Media Mentions

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.

He’s going to Disney World. A Queens man who was wrongfully convicted of stabbing a friend to death and spent 15 years in prison before being exonerated signed off on a $2.75 million settlement Wednesday, and said he would use the money to help make it up to his family. Kareem Bellamy, 47, has maintained his innocence since James Abbott Jr. was killed in 1994. Bellamy was released on bail in 2011 ­after his legal team learned that a gang member had confessed to the crime. [Pictured: Jonathan Hiles `15.]

Law firm marketers and business development leaders congregated this week at the University Club of New York to discuss how to land new business by mapping out and executing firm strategy, maintaining a digital media presence and working collaboratively with practicing lawyers...Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow and Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School: “The word I hate is ‘cross-selling.’ Clients hate to be cross-sold. If I’m a tax partner and I talk to a client and say, ‘Hey, can I bring my real estate partner along?’ Clients tell me that they think it’s demeaning and condescending. They say, ‘What, do you think I’m stupid and don’t have someone looking over my real estate contracts for me?’ Cross selling is the equivalent of, ‘Do you want fries with that?’ Loyalty is another word I don’t like…. Clients say, ‘Like it or not, I’m kind of stuck with my firm that gives me this cross-disciplinary services, because no other firm is going to match that.’ It’s grudging loyalty.

Did you know that there actually is a correlation between the incidents of shark attacks and tornados? It’s a decently strong one (77.4 percent), if you graph the numbers over the years 2002-2010. It’s also, like most of the correlations plotted by Harvard Law student Tyler Vigen [`16], more or less total coincidence, just like the correlation between “US supply of shrimp” and “People killed by sharp glass,” (90.4 percent) or “Physical retail sales of video games” and “UFO sightings in Massachusetts” (91.6 percent). Although it is often funny, Vigen adds that “this book has a serious side. Graphs can lie, and not all correlations are indicative of an underlying causal connection.” We may love to contemplate the data that seem to connect sharks and tornados (who wouldn’t?), but Vigen’s reminder is important when we’re faced with spurious correlations in the wild, played not for laughs but to mislead.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Asia has gone nuts for nukes this week. On the heels of a Pentagon report that China is loading multiple warheads onto its intercontinental missiles, North Korea announced Wednesday that it has developed warheads of its own, making the transition from a nuclear-capable power to a nuclear-loaded one. The North Koreans may be lying or exaggerating, of course. But even so, the announcement augurs a new stage in the complex relationship between China and North Korea.

Companies fear that if its users, like the French teacher, win cases against them, it could require them to tailor-make their sites for each specific country’s laws — an expensive task even in the E.U., which has 28 member states. That makes the issue of jurisdiction key to many cases. “This question that is on everyone’s minds right now, not only for Facebook but also Google and Twitter, because all these entities have international scope and reach,” says Adam Holland, project coordinator for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “We don’t want to let local laws dictate global policy, because where will that end?”...Companies fear that if its users, like the French teacher, win cases against them, it could require them to tailor-make their sites for each specific country’s laws — an expensive task even in the E.U., which has 28 member states. That makes the issue of jurisdiction key to many cases. “This question that is on everyone’s minds right now, not only for Facebook but also Google and Twitter, because all these entities have international scope and reach,” says Adam Holland, project coordinator for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “We don’t want to let local laws dictate global policy, because where will that end?”

Elizabeth Warren is trying to kill President Barack Obama’s trade agenda by raising the specter that foreign companies could use an investor-friendly arbitration system to circumvent the U.S. court system...In the 2000 case, Loewen Group filed its dispute against the U.S. government after suffering an expensive legal setback in a business lawsuit in Mississippi. Loewen brought in some big legal guns, including Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, an Obama mentor who is now siding with Warren against the president’s trade deal...Meanwhile, Tribe submitted testimony on Loewen’s behalf calling the Mississippi court decisions a travesty and arguing that an ISDS tribunal should decide the claim because no other avenues were available. Tribe’s participation is notable because of a letter he cosigned last month to House and Senate leaders expressing “grave concern about a document we have not been able to see,” referring to the possibility that the Asia-Pacific trade deal still under negotiation could include ISDS provisions.

(Muslims and Christians do not hate each other , the majority want peace.) An interview with Annette Gordon-Reed.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. “Mad Men” may be over, but no one told Xi Jinping. China’s decision to put multiple warheads into its intercontinental ballistic missiles, an approach traditionally associated with a first-strike threat, is projecting China’s stance back into a Cold War mindset. The development is symbolically significant, because China has had multiple warhead technology, known as MIRV, for years, but has never before chosen to deploy it. The decision puts the U.S. on notice that China won’t react passively to increasing containment efforts in the Pacific. And it also tells a domestic audience that President Xi’s vision of the “Chinese dream” isn't simply economic but also deeply nationalistic and even militaristic.