Media Mentions

Female lawyers work on average four more hours a week than their male counterparts do, are more likely to not have children and are vastly more likely to work part time or leave the profession altogether once they do have a child, according to a Harvard Law School survey of its graduates, released Monday...“It is painfully evident that female lawyers still bear the overwhelming burden of the legal profession’s continuing struggles to integrate work and family,” the study’s authors said...It is titled “The Women and Men of Harvard Law School: Preliminary Results from the HLS Career Study” and was authored by David B. Wilkins, Bryan Fong and Ronit Dinovitzer.

It’s well-known that women in nearly every sector earn less than their male peers, but in the legal profession the gap appears to actually have grown starting in 1975. That news comes from an empirical study conducted by Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession...“The most important explanatory factor appears to be the fact that men are far more likely than women to work in business (not practicing law), particularly in more recent [classes], and that when they do, they earn total compensation that is far in excess of even their highly paid law firm peers,” the report’s authors wrote. According to the study, authored by David Wilkins, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at HLS, and also Bryon Fong, assistant research director at HLS’s Center on the Legal Profession, and Ronit Dinovitzer, an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, men from the class of 1995 whose incomes fell in the 75 percentile of those that participated in the survey, made in excess of $1.625 million. Since women in that class were less likely to work in the business sector than their male classmates, they were less likely to earn such outsized compensation, the report notes.

Of all the winners of the 2015 Webby Awards, the winner of the law category might have the most lasting effect. And not just because it’s a groundbreaking project. Rather, perma.cc got the nod for an effort that could help solve a major problem for legal analysts and academics: the tendency, over time, of a hyperlink to “rot,” or lose its original URL...The project emerged from the work of three Harvard Law School researchers—professors Jonathan Zittrain and Lawrence Lessig and student Kendra Albert—who noted that only half of all links used in recent Supreme Court decisions were still active at the time they published a 2013 paper on the topic...“Libraries are in the forever business,” Harvard Library Innovation Lab Director Kim Dulin said in a news release. “We developed Perma.cc to allow our users to protect and preserve their sources, no matter where they originate.”

The American legal scholar Cass Sunstein has become one of the most influential non-economists toiling in the world of economics. Over the course of his career, his interests arced from constitutional law to a pioneering synthesis of behavioral economics and public policy developed in concert with the economist Richard Thaler. Originally called “libertarian paternalism,” the Sunstein-Thaler approach stresses the fact human choices can’t help but be influenced by the way those choices are framed...In his new book Choosing not to Choose, Sunstein zeroes in on a particular kind of nudge, a default setting, which is extraordinarily effective at shaping outcomes. He argues that defaults are perhaps the best of all nudges. For one thing, they can always be over-ridden, thereby preserving the ability to choose. They also, he says, preserve a certain kind of liberty that people lose when they’re forced to make a decision: the freedom not to choose. What follows are edited excerpts of Sunstein’s conversation with Quartz, when he stopped by recently.

Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession on Monday released the results of a widespread survey of its graduates which suggests women work more hours on average than men, among other potentially myth-busting findings. Through a survey of HLS graduates from the classes of 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2000 and other research, it provides a detailed portrait of the gender gap within the legal profession, including all the ways women have advanced or failed to advance. Entitled, “The Women and Men of Harvard Law School,” it collected data on the four HLS classes through a survey that was sent by mail between 2009 and 2010 and is also available online...The authors include David Wilkins, who is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at HLS, and also Bryon Fong, assistant research director at HLS’s Center on the Legal Profession, and Ronit Dinovitzer, an associate professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto.

For more than three years, workers doing asbestos removal and demolition jobs for several Woburn companies were paid in cash, resulting in more than $700,000 in unreported wages, federal prosecutors charged in an indictment last week. Meanwhile, construction workers around the state — particularly immigrants hired by subcontractors — say they sometimes go for weeks without pay. When they do get paid, it can be less than promised, and overtime pay is virtually nonexistent...Before the economic downturn, as many as one in four Massachusetts construction employers were misclassifying construction workers as independent contractors, according to a 2004 Harvard University study, the most recent construction-specific estimates available. The problem is no doubt worse today, said study author Elaine Bernard, executive director of the law school’s Labor and Worklife Program.

