Media Mentions

Mancini lay much of the responsibility for community mistrust of police with the media, which, he said in response to one woman’s question about officers who violate civilians’ constitutional rights, “will always focus on the bad apple..." That comment did not sit well with several of those in attendance. “In fact, the officers do violate the Constitution,” retorted Aaron Bray [`16], a Harvard Law School student who grew up in the Bowdoin/Geneva neighborhood. “Any young man who grew up in this neighborhood knows that, so don’t give me that line about bad apples.”

...One activist, Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, wrote this month that sponsored data is “pernicious; it’s dangerous; it’s malignant.” And, she argued, it ought to be outlawed. At least one nation, Chile, has done just that. Crawford fears that if Facebook, for instance, pays for your data whenever you’re logged onto it, you may end up spending most of your wireless online time on Facebook. Soon all the big boys — Google, Twitter, Pinterest — will do the same. Next thing you know, any Internet service hoping to build a mobile audience must buy a sponsorship. Companies that can’t pay are frozen out.

Only at the level of philosophy, it seems. It’s as if everywhere at once, innocents are cannon fodder for ideology and power. Do our lives matter? For local Nigerian immigrants, that more brutally personal question is especially pressing lately...“The people I speak to back home feel hopeless and helpless,” said Aminu Gamawa, an international lawyer and activist who is working on a doctorate at Harvard Law School. “They feel abandoned, first by our government, second by the media, and third by the international community.” Gamawa is frustrated that “people are discussing Paris over dinner and breakfast, but only a few talk about Boko Haram. . . . It is painful to see the double standard.”

An op-ed by Alan Dershowitz. Imagine the following situation: You’re a 76-year-old man, happily married for nearly 30 years, with three children and two grandchildren. You’ve recently retired after 50 years of teaching at Harvard Law School. You have an unblemished personal record, though your legal and political views are controversial. You wake up on the day before New Year’s Eve to learn that two lawyers have filed a legal document that, in passing, asserts that 15 years ago you had sex on numerous occasions and in numerous locations with an underage female. The accusation doesn’t mention the alleged victim’s name—she’s referred to as Jane Doe #3, and the court document includes no affidavit by her...Welcome to the Kafkaesque world of American justice. But Kafka was writing fiction when he described the ordeal faced by Josef K in his famous novel, “The Trial.” What I have described is real. It is happening to me right now. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

One by one, the remaining potential jurors in the case against Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will go before the court for questioning beginning Thursday...“The idea is to find out the jurors that have opinions that really will be an obstacle to being fair,” says Harvard Law professor Nancy Gertner, who has years of experience questioning prospective jurors as a criminal defense attorney and then as a federal judge.

The city of Dubuque, Iowa, is the latest city to pass a ban on sledding...Harvard law professor John Goldberg says it suits like these that are leading some cities, like Dubuque, to consider sledding restrictions or bans even when state laws try to protect them. John Goldberg: All it takes is a couple of high-profile judgments to get people worried, so I think, in this case, it may be not so much a calculation of oh, my God, it's only a matter of time before we get sued and more gee, if we do get sued, which is a low probability event, the stakes might be quite high. We could be talking about millions of dollars in liability. And why take the risk when we don't have to?

New York asked more than 50 historians to respond to a broad questionnaire about how Obama and his administration will be viewed 20 years from now..."The president’s blackness will matter a great deal, mainly because I think it shaped how many Americans viewed him and gave ammunition to his opposition. And on the other hand, I think Obama’s being black will influence the way that young people see the world. Having a black family living in the White House is important symbolically, as it suggests that the United States is not a “white” nation." – Annette Gordon-Reed

An article by Nancy Gertner. Campus sexual assaults are horrifying, made all the worse because the settings are bucolic and presumed safe—leafy campuses, ivy-walled universities. Assaults are reported in dormitories, off-campus apartments, and fraternity houses, in elite and non-elite institutions, from one end of the country to the other. Title IX (of the Education Amendments of 1972) was supposed to promote equal opportunity in any educational program receiving federal money. But until recently, Title IX was dormant and largely ignored....Just as the complainants must be treated with dignity and their rights to a fair resolution of their charges be respected, so too must those accused of sexual misconduct. You don’t have to believe that there are large numbers of false accusation of sexual assault—I do not—to insist that the process of investigating and adjudicating these claims be fair. In fact, feminists should be especially concerned, not just about creating enforcement proceedings, but about their fairness.

A book excerpt by Lani Guinier...Call it what you will, the SAT still promises something it can’t deliver: a way to measure merit. Yet the increasing reliance on standardized test scores as a status placement in society has created something alien to the very values of our democratic society yet seemingly with a life of its own: a testocracy. Allow me to be clear: I’m not talking about all tests. I’m a professor; I believe in methods of evaluation. But I know, too, that certain methods are fairer and more valuable than others.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Justice Antonin Scalia was missing from the bench this morning when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two statutory interpretation cases -- apparently he was stuck in traffic. But even in his physical absence, Scalia’s presence was looming. It’s not only that he wrote both of the opinions, each decided by a unanimous court. It's that both opinions reflect his approach of “textualism” -- a form of literal legal interpretation that has become his most distinctive contribution to U.S. law. And that in turn provides a strong indication that the Supreme Court will use the same technique later this year to reach a ruling that effectively puts an end to the Affordable Care Act.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What’s free speech for? There’s probably no more fascinating and important question in modern American public life -- or so says this professor of the First Amendment. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court took a stab at it in a case about directional signs guiding worshippers to the Good News Community Church of Gilbert, Arizona. The oral argument showed how sometimes the most trivial laws can generate the most fundamental constitutional issues. The case, Reed v. Town of Gilbert, involves a municipal ordinance that regulates signs put up by individuals, businesses or other organizations, such as churches.

