Media Mentions

As we write this, about half of the nation's governors, nearly all Republicans, have "banned" Syrian refugees from moving into their states, in the wake of Friday's surprise attacks on civilian targets in Paris, carried out, France says, by Islamic State terrorists. Most of them were homegrown European jihadists; one is believed to be from Syria. ...And once the U.S. government has vetted an applicant for refugee status and granted him or her such status, he or she is free to move around the country. Governors or no governors. The granting of refugee status "is an exclusively federal issue,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, in the New York Times. “Under our Constitution, we sink or swim together.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman: President Francois Hollande has closed France's borders for three months after Friday's terrorist attacks on Paris. But this is only the latest shutdown to threaten Europe's coherence and unity. European Council President Donald Tusk warned last week of a “race against time” to save the 1985 Schengen Agreement, which created open borders among almost all members of the European Union as well as a few other countries. That's putting it mildly. Germany, the EU’s 800-pound gorilla, closed its border with Austria in September. Even Sweden, the most welcoming European country when it comes to refugees, has implemented border checks.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Crimson editor Linda J. Greenhouse ’68 gave the second of three lectures in her series “Just a Journalist: Reflections on Journalism, Life, and the Spaces Between” on Wednesday. In her lecture, titled “Stories,” Greenhouse argued that the media’s overemphasis on objectivity diminishes its ability to present issues accurately. Greenhouse said there are several disturbing trends in the way stories are currently reported. For example, she described the way that journalists distance themselves from their work through tactics such as putting something they believe to be true in the words of someone else....The lecture series is sponsored by Harvard’s Graduate Program in American Studies. In his introduction to the talk, Harvard Law School professor Kenneth W. Mack praised Greenhouse’s deft reporting on the Supreme Court, coverage for which she is well known. “She’s someone that’s not shy about both informing us and making us think when she writes,” Mack said.

Citing "grave concern" for the pending "crisis," more than three dozen prominent legal community members today asked Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch to launch a formal investigation into "compelling evidence of pervasive police and prosecutorial misconduct" in Orange County. ... Others joining in the sentiment of the communication include Harvard legal theorist Charles Ogletree, criminal justice professor Angela Davis, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, former Chief Assistant United States Attorney Richard Drooyan and Alex Whiting, a Harvard professor and former prosecutor of international crimes at the Hague as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Constitution Project.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, more than half the nation's states are vowing to bar Syrian refugees. But do they have the legal authority to do so? Harvard Law professors say the answer is clear: No.

Amid a growing controversy involving questions of accuracy and fairness, the makers of The Hunting Ground, a documentary indictment of campus sexual assaults, are defending the film, which is set to air on CNN on Nov. 22...On Nov. 19, law professors at Harvard, where another of the film’s documented incidents took place, attacked the filmmakers’ accuracy in a widely publicized joint letter that focused on the victim’s inebriation and the absence of violence in the assault. The professors wrote in a letter that was posted on The Harvard Law Record website that the film gave the impression that the accused student "like others accused in the stories featured in the film, is guilty of sexual assault by force and the use of drugs on his alleged victims, and that he, like the others accused, is a repeat sexual predator.” The professors, including prominent faculty members Jeannie C. Suk, Laurence Tribe and Randall Kennedy, noted that there have been "extensive investigations and proceedings" examining the case against the student -- at Harvard Law School, in a criminal case before the grand jury, and in criminal trial before a jury.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. When a federal court of appeals struck down a key part of President Barack Obama's immigration reform last week, it wasn't just a blow to the administration's goal of assuring the parents of U.S. citizens that neither they nor their children will be deported. It was a challenge to the way federal agencies operate -- one that could change how future administrations make policy. The central issue in the case has nothing to do with the separation of powers, or with the widespread objection that Obama has “bypassed Congress.” The only question is this: When do executive agencies have to give the public an opportunity to comment on their policies before those policies go into effect?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Beirutis are justifiably frustrated that Friday's attacks in Paris overshadowed the bombings that killed 43 people in their city the day before. But equal respect for human life isn't the only reason Western media should be more focused on Beirut than they have been. The Paris attack succeeded in frightening the West, but the attack on Beirut represents a more important strategic avenue for Islamic State. The Sunni-militant group isn't going to destabilize France. Yet destabilizing Lebanon, a tinderbox at the best of times, is an achievable goal.

