Media Mentions

The University of Virginia held a two-day conference last February on “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.” One of the speakers was the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, who touted her office’s efforts to compel colleges and universities, under pain of losing federal funds, to adopt draconian policies on sexual harassment and assault. These policies have raised serious concerns about due process and basic fairness for the accused, and an audience member asked Ms. Lhamon how she planned to deal with such “push-back.” Her reply: “We’ve received a lot of push-back, and we need to push forward notwithstanding.” The recent experience of Harvard Law School demonstrates the value of pushing back...Most institutions yield to OCR’s pressure without significant dissent. But at Harvard, 28 law professors—including liberal luminaries Elizabeth Bartholet, Alan Dershowitz, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley, Duncan Kennedy and Charles Ogletree —signed an open letter, published in the Boston Globe, in which they described the new policies and procedures as “inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach.”...Still, the law school’s new procedures are a significant improvement over the university’s, and they promise more fairness than the kangaroo-court systems many universities have adopted under OCR pressure. The investigation of Harvard College is still under way, and the university could do far worse than to follow the lead of Harvard Law, the school that pushed back.

While U.S. Supreme Court opinions are routinely examined through the political lens of the court’s nine justices, far less is known about the ideological makeup of the thousands of judges on the nation’s federal and state benches...Now, research from Maya Sen, an assistant professor of public policy with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), and Adam Bonica, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, sheds some light on the opaque world of politics in the judiciary...[Nancy] Gertner said the research “comports” with her view that Republican presidents such George W. Bush selected conservative judges, but Democratic presidents, including Clinton and Barack Obama, J.D. ’91, largely pulled their punches in an effort to sidestep contentious confirmation processes...Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law at HLS, said the research documents what is already known: that politics has always played a decisive role in judicial appointments.

A senior commander in the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Dominic Ongwen, appeared before a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) this week to face charges of war crimes carried out during a 20-year conflict in northern Uganda....It is not yet clear whether the ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, will seek additional charges. Alex Whiting, a former member of the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, said it was possible fresh charges could be added as further evidence was gathered in the run-up to the trial. “Since the warrant in the case is so old, the Office of the Prosecutor will need to do additional investigation [to support existing charges],” Whiting said. “In that process, it is very possible that it will uncover evidence supporting additional charges.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Why has Greece chosen a far-left government at a time when discontented and frustrated voters elsewhere in Europe have turned to the far right? In northern Europe, the frustrated voters’ parties of choice are right wing and anti-immigrant. So how come frustrated Greeks made a sharp turn to the left, electing the near-communist Syriza party to lead the government? The choice of left over right is especially striking because Greece is a first port of call for so many new immigrants to Europe.

Sen Orrin G. Hatch wants to see the Supreme Court strike a blow to Obamacare this year--but the Utah Republican's own words are being used by the Obama administration in that court case to defend the law...In cases like these, it is fairly common for interested parties to "use whatever they can to flavor their arguments in the briefs," said I. Glenn Cohen, a health law expert at Harvard Law School. But that doesn't mean the justices will tune in. "All the justices will focus on the text itself, and while a few may look at legislative history, I would be quite surprised if media comments are used as anything but a rhetorical device in the opinions," Mr. Cohen said.

Even as Los Angeles became home to the country’s largest population of homeless military veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs for years has used much of its 387-acre tract near the city’s exclusive Brentwood neighborhood for other purposes, including leasing property to a car rental agency and the laundry facilities of a major hotel chain....This week, the department agreed to settle a three-year-old lawsuit on behalf of homeless veterans by pledging to build permanent and transitional “bridge” housing on the tract and at other locations throughout greater Los Angeles. ...The legal team also included the Inner City Law Center, Prof. Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, and two high-powered firms, Munger Tolles & Olson and Arnold & Porter.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Maybe you remember Roy Moore? He’s the chief justice of Alabama who, in 2001, ordered the erection of a 5,200 pound granite copy of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court -- then refused to remove it in 2003 after a federal court ruled it unconstitutional. On Tuesday, while the Northeast was covered in snow, Moore was at it again. He sent the Alabama governor a letter asserting that Alabama judges aren’t bound by the federal district court decision requiring issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the state. Moore’s idiosyncratic view isn’t completely crazy -- but it is dangerously wrong. And it’s especially important to show why it’s wrong, because Southern states’ rights fundamentalism has a long and bad history of challenging federal constitutional decisions in the context of segregation.