The presidential panel formed in response to heightened tensions between the public and the law enforcement community held its first public meeting on Tuesday, drawing suggestions for legislative fixes, funding for body cameras, and reforms to increase public trust of police...Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree told the task force he wanted to see community policing instead of militarized police. "Police officers should be not just officers, they also need to be social workers," he said, and play a role in the community to make a difference in people's life.

...This is the second year of the N.H. Rebellion, with its 20 or so diehards who will walk for 10 days the whole route, while others join in for a portion. Each year it has begun in Dixville Notch, but this year there are three other routes from Portsmouth, Keene and Nashua, all converging on Concord on Jan. 21. They walk with Harvard professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig in memory of Aaron Swartz and Doris Haddock and to bring awareness and momentum to what they call the most pressing issue in American politics. As long as the most wealthy Americans can influence elections, all other activism suffers, they said.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Here's a quiz. Why did President Barack Obama take steps to normalize relations with Cuba? (a) To polish his legacy. (b) To improve the position of the Democratic Party for the 2016 election. (c) To weaken the Cuba lobby. (d) To show leadership. (e) None of the above. If you answered anything other than (e), you're wrong.

An article by Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie. Why do governments enact, and stick with, policies that are plainly failing? Why do companies adopt foolish strategies that produce massive losses? Why do labor unions, law firms, and religious organizations make self-destructive errors? Over the past three decades, behavioral scientists have made progress in understanding why individuals make unwise choices and why groups do not correct, and frequently even aggravate, the mistakes of their members. The most common and devastating failure of the group process is incomplete information-sharing.

While a student at Harvard Law School, Eva Hibnick took business and marketing electives at Harvard Business School and MIT. However, it wasn’t until a couple of years later, when she left a big law firm to join a startup, that she realized how important personal branding, networking and marketing were...[Silverstein] says she and her friend Heidi Gardner, (an assistant professor who just shifted over from Harvard Business School to Harvard Law School and teaches law firm economics, strategy, marketing and collaboration), are co-authoring the first textbook on law firm business management because “Heidi and I are convinced (these classes) will be part of every law school program in the near future.”...n addition to transitioning Gardner over to the law school, Harvard Law has made other advancements in this area recently and has made “a giant leap from where Harvard Law School was 20 years ago,” says Scott Westfahl, a professor of practice who joined Harvard Law just over a year ago.

When Rajesh De, the chief lawyer for the National Security Agency, needs a special court order so the agency can spy on potential security threats, he turns to John P. Carlin and his team of attorneys in the Justice Department to advocate for the new authority. But De doesn’t always get what he wants from his former Harvard Law School roommate. In a twist of fate they could hardly have predicted a decade and a half ago in Cambridge, they along with another friend from the Class of 1999 are now among the most influential legal minds in the nation’s war on terrorism. Their mission is to strike one of the most weighty — and controversial — balancing acts of the Obama administration: fighting terrorism while protecting the civil liberties of Americans...Another key partner is their other close friend and former classmate, Adam Szubin, the Treasury Department official responsible for cutting off the flow of money to terrorist groups.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Is New York state’s ban on “tiger selfies” the goofiest law of the year? It might be absurd for the state to pass a law banning the taking of photographs with jungle cats, but there’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that bans absurd laws. The practical question -- at least if you’re a New York stud who wants a tiger selfie for your Tinder photo -- is whether the law is constitutional. If it is, you might have to travel to New Jersey (gasp) for your close encounter of the feline kind. And if you aren’t on the edge of your seat already, don’t despair. Before you conclude that this is the sorriest legal column you’ve ever read, I promise there are deep free speech issues in the underlying constitutional problem. Really. And grrrr.

Jury selection is underway in Fall River in the case of Aaron Hernandez, who's charged in the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd...Harvard Law School Professor Ronald Sullivan Jr. says that this pre-trial publicity cannot be avoided, given the recent advancements in information technology. But he says the jurors do not have to be unaware of the case in order to render an impartial verdict. "The juror does not have to be wholly ignorant of... the facts of the case. That's almost impossible. In certain cases, neither side probably wants a juror who's so disconnected from the world that they've heard absolutely nothing about these huge cases. But rather, the question is -- not withstanding that you've heard something about the case -- 'can you nonetheless follow the judge's instructions and render an impartial verdict?'" said Sullivan.

The “testocracy” is the term that I use to describe the overemphasis by many institutions of higher education on the applicant’s ability to do well on an SAT or an LSAT or some other test that is presumed to predict performance in college. What these tests really tell you about is the financial stability of your family. The focus of higher education has become extremely competitive as opposed to courageously collaborative. The testocracy doesn’t take into account the important roles that higher education plays or attempts to play in a democracy. Those roles are a form of teaching leadership, of teaching scholarship, and producing citizens who are going to contribute not just to their own family but to the larger society.

Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, is about to face her toughest trial yet: to demonstrate that the court has enough muscle to tackle the gravest human rights cases, even if it means confronting the world’s most powerful countries...Both raise novel legal issues, international criminal lawyers say, and the prosecutor is likely to move cautiously — “not because they are politically sensitive,” wrote Alex Whiting, one of her former colleagues at the I.C.C., “but because critical support for its work on these cases is far from assured.”...According to Mr. Whiting, who now teaches at Harvard Law School: “The strong reactions to the Palestinian move to join the court show something else: that the I.C.C. still matters. A lot.”