An op-ed by Mark Roe. Bankruptcy experience provides good reason for rules requiring disclosure of managers’ compensation for the year before bankruptcy. A longstanding problem for bankruptcy has been to limit transfers that insiders make to themselves and their business associates when the firm fails. It is no surprise that debtors sometimes prefer to see their firm’s value in stockholders’ hands rather than in creditors’ hands. Although most insiders don’t act this way, insider transfers have been enough of a problem over the long-run that bankruptcy has generated rules—some going back for centuries—to police and recover these transfers for creditors’ benefit.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan discussed what she described as “remarkable” changes in interpretation of statutory law in a conversation with law professor John F. Manning ’82 during an event at the Law School on Tuesday. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow introduced Kagan, one of her predecessors as dean. She noted that this lecture series is named after Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia, whom Minow described as Kagan’s “sparring partner, hunting partner, and friend.” The talk centered on what Minow called the “revolution” in statutory interpretation over the past several decades that has shifted the focus in the courts from common law to statutory law.

Experts are uncertain how antitrust law will be applied to the antitrust case involving Duke’s alleged no-poaching agreement for medical faculty. Seaman v. Duke University, et al. is a class action lawsuit filed by Dr. Danielle Seaman, assistant professor of radiology, on behalf of all similarly situated medical faculty at Duke and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill since 2012. Filed June 9, the suit alleges that Duke and UNC entered into an agreement not to hire each other’s staff for parallel positions—an agreement that violates antitrust laws...“There have been many [antitrust cases involving educational institutions], particularly concerning agreements restraining the commercial activities of college sports programs,” wrote Einer Elhauge, a law professor at Harvard Law School, in an email. Elhauge referred to two cases in particular: NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma—a 1984 Supreme Court case challenging the NCAA’s limitation on the number of television broadcasts permitted for each university—and Law v. NCAA—a 1998 U.S. Court of Appeals case challenging a salary cap for college coaches. Both decisions deemed the NCAA to be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

An op-ed by Jeannie Suk. I often informally ask my students, at Harvard Law School, what their most important ideals are and how they hope to fulfill them in their lives and careers. In the past several years, I’ve been touched to hear a significant plurality of students name a priority that I didn’t hear much when I began teaching, nearly a decade ago: their close relationships with their parents... Particularly in the way things have unfolded at Yale, students’ social-justice activism has been expressed, in part, as the need for care from authority figures. When they experience the hurt that motivates them to political action, they’re deeply disappointed with parental surrogates for not responding adequately or quickly enough to support and nurture them.

Governor Charlie Baker joined more than two dozen other governors Monday who said they did not want Syrian refugees to resettle in their states, citing security concerns after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris....Under federal law, the president, after consulting with Congress, sets the number of refugees admitted every year and the government works with the United Nations and nonprofits to resettle refugees around the United States. “Neither Massachusetts nor any other state can fence Syrian refugees out of the state,” said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law scholar. “We are a union and must sink or swim together.”

The arrival in mid-2007 of what we now regard as the smartphone was that rarest of moments in technology, a true, full-on revolution. The center of that revolution was the upper end of the U.S. consumer market. Now, it’s bringing billions of people in the developing world online for the first time, creating some startling challenges and opportunities, a few of which surfaced Monday at Quartz’s Next Billion forum. Here are some highlights....Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination with a campaign based on Congressional reform, reminded the audience that he was branded a “Cassandra” 15 years ago for warning that the Internet could lead to a world in which everyone’s moves were tracked and privacy was compromised. “I am sorry that Cassandra was right about the Internet. But I am hear to tell you today that Cassandra is back,” he said. Paraphrasing Aaron Swartz he said, “The Internet is the best influence and the worst. It is both.”