Former North Carolina basketball player Rashanda McCants said she and former UNC fullback Devon Ramsay need teammates to help them go against not only their former school but also the mighty NCAA...The complaint filed a week ago at the Durham County courthouse claims both UNC and the NCAA were complicit in steering hundreds of UNC student-athletes to irregular classes that lacked faculty involvement or attendance requirements...Harvard Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. is among the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.

Sorority women at the University of Virginia were ordered to stay home on the biggest party night of the year to protect their “safety and well-being” -- and they are furious about it. Members of the National Panhellenic Conference told 16 UVA sorority chapters last week not to participate in Boys’ Bid Night fraternity parties on Saturday. The revelry has led to allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking in the past. Women who break the prohibition may face sanctions...“This is the wrong approach to thinking about how to empower women,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor of civil rights and family law at Harvard Law School. “It’s not the right reaction to say we need to keep women away.” Bartholet is one of 28 law professors who signed an open letter last year condemning Harvard’s sexual-misconduct policy, saying it “departs dramatically” from current law.

Virginians rightly disgusted by the sleazy behavior of ex-Gov. Bob McDonnell need to brace for the possibility that he and his wife could eventually be fully cleared on appeal even though they were convicted of a total of 19 corruption felonies....“None of the case law up until that point, nothing in the statute, would have suggested that introductions and access were criminal,” Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge who now teaches law at Harvard, said. She and a Harvard colleague wrote a brief supporting McDonnell. “The criminal law has to be clear. It has to give notice. Otherwise, every politician is vulnerable to an ambitious prosecutor,” said Gertner, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.

With a push from the NFL, all 50 states and the District of Columbia passed youth concussion laws over the span of about five years. They were modeled after legislation passed in Washington state in 2009. But an Associated Press analysis shows just 21 of the laws that followed included all four key elements in Washington's bill. "Washington state is the 'gold standard,'" said Peter Carfagna, the founder of a sports marketing company and a teacher at Harvard Law School. "I have a hard time thinking of a good reason why you'd deviate from it."

It’s nearly the end of the college application season and, for many high school seniors, that means the end of a years-long process full of AP tests, extracurricular activists, volunteer hours and SAT prep — much of it a means to an end: getting into the highest ranking college. For years, SAT critics have argued the test disadvantages poor students, but now, Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier is saying the test has hurt the mission of higher education. She outlines that position in her new book, “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America."

The law can be an important tool in increasing low breastfeeding rates. Mississippi has some protections already in place for breastfeeding mothers...The language, drafted by Harvard Law School/Mississippi State University Delta fellow Desta Reff, doesn't give women any new legal rights. Instead, it extends "the support of the Mississippi Senate for the needs and rights of breastfeeding mothers consistent with the law."...A 2006 state law protects women's right to breastfeed in any location, but has no enforcement provision. "So if someone tells you (to) cover up, you have no recourse," says Reff.