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Since the Supreme Court cleared the way for unlimited independent political expenditures by individuals, unions and corporations, there has been a fierce debate among academics and activists about what the term “corruption” means. For five justices on the court, “corruption” means “quid pro quo” — a bribe, or an exchange of a favor for influence. But an almost unanimous view, certainly among Democrats, and even among many Republicans, has emerged that this is a hopelessly stunted perspective of a much richer disease. Certainly, quid pro quo is corruption. But equally certainly, it is not the only form of corruption. Even if no deals are made, the influence of special-interest super PACs is a corrupting influence on American democracy.

A rift widened between President Barack Obama and liberal Democrats in Congress over trade as he and Senator Elizabeth Warren renewed their gripes a day before a key vote on a potential deal with Pacific nations....As a matter of law, Warren is correct that a trade deal approved under fast track could override U.S. laws, including Dodd-Frank, though a future president and Congress would have to approve the pact, said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School. “Any duly ratified treaty overrides any contrary prior federal legislation,” Tribe said.

An op-ed by Elizabeth Warren and Rosa DeLauro. Congress is in an intense debate over trade bills that will shape the course of the US economy for decades. Much of this debate has been characterized as a fight over whether international trade itself creates or destroys American jobs. There is, however, another major concern — that modern “trade” agreements are often less about trade and more about giant multinational corporations finding new ways to rig the economic system to benefit themselves...Economist Joe Stiglitz, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, and others recently noted that “the threat and expense of ISDS proceedings have forced nations to abandon important public policies” and that “laws and regulations enacted by democratically elected officials are put at risk in a process insulated from democratic input.”

It’s another town reaching its breaking point as the Gray family lays their 25 year old son Freddie to rest. Upon a mysterious death following an arrest, the City of Baltimore is crying out for justice; some lashing out with violence. Attorney and President of the NAACP’s Boston Branch Michael Curry joins law professor and director of Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute Ronald Sullivan. Together, they hash out the root causes of many of the recent backlashes, plus the systemic change necessary to bring peace.

Hunched over burgers and chili cheese dogs at a Boston-area pub, a group of friends digested Monday's news of punishment in the "Deflategate" scandal for the New England Patriots and star quarterback Tom Brady..."Even as a Patriots fan, I feel like it's not as harsh as it should be," said Derecka Purnell [`17], a 25-year-old Harvard law student, as she and husband Grandon Purnell strolled with their baby in Cambridge. "NCAA titles are stripped away for much lesser things," she said, referring to the college sports governing body. "But Boston would be in riots if the Patriots lost the Super Bowl title."

The Obama administration on Monday ordered all insurers to provide IUDs, the contraceptive patch and other birth control free of out-of-pocket charge to all women, thereby rewriting the rules after reports that some insurance carriers were refusing to cover all types of contraceptives...Pro-choice groups and others had said insurers were using so-called "medical management" to either skirt the rules or plead ignorance. For example, an inquiry by the New York attorney general found one plan told a patient she couldn't get the NuvaRing — for which there is no generic on the market — without cost-sharing because she could use birth control pills with the same chemical formulation. Holly Lynch, a bioethics experts at Harvard Law School who closely tracks Obamacare's contraception rules, said that was exactly the type of problem that HHS wanted to erase. "Just because a pill would be available for free doesn't mean that an insurer could refuse to make the ring available for free," she said.

The idiom “bargaining with the devil” sets up well the attitudes of both Tehran and Washington toward each other in their current negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities...“Bargaining with the Devil” is also the title of one of my favorite books, by Harvard’s Robert Mnookin, the subtitle of which is “when to negotiate and when to fight.” Mnookin takes up several case studies to answer this question, ranging from divorce, to sibling rivalry, to business quarrels, on through Winston Churchill’s decision not to bargain with Hitler during the darkest days of Word War II, and Nelson Mendela’s decision to bargain with his devil, the apartheid government of South Africa. Mnookin’s book was written in 2009, long before the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia decided to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program. But the book’s conclusions have relevance today.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Immigration is one of the great themes of the 2015 Venice Biennale -- which makes a lot of sense for the signature European art fair in an era when immigration is Europe’s most pressing political issue. But the most thought-provoking piece on the subject that I saw here in three days wasn’t actually in the festival. It was a temporary performance staged Wednesday morning near the entrance to the beautiful gardens where the national pavilions display their works. And it consisted of a single woman standing silently, staring ahead without moving -- a bit in the manner of the silent human statues you can see in New York's Central Park or London's Trafalgar Square, which for the most part don’t seem like good art at all. What made the woman extraordinary was her outfit. She was dressed in a full niqab -- not only a headscarf or cloak but both, her face covered except for a slit for each eye. And her niqab clearly wasn’t the ordinary niqab of a very observant Muslim woman. It was made out of yellow reflective cloth, with four bright reflective silver stripes, like those you’d see on a first-responder.

Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell supports renewing the Patriot Act as is, but a appeals federal court ruling striking down the routine government sweep of U-S phone records adds pressure for reform. Please join us for debate over the limits of government surveillance. Guests...Benjamin Wittes senior fellow in governance studies, Brookings Institution; editor in chief at Lawfare. He is co-director of the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law and Security.

Panelists raised concerns about the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. at Harvard Law School’s annual conference on law, religion, and health on Thursday...Law School Dean Martha L. Minow noted that the litigants in the case had given evidence that they would leave the U.S. if they lost...CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article miscontextualized a quote from Harvard Law School Dean Martha L. Minow. In fact, Minow noted that the litigants in the case had given evidence that they would leave the U.S. if they lost; she did not suggest that she could imagine herself leaving the country over her religious beliefs or that others should.

With his time in office waning, President Barack Obama is speaking out on race and poverty in increasingly blunt terms as violent protests in U.S. cities highlight the unrealized promise of his election....“I must confess to having shared that great optimism, especially because I had been so impressed personally with Barack Obama when he was my student and research assistant,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University."

An op-ed by Robert J. Smith and Charles J. Ogletree Jr: Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a death penalty case, Glossip v. Gross, challenging the use of midazolam — a drug intended to induce an anesthetic and unresponsive state — in executions. The court must consider whether midazolam’s use violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and specifically whether there is an intolerable risk that the drug, which has been tied to at least three botched executions, will cause gratuitous suffering. Doctors have referred to the use of midazolam as “a failed experiment.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) labeled a botched execution in Arizona “torture.” And Justice Elena Kagan observed during oral arguments that regaining consciousness during an execution by lethal injection is “like being burned alive.”

Panelists raised concerns about the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. at Harvard Law School’s annual conference on law, religion, and health on Thursday. ... Law School professor Charles Fried provided context for the issue Dionne raised, pointing to a different interpretation of the protection of religious freedom under the First Amendment, which he said was not always used to challenge laws. “It was assumed that the First Amendment had to do with beliefs and persecution of people for their beliefs,” Fried said. “[It] had nothing to do with granting exemption from what have come to be called laws of general applicability.” Law School Dean Martha L. Minow recognized the difficulty of this topic and empathized with the personal nature of religion in many people’s lives. In cases where individuals cannot find a way to reconcile this issue, Minow proposed an extreme solution. “There will be some issues where the values of this country will run in conflict with some people’s religious views, and if they can’t live with it they should leave,” she said. Minow herself could imagine choosing to leave the country over renouncing her religion, she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has almost certainly made its decision about the right to marry for same-sex couples. The justices met in private conference Friday, May 1, and took a vote. They have until June 30 to issue their decision. ... Roberts' seeming willingness to recognize sex discrimination in the context of bans on same-sex marriage stood in stark contrast to his equally blunt comment to same-sex couples' attorney Mary Bonauto. "My question is you're not seeking to join the institution, you're seeking to change what the institution is. The fundamental core of the institution is the opposite-sex relationship and you want to introduce into it a same-sex relationship." To that remark, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried said he would have replied, "So what?" "At one time, people thought women were inferior to men intellectually and physically, and Aristotle thought women made no contribution to the genetic component." said Fried, a U.S. solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan and a former member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. "They were wrong then, and we think we've got it right now. If I had been arguing ... I'd have said, 'Maybe that was the definition back then, but it's the wrong definition of the concept we're talking about now.'"

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: In a major vindication for Edward Snowden -- and a blow for the national security policy pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike -- the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program is unlawful. This is the most serious blow to date for the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11. The central question depended on the meaning of the word "relevant": Was the government's collection relevant to an investigation when it collects all the metadata for any phone call made to or from anywhere in the U.S.? The court said no. That was the right decision -- not so much because it protects privacy, as because it broke the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA and endorsed by the secret national security court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.