The president of Florida State University condemned CNN’s upcoming airing of a film that explores sexual assault on college campuses, saying it does not adhere to journalistic standards. As a result, FSU president John Thrasher is refusing to participate in a televised panel discussion on CNN to talk about the film, The Hunting Ground. “It is inexcusable for a network as respected as CNN to pretend that the film is a documentary rather than an advocacy piece,” Thrasher wrote in a statement that was distributed Monday...A group of 19 Harvard Law School professors have come out against the film and its portrayal of a case involving a Harvard student. The professors, in a letter, wrote that the film “provides a seriously false picture both of the general sexual assault phenomenon at universities and of our student.”

Republican fury over illegal immigration and border security took on a new dimension Monday as a growing number of governors, presidential candidates and members of Congress rushed to oppose or even defy President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees. Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant...Governors can ask the State Department, the primary agency managing the refugee program, not to send Syrians to their states. But some legal scholars were adamant that the governors’ efforts to bar Syrians on their own were unconstitutional. “This is an exclusively federal issue,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. “Under our Constitution, we sink or swim together,” he said.

Alex Epstein, president and founder of the for-profit think-tank Center for Industrial Progress and author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” argued for the use of fossil fuels on Monday in Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall. Aladdine Joroff, a clinical instructor and staff attorney in the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at the Law School, spoke after Epstein and gave a rebuttal. The event was hosted by the Harvard Federalist Society, a student-run organization for conservatives, moderates, and libertarians....In her rebuttal, Joroff asserted that opponents of fossil fuel usage want to transition to a cleaner energy supply, not remove the existing energy supply.“From a moral perspective, I’d argue that we have an obligation to pursue feasible alternatives now,” she said. Trenton Van Oss [`17], vice president of speakers for the Federalist Society and one of the hosts of the event, said he was pleased with the proceedings.“[T]hat’s part of our mission at the school, to provide students with points of view that they might not get in the classroom or at other events,” he said. “Alex did that, and Professor Joroff offered a great response.”

For all the claims that the $95.5-million settlement, announced on Monday, of a federal false-claims lawsuit against the Education Management Corporation was "historic," "unprecedented," and "a very clear warning to other career colleges out there," the deal actually won’t do a whole lot for the thousands of students who may have been pressured to enroll by the company’s admissions recruiters over the past decade. In fact, some of the biggest financial beneficiaries will be the lawyers for the four sets of whistle-blowers who brought the allegations of "boiler room"-style recruiting to light, beginning in 2007...In exchange for having broken laws, "the company agrees not to break the law going forward? None of this sounds like remedy to me," said Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, at Harvard Law School. "The company has taken billions of federal funding and distributed that to its executives and shareholders," but students will see very little of it, Ms. Merrill said.

More than a dozen state governors refused on Monday to accept Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks, part of a mounting Republican backlash against the Obama administration's plan to accept thousands more immigrants from the war-torn country. Leading Republican presidential candidates called on President Barack Obama to suspend the plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the coming year and some Republican lawmakers began moves in Congress to try to defund the policy..."The federal government has the power over immigration. If they admit Syrian refugees, they're here," said Deborah Anker, a professor of law at Harvard Law School who specializes in immigration issues. "People aren't going to the (state) border. The federal government is going to bring them in."

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. For Republican presidential contenders challenged by the media, the go-to answer has become a claim of victimhood: You are biased against us. As Marco Rubio put it at the CNBC debate last month, “The Democrats have the ultimate super-PAC. It’s called the mainstream media.” Are media outlets really biased against Republican candidates? One of the most careful studies, by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro of the University of Chicago, doesn’t find much evidence of that. Its central conclusion is that readers have a strong preference for like-minded news -- and that newspapers tend to show a slant in a direction that is consistent with the preferences of their readers.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. As if the University of Missouri didn't already have enough problems, State Senator Kurt Schaefer is trying to block a research study by a graduate student in the School of Social Work. The senator, who’s a one-man scourge of Planned Parenthood, is claiming that the study violates a Missouri law that bars spending state funds to encourage abortion. Schaefer’s effort blatantly violates academic freedom. If it succeeds, it might possibly violate the First Amendment.