Dominic Ongwen, a Ugandan commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), made his first appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday for a pretrial hearing. What now? IJT asked two experts what they expected of this first ICC case against a former child soldier-turned-perpetrator...The arrest warrant dates from 2005 and does not include crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic (CAR) or South Sudan. It is possible newcharges will be added later, says Harvard professor Alex Whiting, who worked as an investigation and prosecution coordinator at the ICC from 2010 to 2013...Whiting, however, believes it “is not a big deal” that the ICC is prosecuting a formervictim. He compares it with domestic criminal cases against violent adults who were mistreated in childhood. “The fact that you were a victim is no excuse for becoming a perpetrator,” he says. Still, he agrees that proving Ongwen was “coerced” to com- mit the crimes or “damaged” may allow his past to “count as a mitigating factor”, though not hinder his prosecution.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Syrian and Iraqi Kurdish forces say that, with the help of three months of U.S. airstrikes, they’ve retaken the town of Kobani on the Syria-Turkey border from Islamic State. This success doesn’t change the basic strategic calculus of the war on the insurgent group: The fight for Kobani was always more about symbolism than military advantage. But the victory, if you can call it that, carries three lessons about how the conflict with Islamic State is going -- and how it can and cannot be affected by the use of force. The first and most important lesson is that airstrikes alone can’t retake territory from Islamic State.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The news that California will ban its judges from participation in the Boy Scouts has been on my mind since it was announced Friday. The decision is interesting on many levels, with implications from the mainstreaming of gay rights to the centrality of scouting to Mormonism and beyond. But the angle that’s been gnawing at me is constitutional: How, exactly, can the state code of judicial conduct prohibit judges from exercising what would otherwise be their constitutional right to free association? You and I can join any private organization we want. Why can’t judges?

Poor and middle-class litigants in Florida are increasingly showing up to court without lawyers, resulting in a significant access-to-justice problem throughout the state. That was the consensus of a panel on "The Importance of Access to Justice to the Judiciary" held Friday at the University of Miami School of Law. The panel was part of a Legal Services Corp. half-day seminar. Panelists included Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga; U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami; Richard Leefe of Leefe, Gibbs, Sullivan & Dupre in Louisiana; Puerto Rico Supreme Court Chief Justice Liana Fiol Matta; and William Van Norwick Jr., a retired judge from Florida's First District Court of Appeal. The panel was moderated by Harvard law dean Martha Minow.

...To investigate the role of motivated reasoning in the sort of institutional flip-flops that politicians and judges engage in, Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein and I conducted a series of surveys. In one, we asked people whether President Bush acted rightly by using a loophole to make appointments in defiance of Senate opposition. Most Republicans said he did the right thing while most Democrats said he acted wrongly. We then put Obama’s name in for Bush with a different group of respondents and asked the same question. This time the vast majority of Republicans opposed the appointments while most Democrats said he did the right thing.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. Questioning prospective jurors is tedious. The press usually ignores it. In Massachusetts, few judges or lawyers pay much attention to it. One judge bragged about the speed with which he picked a jury: “Ten minutes, tops, no matter what the case is.” But with the two high-profile cases of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Aaron Hernandez , all eyes are on jury selection. A new state statute and guidelines from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court may forecast a new approach for state courts — permitting jurors to be questioned by lawyers, not just judges, and on a broad range of issues — but only for cases after Feb. 1.

The Rev. Lorenzo Lynch was in his living room here, surrounded by photographs of his daughter Loretta, when he first heard the news that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was stepping down and she was on the short list of candidates to replace him...When she graduated law school, Lynch and another Harvard student, Annette Gordon-Reed, both joined the Wall Street law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel as litigation associates. They and another African American woman at the firm called themselves “the triplets” and worked brutal hours. “We often found ourselves sitting in a conference room at 3:00 in the morning eating Chinese food and working on a case,” said Gordon-Reed, now a Harvard law professor. “She’s a Southern steel-magnolia-type person — very, very strong,” Gordon-Reed said. “But she’s also one of the funniest people I know and a good mimic.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. For many decades, the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York has ranked among the most universally despised rulings in the history of American law. In that long-repudiated case, the court struck down a maximum-hours law for bakers. A week ago, Senator Rand Paul -- a likely candidate for president, and among the most influential members of the Republican Party -- explicitly embraced Lochner, and proudly endorsed the whole idea of “judicial activism.” That tells us a lot about contemporary law and politics, and probably about the future of conservative thinking as well.