Law professors who signed the Globe letter and has played a leadership role in pushing for changes to the Law School’s Title IX procedures, also argued that engaging students is crucial. “We really need to be walking towards the students and saying, 'What is this really about?'” Halley said.

Daniel Meltzer, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a top legal adviser to President Obama, died May 24 at a hospital in Boston. He was 63.

More than a year after the fight for legal personhood for the research chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, the apes and their lawyers got their day in court. At a hearing in Manhattan on Wednesday, a judge heard arguments in the landmark lawsuit against Stony Brook University, with a decision expected later this summer. At stake: the question of whether only human beings deserve human rights. ...In the other appeals court decision, judges declared that chimps are not legal persons because they can’t fulfill duties to human society. But that rationale arguably denies personhood to young children and mentally incapacitated individuals, as several high-profile legal scholars, including Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe, pointed out. He filed a brief on behalf of the Nonhuman Rights Project, saying the court “reached its conclusion on the basis of a fundamentally flawed definition of legal personhood.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Does the Constitution guarantee one person, one vote? Or is it one citizen, one vote? This deceptively simple question is actually profound -- and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide it in the term that will begin in October. The answer will define the nature of American democracy for generations to come.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It wasn't exactly extraordinary rendition. But when Swiss police arrested seven officials of FIFA, the international football federation, for extradition to the U.S., there were some echoes of the secret terrorism arrests. Soccer is a global game, and it matters more to almost everyone than to Americans. So why is the U.S. acting as the international sheriff and grabbing up non-U.S. citizens to try them domestically for corrupting the sport worldwide? And more to the point, why is this legal? It turns out the legal basis for the FIFA prosecutions isn't all that simple or straightforward -- and therein lies a tale of politics and sports. The prosecutions are being brought under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, which was designed to prosecute crime syndicates that had taken over otherwise lawful organizations.

In 2013, Jennifer Chung was working as a software engineer in Seattle when she decided to take CopyrightX, an online legal course offered through Harvard’s edX collaboration with other universities. Now she’s a second-year student at Harvard Law School...CopyrightX is offered to different student populations in different ways. For instance, the in-person version of the course is offered in a traditional classroom to HLS students. The online version, which is taught in parallel with the campus course, has been offered since edX began in 2012. The third, hybrid version of the course began almost by accident, according to William Fisher, the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law, the course’s main instructor. That first year, he said, a former student asked if she could use the CopyrightX material to teach a parallel course to her students in Jamaica. Fisher agreed. During the course’s second year, instructors at 10 institutions around the world offered it, combining their own in-class instruction with CopyrightX’s online lectures and reading materials. This year, the number of affiliated courses grew to 18, at institutions from Australia to Africa to the Middle East to Europe to the Caribbean to South America.

“We present the Radcliffe Medal to an individual who has been a powerful and impressive force for change, someone who takes risks and forges ahead. These are hallmarks of Radcliffe.” Lizabeth Cohen, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, made this statement in announcing that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is this year’s Radcliffe Medal recipient...Moderated by Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. ’69, a former chief justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, a senior research fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and the 2012 Radcliffe Medalist, “A Decade of Decisions and Dissents” will feature the following panelists: Linda Greenhouse ’68, Knight Distinguished Journalist-in-Residence and Joseph Goldstein Lecturer in Law, Yale Law School, and former Supreme Court correspondent, The New York Times; Michael Klarman, Kirkland & Ellis Professor, Harvard Law School; Lauren Sudeall Lucas, J.D. ’05, assistant professor of law, Georgia State University College of Law; John Manning ’82, J.D. ’85, Bruce Bromley Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

On a windswept, sunny afternoon day on Holmes Field at Harvard Law School, former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and her spouse, the astronaut Mark Kelly, emphasized the value of public service to the Law School’s Class of 2015....The ceremony also featured several student awards given by Dean of the Law School Martha L. Minow. She honored students for service to the Law School community, including several for their pro bono work as students...Jon D. Hanson, a Law School professor, was also honored at the Class Day ceremony. Hanson spearheaded the Law School’s systemic justice project, which focuses on tackling societal and policy problems with the law. He discussed the events at Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, and Baltimore involving police violence towards black men, and “the chasm between law and justice.”

