Media Mentions

Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1994. She presided over trials for 17 years. And Sunday, she stood before a crowd at The Aspen Ideas Festival to denounce most punishments that she imposed. Among 500 sanctions that she handed down, “80 percent I believe were unfair and disproportionate,” she said...No theory of retribution or social change could justify them, she said. And that dispiriting conclusion inspired the radical idea that she presented: a call for the U.S. to mimic its decision after World War II to look to the future and rebuild rather than trying to punish or seek retribution. As she sees it, the War on Drugs ought to end in that same spirit. “Although we were not remotely the victors of that war, we need a big idea in order to deal with those who were its victims,” she said, calling for something like a Marshall Plan.

An op-ed by Charles Ogletree. The last time I visited Shreveport, the Confederate flag still adorned the Caddo Parish Courthouse. It was 2011 and I came to meet with Carl Staples, the man who refused to serve on a jury so long as that flag — a symbol of one of the most "heinous crimes ever committed to another member of the human race" — flew over the courthouse lawn. How could we be here for justice, Staples asked, when we "overlook this great injustice by continuing to fly this flag?" When I heard about Staples' courage I had to meet him. It was an honor to stand with him and Caddo Parish's community, business and church leaders as they asked the Caddo Parish Commission to take down that flag.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. The government focused on the claim that Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not show remorse for his heinous, unimaginable crime until last week’s sentencing proceeding. That, counsel suggested, was too little, too late. Why was Tsarnaev silent during the penalty phase, when his life was on the line, only to speak after the jury chose death, when it no longer mattered? The sealed docket entries, the arguments of counsel, the documents that have been kept from the public, may hold the clue.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. You didn’t really think you could get out of this U.S. Supreme Court term without a teaser about the next big case, did you? On its last day of public business until the first Monday in October, the court dropped a big hint about next season’s episodes. It agreed to hear Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which squarely poses the question of whether the basic public-union arrangement that’s been in place since 1977 violates the First Amendment.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The end of this term at the U.S. Supreme Court felt like the culmination of an era -- or rather of two eras. Periods in the history of the court tend to form in relation to the great, defining political issues of the day, which eventually make their way to the court in legal guise. The gay-marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, marks the culmination of a 25-year period of gay-rights decisions that coincided with an era of gay-rights advocacy, starting with the 1969 riot at the Stonewall Inn in New York. The Affordable Care Act case, King v. Burwell, belongs to a shorter wave of cases, challenges to the social and economic legislation enacted partly in reaction to the financial crisis of 2007-08.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Score one for the living Constitution. No, not gay marriage, which the framers couldn’t have imagined as a fundamental constitutional right, yet became one last week. Monday's winner is the referendum, which the framers would’ve hated but has been part of our government for more than a century. The case, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Districting Commission, involved an obscure provision of the Constitution that was actually extremely important to those who drafted it during the long, hot summer of 1787.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In a significant defeat for Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote Monday rejected emissions regulations for power plants because the agency didn’t engage in a full-blown cost-benefit analysis at the very first stage of its regulatory process. From the Obama administration’s perspective, if it had to lose Justice Anthony Kennedy’s deciding vote in one high-profile case this term, it was better for it to lose this environmental case than the Affordable Care Act decision. But the loss will still smart for environmentalists.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Other justices appointed by Republicans, most notably Harry Blackmun, turned to the left toward the end of their careers, as Justice Anthony Kennedy has gradually and selectively done. But Blackmun’s turn famously included a refusal to tinker with the “machinery of death,” and a consequent rejection of capital punishment. On the last day of the U.S. Supreme Court term, Kennedy showed he wasn’t even close to there. He provided the fifth and deciding vote Monday to reject death-row inmates’ claim that the drug midazolam, part of the drug cocktail designed to render you unconscious before killing you, is unconstitutionally ineffective.

China adopted a sweeping, new national security law that the government says is needed to counter emerging threats but that critics say may be used to quash dissent and exclude foreign investment. Approved by the legislature’s standing committee Wednesday, the law sets an expansive definition of national security that outlaws threats to China’s government, sovereignty, national unity, as well as its economy, society and cyber and space interests...“This law will legitimize the abuse of power by state and public security bureaus,” said Teng Biao, a prominent Chinese lawyer who was detained in the past over his rights activism, and is now a fellow at Harvard Law School. “For the Communist Party, the rule of law means using legislation as a tool of control.”

The Supreme Court will once again take up affirmative action in college admissions. The Court announced Monday it would review whether considering race and ethnicity while building a college class is constitutional..."It's always been a highly contentious issue," says Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who teaches law and history at Harvard. Brown-Nagin says the Court is taking up affirmative action at a time when the country is debating questions of access for students of color. "It's incredibly competitive to be admitted to selective institutions of higher education," she says. "On the one hand you have the continuing controversy over the use of race in admission. On the other hand you have a lot of anxiety in the public about whether students will be admitted to college."

The secretariat of strategic affairs in Brasília lies in a nondescript ministry building in the middle of the plano piloto — the aircraft-shaped street layout of Brazil’s modernist capital. The job of its new minister, philosopher and Harvard law professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger, is to chart a long-term development plan for President Dilma Rousseff, whose palace lies a kilometre away in the “cockpit” of the plano piloto. It is not an easy task. Latin America’s largest economy is suffering increased turbulence from the end of the commodities super cycle and a credit-driven consumption boom. Economists forecast the economy will shrink nearly 1.5 per cent this year. Unemployment is increasing fast. “The underlying frailty of the system that we built was its very low productivity,” said Mr Unger, one of Brazil’s best-known academics internationally who won tenure at Harvard Law School aged just 29 in 1976.

