Media Mentions

Normally, you’d think your 401k is a force for good. You put money in, let your nest egg grow, and draw it down when it comes time to retire. But Harvard Law professor Einer Elhauge argues that the mutual funds that make up your 401k, along with everyone else’s, have become so immense that they have created a perverse anti-competitive incentive: to keep prices high in industries like airlines and banks, thereby hurting you, the consumer.

The Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at Boston College Law School is pleased to announce the selection of its 2015 Fellows. This year’s group includes Rebecca Harris [`17] from Sharon, a law student at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Turkey’s airstrikes against Islamic State and its decision to allow U.S. warplanes to operate from its air bases are in direct response to terrorist attacks in the Turkish town of Suruc earlier in the week. The cause-and-effect relationship highlights what’s becoming a central strategic dilemma for Islamic State. Ideologically, the organization embraces the jihadi techniques developed by al-Qaeda, which call for suicide bombings against civilians within regimes deemed to be the enemy. Practically, however, Islamic State’s best chance of survival as a quasi-sovereign entity is to leave its Sunni neighbors alone in the hopes they won’t provide the ground troops that would be necessary to defeat the militant group.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Should Denmark prosecute a 90-year-old Dane who volunteered as a Nazi concentration-camp guard more than 70 years ago? The question isn’t hypothetical: The Simon Wiesenthal Center has presented Danish authorities with a dossier urging the prosecution of Helmuth Leif Rasmussen, who by his own account was present at the Bobruisk camp in 1942-43 when 1,400 Jews were killed there.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It's becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, isn't going to be closed during President Barack Obama's administration -- or beyond, despite the administration's efforts. That raises a deep question about foreign policy and the rule of law: What if Guantanamo never closes, and some of its detainees remain there for the rest of their lives?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Leaked intelligence reports say that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the titular head of Islamic State, is delegating authority in anticipation of his untimely demise. That raises some timely questions: Can you have a caliphate without a caliph? What will happen to Islamic State if Baghdadi is killed? And, by extension, how much effort should the U.S. and its allies put into trying to target and kill him?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When I last checked, the U.S. was still a majority-Christian country. So what's the world coming to when the Republican Congress seems more excited to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than Pope Francis? The answer holds a lesson about the role of religion in shaping symbolic politics -- and helps make sense of some of the opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. In the U.S., faith often jump-starts a political movement or position -- but pretty soon, politics takes over the driver's seat and brings the religion along.

...But even though Amtrak has announced that it will not contest lawsuits filed against the company for the accident, Ms. Varnum and Mr. MacFarland fear they will have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars for medical bills out of their own pockets. The couple hope their lawsuit will highlight the fact that the congressionally mandated cap on liability for Amtrak accidents can leave victims with enormous bills...“When Congress enacted the cap, it made the judgment that victims of large-scale railroad crashes will be among those who have to bear the cost of keeping Amtrak up and running,” said John C. P. Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard and expert on tort law. “It is very difficult to see why, in effect, some of the subsidy should come from the victims of train crashes rather than the public.”

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In recent years, high-level Western officials have argued that terrorism is a product of poverty, a lack of education or mental illness. Other influential voices have urged that terrorist acts expose the truth about Islam, and still others that they are a natural, if excessive, response to legitimate grievances against the West. On Monday, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron pointedly rejected every one of these theories -- and went on to provide what may well be the most clear-headed explanation ever offered by a head of state...In Cameron's view, the root cause of terrorism is instead an extremist ideology, fueled by a process of radicalization.

Leave it to Berkeley: This city, which has led the nation in passing all manner of laws favored by the left, has done it again. This time, the city passed a measure — not actually backed by science — requiring cellphone stores to warn customers that the products could be hazardous to their health, presumably by emitting dangerous levels of cancer-causing radiation...Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, and Robert Post, the dean of Yale Law School and an expert on the First Amendment, have agreed to defend Berkeley pro bono over claims that the legislation is unconstitutional. “The First Amendment is being contorted to all sorts of wrong ends,” Mr. Lessig said. “We’re not intending to challenge the science of cellphones,” Mr. Lessig said. “We’re just making people aware of existing regulations.”

As any civil practitioner can attest, the number of people who show up in court without an attorney seems to increase every year. But what’s driving the surge in pro se litigants? How do those trend lines compare in different jurisdictions? And, more broadly, what can be done to improve access to justice? Those were just a few of the questions posed by Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow at the quarterly meeting of Legal Services Corporation at the University of St. Thomas law school in Minneapolis last Friday. As it turns out, the precise incidence of pro se cases is surprisingly difficult to quantify. But Minow’s panelists — four state supreme court justices from the upper Midwest and one U.S. District Court judge — agreed on one point: The shortage of pro bono lawyers is most pronounced in family law.

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. For the first time in modern history, the leading issue concerning voters in the upcoming presidential election, according to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, is that “wealthy individuals and corporations will have too much influence over who wins.” Five years after the Supreme Court gave corporations and unions the right to spend unlimited amounts in political campaigns, voters have had enough...Real reform will require changing the way campaigns are funded — moving from large-dollar private funding to small-dollar public funding.

Maria Hinojosa, Ron Christie, Kenneth Mack, and Efrén C. Olivares join Melissa Harris-Perry to consider why some babies born in Texas are being denied birth certificates - even though the 14th Amendment should guarantee their citizenship.

Melissa Harris-Perry and her panel break [including Professor Kenneth Mack] down President Obama's unprecedented week, in which he addressed criminal justice reform, foreign policy, and more.

The federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination regulations ruled that civil rights law protects gays and lesbians, citing a Massachusetts lawsuit filed more than a decade ago, among other cases...In a ruling in 2002, US District Court Judge Nancy Gertner denied the Postal Service’s bid to have the suit thrown out on the grounds that Title VII did not specifically mention sexual orientation...Gertner, who has retired from the bench and teaches at Harvard Law School, said Tuesday night that the commission ruling in the Miami case is the first time the agency has explicitly said the Chapter VII provision against sex discrimination applies to sexual orientation. “It is a big deal,” she said, adding that while the ruling does not affect Massachusetts, which has protections for gays and lesbians, “it would matter nationwide.”

...It would follow that once infrastructure investments decline, Internet prices should go down, but that hasn’t been the case. A study by Harvard scholar Susan Crawford and telecommunications analyst Mitchell Shapiro shows that while companies’ capital expenses have declined, they make more and more profit off of what exists.

...Indeed, less than 20% of the provisions relate to trade – the rest are economic and political issues. Obama's law mentor, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe together with other very senior US law experts agree that this is not a trade agreement. "It's about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When Texans, including Governor Greg Abbott, give credence to the possibility that the U.S. military's Jade Helm 15 training exercise is a pretext to occupy Texas and confiscate the people's guns, it's easy to dismiss them as paranoid fantasists. And certainly, those concerns are demonstrably paranoid. But it's paranoia that reflects a quintessentially American concern about the risks of a standing army -- one that goes back to James Madison, and is tied to the origins of the Second Amendment.

...“I think she really made the government angry because of her human rights work,” said Teng Biao, one of China’s best-known civil rights lawyers and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. “These lawyers are well organized and they are well connected. They can mobilize people through social media.”

...Readers have been shocked, dismayed, disillusioned and disoriented. But one thing they perhaps should not be, according to Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, is surprised.

...While circuit courts aren’t bound by each other’s rulings and the cases are not identical, the 10th Circuit’s narrow view of the Commerce Clause is sure to be raised in Minnesota’s appeal, said Ari Peskoe, energy fellow at Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative, which tracks energy litigation.