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Michael McConnell. Lately, there has been a disturbing turn toward ill will and demonization when discussing tensions between religion and law in the United States. Many avidly watch who will “win” and who will “lose” in high-stakes conflicts over the place of religious views and practices in health care, marriage, commercial contracts, and public life. But the biggest losers are the entire nation if we descend into intolerance. We would abandon the remarkable American promise to welcome people of all religions and give up our model for the world on how to be both religiously vibrant and mutually respectful. Today’s struggles on behalf of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people mirror protracted struggles by Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim, and other religious groups to secure freedom and tolerance in schools, workplaces, and daily life, including marriage. All these issues are deeply felt, constitutive of identity, and difficult to change.

...At Harvard, many centers, courses, and collaborations maintain a sharp focus on the intellect, but they increasingly also are working to address everyday issues in life, and they’re crossing academic boundaries to do so more effectively...Working to harness the power of collective wisdom, the Behavioral Insights Group (BIG) at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has assembled 28 decision-research scholars, behavioral economists, and behavioral scientists from across Harvard to share their work and develop evidence-based approaches to public policy problems that bedevil governments, school districts, and other organizations, including key issues like student underachievement, gender inequality in the workplace, and even tax collection...The nudge concept was first popularized by the 2008 bestseller from Richard Thaler, an economist at the University of Chicago, and Cass Sunstein, now the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School (HLS). Sunstein is a member of BIG.

It has been submitted as a rulemaking petition twice since 2011, garnered 1.2 million comment letters, sparked a superhero-themed ad campaign, and is the subject of a current lawsuit. The latest push to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to act on a largely ignored demand that companies disclose political contributions and spending on lobbyists: pressure from former commissioners...The push for political spending disclosures initiated with a Petition for Rulemaking filed by a team of 10 prominent law professors. Robert Jackson, an associate professor at Columbia Law School, and Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk spearheaded the effort in 2011.

An op-ed by Mark Wu. Many Americans who think free trade can be good for them nevertheless doubt whether the same can be said for the international trade agreements that are actually being written, often in conditions of secrecy. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that the US is negotiating with 11 Pacific Rim countries, is a case in point. Beyond the few paragraphs on the White House website, most Americans have little idea what it contains. Even members of Congress have to go to a secure room in the basement to read the latest negotiating text...As a former trade negotiator, I know that so-called trade promotion authority and some degree of secrecy is vital for getting a deal done. But the current level of secrecy may be going too far. Instead of dismissing critics as misguided, the White House should strike a better balance between retaining flexibility for negotiators and keeping the public informed during the process.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Word that the Department of Justice has reached a settlement with the Cleveland Division of Police ought to be reassuring … right? Someone must’ve thought so, given that the news was leaked over the holiday weekend. The timing was presumably intended to counteract public outrage at a judge’s acquittal of Officer Michael Brelo, who was involved in a chase in which an unarmed black couple died after being shot at 137 times. There are important reasons for the Justice Department to get involved and rein in rogue police departments. Yet we shouldn’t get too complacent when we hear that the department has settled with police in the spotlight. Federal supervision isn’t the answer to the problems facing America’s police departments -- better political participation is.

As the Internet has upended their business, cable companies have been racing to reinvent themselves as dominant broadband providers and distributors of online video. Charter Communications' $55 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, paired with a $10 billion side offer for Bright House Networks, marks the latest in a wave of deals that promise consumer benefits...Some think differently. Cable companies already have scant competition for supplying Internet service, said Susan Crawford, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. "High-speed Internet access today is a utility" that's essential for education and job searching, Crawford noted. "Yet in American cities, cable is the dominant provider of that private utility and can charge whatever it wants to whoever it wants."

