Media Mentions

Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a mentor to President Barack Obama, said the administration’s carbon rule for power plants is “a remarkable example of executive overreach” that raises “serious constitutional questions.” Tribe, who submitted joint comments to the Environmental Protection Agency with coal producer Peabody Energy Corp., said the agency should withdraw its plan to cut emissions from power plants because it reverses decades of federal support for coal. “The Proposed Rule lacks any legal basis and should be withdrawn,” Tribe and Peabody wrote in their filing, which law firms for the company said was submitted to EPA on the Dec. 1 deadline. Peabody, the nation’s largest coal producer, has declined more than 44 percent in trading since the EPA plan was unveiled at the beginning of June.

An op-ed by Mark Roe. If you could make one change to the bankruptcy code, what would it be? It’s the safe harbors. The bankruptcy code works well, but even good codes could be improved. Everyone will have a favorite for making a typical industrial firm bankruptcy work better. (Mine is to better handle the time value of money during a bankruptcy proceeding.) But only one piece of the code can spill over to damage the entire American economy in a serious way. And it’s those safe harbors for repo and derivatives. They need narrowing and fixing.

Most people struggle to plan their financial futures beyond the next decade, while those with money and foresight are likely to think well in advance about what they want to leave their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. But what about planning for eternity? It seems too long to contemplate. Yet in the last several decades, states have begun competing with one another for the business of perpetual trusts, which are designed to last forever, or at least 1,000 years in the case of Wyoming...But now a Harvard Law School professor, Robert H. Sitkoff, has written an academic paper making the case that perpetual trusts are unconstitutional in some of the very states that have tried hardest to persuade people to establish them..."Why do we care about these perpetual trusts?” Mr. Sitkoff said. “Because there’s a lot of money in them. Billions of dollars is pouring into these jurisdictions.”

Want to take a popular Harvard course? Go to Yale. Next fall, Yale University in New Haven, Conn., will offer a computer-science class in which its students will watch live-streamed lectures from Harvard University, and students on both campuses will take uniform tests, visit one another and collaborate in other ways both digital and physical...“A shared course allows for interactions not possible within a single physical classroom…cultivating a healthy diversity of viewpoints,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor who co-founded the school’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

When newly elected Massachusetts State Senator Eric P. Lesser ’07 [HLS `15] arrived at Harvard from his hometown of Longmeadow, Mass. in the fall of 2003, his career in politics was well along its way...Lesser...Lesser will begin serving on Beacon Hill in Boston on Jan. 7.

The deaths this summer of two African American men at the hands of white police officers again brought racial tension to the national spotlight; The death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson resulted in a decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson last month, and on Wednesday, a grand jury in New York decided to not charge NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choking death of Eric Garner. Protests and rallies nationwide aim to drive home the same point: Racial inequality is alive and well, and exacerbated by the American justice system. Illinois Public Media's Hannah Meisel spoke with race relations expert and Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree about where the country goes from here.

It’s likely no surprise that digital media outlets are quickly capturing the worldwide sports audience. Websites and social outlets such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter regularly share the latest great catch or slam-dunk via video, tweet, or “like.” Yet television still has an enormous grip on millions of fans around the globe, in particular during live sporting events with international appeal, such as the Olympics or the World Cup...The discussion on the future of the sports business model was sponsored by HLS’s Brazilian Studies Association and its Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law. The panel, moderated by Charles Nesson, the William F. Weld Professor of Law and co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, included Harvard Business School’s Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration, emeritus Stephen Greyser, and sports law specialist and HLS lecturer on law Peter Carfagna.

Freedom from surveillance is shaping up to be a major human rights issue in the post-Snowden era. The UN human rights committee is calling for a review of how member states collect residents’ data, and a Pew study last month found that most Americans are concerned with government and corporate data collection. For journalists, recent events such as the FBI posing as the Associated Press and an Uber executive allegedly threatening to expose the personal lives of the people writing about the company underscore the importance of digital security in the 21st Century...Though there is an argument to be made that digital privacy rights are enshrined in the supreme law of the land, legal scholar Mark Tushnet of Harvard Law says that idea is actually controversial. It stems from outdated doctrines and case-law that doesn’t reflect modern realities.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When 188 people are sentenced to death in the same trial, as happened Tuesday in Egypt, you know something's gone terribly wrong in the system of justice. It's undeniable that there was a protest in the Kerdasa neighborhood of Cairo on Aug. 14, 2013, the same day that Egyptian security and military forces cleared Muslim Brotherhood supporters out of Tahrir Square some 10 miles away. Eleven policemen died, according to news reports. But a collective trial and conviction ignores the structure of individual justice that criminal law is supposed to deliver, no matter the country. It's the latest depressing chapter in the death of Egypt’s short-lived democracy -- and a reason for the U.S. to rethink its instinctive tendency to back the government of former general Abdul Fattah El-Sisi.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Does the U.S. Supreme Court have a trademark? It certainly has its own seal: Check out the cool legal eagle on supremecourt.gov. Regardless of whether it's a trademark, however, the eagle has reason to look proud of its uniqueness right now. The court, which very rarely hears trademark cases, is making two exceptions this week. Yesterday, the issue was how much the courts should defer to the examiners in the Patent and Trademark Office, in a technical case that I'm going to spare you. Today's case is both simpler and more fun -- and it involves the fascinating question of whether a trademark should count if it originates in a foreign language.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed, after White House review, an ozone regulation very similar to one that President Barack Obama personally blocked some three years earlier. On both the right and the left, and in news stories as well, the new proposal is being portrayed as an intensely political reversal: Unburdened by the prospect of reelection, the president is said to be following his instincts, appealing to his base and ignoring the complaints of the business community, to which he capitulated in 2011. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Congress is working on extending a number of expiring tax breaks. These temporary tax cuts are very important to business; some are for research and development, others let companies write off investments in equipment or facilities. Corporations really want to see them extended. But nothing’s free in Washington. “These temporary provisions become very efficient tools for members of Congress to raise money, ” says Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor. He says that members of Congress want to keep these tax breaks temporary so they can tell corporate donors: Give us campaign contributions so we can stay in office and renew your tax breaks. This keeps lobbyists busy too, according to Lessig. “So everybody inside the beltway wins in this Christmas gift process, which we call the extension of these temporary provisions,” he says.