The Supreme Court will consider limiting the power of government employee unions to collect fees from non-members in a case that labor officials say could threaten membership and further weaken union clout..."When unions are required to provide representation, if people don't have to pay for that, a lot of them are going to opt for that free option and that's going to cause enormous problems for the viability of unions," said Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School specializing in labor law.

A new study has found that the majority of state-run Medicaid programs are creating formidable barriers to patients with the potentially deadly Hepatitis C virus from being treated with new wonder drugs that can cost as much as $1,000 a pill. The joint study by researchers from Harvard Law School, Brown University’s Department of Medicine, Rhode Island’s Miriam Hospital, and the Kirby Institute of Australia was published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine...Robert Greenwald, a professor at the Harvard Law School’s Center for Health Law and Policy and a co-author of the study, said that he began the research with the idea there were restrictions in place but that he didn’t anticipate the breadth of these restrictions. “I think there is evidence that they are rationing based on cost,” Greenwald said in an interview on Tuesday, adding that “the sad reality” is that states are withholding treatment to many despite receiving rebates or discounts from the drug manufacturers of 23 percent or more.

State-run insurance programs for the poor may be putting up illegal barriers that prevent people with hepatitis C from getting a new treatment, a new study suggests. "We had this idea that there were restrictions in place, but we didn't anticipate the breadth of these restrictions," said study author Robert Greenwald of the Center for Health Law and Policy at Harvard Law School in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

The Supreme Court put public-sector unions in its crosshairs Tuesday by agreeing to hear a constitutional attack on the mandatory representation fees that nearly all California teachers pay...“This is a very significant case. It may well be life or death for the unions,” said Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs. “Unions are required to represent everyone. And this could mean nobody has an obligation to pay.”

The Supreme Court issued two historical decisions last week—one upholding the Affordable Care Act, and the other legalizing same-sex marriage across all fifty states. Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School and most recently author of "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution," is perhaps uniquely qualified to discuss matters of the court: he had two of its members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan, as students. (You may also be familiar with his former research assistant, now-President Barack Obama.) Tribe joined Jim Braude and Margery Eagan in Studio 3.

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Obama administration's environmental plans, deciding that efforts to sharply limit hazardous power plant emissions must also consider their costs. In a 5-4 decision Monday, the justices said the Environmental Protection Agency needs to weigh the economic impact of proposed regulations — estimated at $9.6 billion annually — on power companies and their customers...The decision "overturns one of EPA's most important pollution control rules," said Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, an expert on environmental law. "The good news is that EPA can likely go back and reissue the same rule, this time taking costs into account. The bad news is that this may take a long time to accomplish. The Obama administration will be hard-pressed to get the job done before it goes out of office."

... CHUCK TODD: We'll cover it all, victories for liberals, President Obama's growing legacy, and how conservatives will respond. I'll be joined by two 2016 Republican candidates, Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, and Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina. Finally, terror abroad and concerns at home. How serious is the threat to us? I'm Chuck Todd, and joining me for insight and analysis this Sunday morning are former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University, Kathleen Parker of The Washington Post, and Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School. Welcome to Sunday, it's Meet the Press. ... As we bring in the panel, I wanted everyone to see how the Supreme Court's decision was covered in America's newspaper. For many people, these are the kinds of front pages they'll be saving, hanging on their wall, framing it. You'll see it there from all over the country. They will be souvenirs for many people. Others maybe not so much. Let me bring in the panel. Charles Ogletree, Michael Eric Dyson, Newt Gingrich. Charles Ogletree, let me start with you. You're the Harvard law professor here. What did you learn from the Supreme Court this week? Charles Ogletree: It was a great series of decisions. And I think that this is not about left and right. The Republicans have not turned conservative or library. This is about justice and equality. And I think those opinions show about justice equality. So I'm very happy with what was decided by the court today.

An op-ed by Heidi Gardner: True rainmakers don’t need to be convinced to collaborate: referring work to colleagues and developing a loyal team capable of extraordinary…

An op-ed by Bonnie Docherty:  Such fully autonomous weapons, or “killer robots,” are under development in several countries. But the robots’ use of force would undermine the fundamental legal and moral principle that people should be held responsible for their wrongdoing. Countries and nongovernmental groups around the world have been working for two years now to figure out how to deal with these weapons before they are in production. In April, representatives from 90 countries met at the United Nations in Geneva for their second round of talks on what to do about “lethal autonomous weapons systems.”

Following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision Friday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marriage, several Harvard Law School professors said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion, played an extraordinary role in advancing the cause. “The majority opinion by Justice Kennedy was a triumph of reason and passion alike,” Law School professor and former Supreme Court clerk Laurence H. Tribe ’62 wrote in an email. ... Law School professor Michael J. Klarman wrote that Friday’s decision “confirms the extraordinary influence” of Kennedy, adding that he believes Kennedy is “the most powerful justice in history.” ... Law School professor Richard H. Fallon agreed that people opposed to same-sex marriage may be angry about the verdict, they are unlikely to act politically, given a shift in public support for same-sex marriage in recent years.