When President Obama took office back in 2009, "cybersecurity" was not a word that everyday people used. It wasn't debated. Then, mega-breaches against consumers, businesses, and the federal government changed that...Now, the 45th president will have to come into office with a game plan for how to protect us online...Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, says another way to protect consumers is corporate accountability. "What government can do about data breaches is increase the penalties," he says. "Right now your data is not very well protected because the cost of losing it isn't very high to the companies that have it." Schneier wants to see the next president take on privacy too — what should police be able to access without a warrant, and what should companies be allowed to store. So far, we've just kind of assumed the answer is ... everything.

An article by Samuel Moyn. Imagine that one man owned everything. Call him Croesus, after the king of ancient lore who, Herodotus says, was so "wonderfully rich" that he "thought himself the happiest of mortals." Impossibly elevated above his fellow men and women, this modern Croesus is also magnanimous. He does not want people to starve, and not only because he needs some of them for the upkeep of his global estate. Croesus insists on a floor of protection, so that everyone living under his benevolent but total ascendancy can escape destitution. Health, food, water, even paid vacations, Croesus funds them all. In comparison with the world in which we live today, where few enjoy these benefits, Croesus offers a kind of utopia. It is the one foreseen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), a utopia that, though little known in its own time, has become our own, with the rise in the past half-century of the international human rights movement — especially now that this movement has belatedly turned its attention to the economic and social rights that the declaration promised.

An op-ed by Mark Roe. Headlines about banks’ risks to the financial system continue to dominate the financial news. Bank of America performed poorly on the US Federal Reserve’s financial stress tests, and regulators criticised Goldman Sachs’ and JPMorgan Chase’s financing plans, leading both to lower their planned dividends and share buybacks. What was also of interest was Citibank’s hefty build up of its financial trading business that raises doubts about whether it is controlling risk properly. These results suggest that some of the biggest banks remain at risk. And yet bankers are insisting that the post-crisis task of strengthening regulation and building a safer financial system has nearly been completed, with some citing recent studies of bank safety to support this argument. So which is it: are banks still at risk? Or has post-crisis regulatory reform done its job?

An op-ed by Mark Roe. China has begun to stretch its economic and military muscles in recent years. In the South China Sea, it has built a series of quasi-military bases on the tiny Spratly Islands and deployed warships to defend them. Meanwhile, it is sponsoring the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – an international institution that threatens to rival the World Bank in Asia – and has persuaded countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to join, over the vocal objections of the United States. It is easy to conflate China’s saber-rattling with its economic and diplomatic initiatives such as the AIIB, as some US officials seem to have done. But, while China’s rise does merit some caution, it does not make sense to resist the country at every turn; sometimes, it is wiser to leave well enough alone.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In case you haven’t heard, the world’s first Global Family Reunion will be June 6 in New York City. The invitation list runs to 7 billion people: Earth's entire population. So far, 77 million of them have a proven connection to the world’s biggest family tree, created by A. J. Jacobs, the reunion’s mastermind, who is fascinated that many millions of people can find familial connections to many millions of other people, past and present. You’re a cousin, so you're welcome to attend. As it happens, Jacobs is a pretty close cousin of mine. He’s my father’s sister’s grandson. Because of this and because he knows his own family tree, he can show my connection to lots of people. Frank Sinatra, it turns out, is a very distant cousin (by marriage -- many marriages, actually). Abraham Lincoln is a distant cousin, too. And, of course, Lady Gaga. It turns out that radio host Glenn Beck -- who has called me “the most dangerous man in America” and also “the most evil” -- is a cousin as well. Welcome to the family, Glenn!

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s official: The Boy Scouts of America, headed by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, thinks the U.S. Supreme Court is about to create a right to gay marriage. There’s no other logical explanation for why they chose Thursday to announce that they plan to stop banning gay scoutmasters. For the Boy Scouts, this decision isn’t about getting ahead of the curve. It’s about coming out from behind the curve at the last minute. For 15 years, the Boy Scouts have been synonymous with anti-gay discrimination, ever since the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale. That landmark case established the principle that there’s a constitutional right of free association that allows private groups to discriminate in membership -- provided the discrimination is intentional and at the core of their expressive mission.