...STEM can sometimes be an overused buzzword, the negative impacts of which are felt by students who don’t get a quality, well-rounded education. But in general its hype is justified because students simply need greater scientific and technological literacy than they did before to function in today’s society and economy. “Anything that gets this kind of buzzword character tends to lose some of its real meaning in the process,” said Michael Teitelbaum, a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and author of the new book Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent.

...About 300 Harvard law students convened on campus Monday chanting “no justice, no peace,” before they joined a larger Ferguson protest in Harvard Square...Ferguson protests have raged across the country in the week since the grand jury’s decision was made public, and law students appear to be especially active in the movement. That’s likely because many law students are strongly committed to social justice and feel an added responsibility to ensure that the law is applied fairly, said McKenzie Morris [15], president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association. “From my experience, when you are learning the law every day, you learn that the law has many limits and that the word ‘justice’ can be construed in many ways,” she said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Some days you just can't catch a break. Larry Whitfield had one of those on Sept. 26, 2008. First, he botched a bank robbery without even getting in the door. Fleeing, he ended up in the home of a 79-year-old woman, Mary Parnell -- who promptly died of a heart attack. Whitfield wasn’t convicted of murder, but he was convicted of the federal crime of forcing someone to accompany him while in the act of a bank robbery. The “accompanying,” prosecutors said, took place when Whitfield asked Parnell to move one from one room in her house to another. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether the prosecutors overreached -- and therein lies an intriguing legal tale.

Once Barack Obama's mentor, Professor Tribe says the commander-in-chief could have done a little better on some things.(Also, he gave Obama an A+ in school--Ted Cruz got only an A.)

...Rebecca Chapman, HLS ’15, who went to Ferguson in October, notes that, “despite what we are taught in law school, the law is not neutral; lawyers and law students have a unique perspective on the reality that law does not protect everyone equally. Judges, prosecutors, politicians, policemen – everyone is complicit in perpetuating our unequal, racist, sexist system of laws.” Victoria White, HLS ’15 returned from Ferguson only a few days ago. “The time I spent in Ferguson reaffirmed for me the idea that there is an integral role for lawyers to play in social movements—not only to work alongside organizers and activists, but also to protect the civil and human rights of those who exercise their right to protest. We must use our legal education to begin addressing systemic injustice, one day at a time.”

Global leaders are gathering in Lima, Peru for United Nations-sponsored climate change talks. It will be the last major gathering before a new climate pact is finalized in Paris at the end of 2015...Jody Freeman, the director of Harvard University's environmental law program and the former White House Counselor for Energy and Climate Change, says that having two of the world’s biggest polluters at the negotiation table makes all of the difference. “The terrible air pollution problem in China may be driving them even more than the problem of climate change,” says Freeman. “Either way, the U.S.-China deal is a game changer and it adds tremendous momentum to these talks in Lima. The U.S. and China are the two indispensable nations on this problem. Together, they’re responsible for 40 percent of global emissions.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Free speech doesn't permit you to make a true threat against the safety of another person. But what’s a true threat? Is it enough that a reasonable listener would consider the threat real? Or do you have to mean it? The Supreme Court has considered this First Amendment question in the past, but now it’s taking it up in the age of Facebook and gangsta rap -- and the answer may well be different to fit a different era.

New scrutiny on the prevalence of campus rape and government inquiries into how college administrators handle the problem have compelled many schools to reconsider how they respond to reports of sexual assault. Some universities have turned to hiring nonacademics to investigate rape cases, but that approach invites new concerns about who’s qualified to judge whether one student has victimized another—and what should be done about it...Full-time investigators aren’t necessarily impartial just because they work outside academia, either. Schools “could easily choose an outsider who has the same mindset” as the administration, says Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law School professor who signed a letter in the Boston Globe that condemned Harvard’s new sexual harassment policy. “I don’t think simply farming out the job will solve the problem,” she says.

Impeachment has faded in Republican circles as an option to punish President Barack Obama over his sweeping executive actions to reshape immigration enforcement, ruled out even by hardliners like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who are livid with the president and want to retaliate. An alternative that has gained some traction among Republicans is to "censure" the president...Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said a congressional resolution to censure a president is not clearly authorized by the Constitution, "so a strict constitutionalist would say that it's an action beyond the authority of Congress."