Media Mentions

As top-notch experts met at Harvard University to discuss global warming impacts and solutions Monday, dozens of Harvard students and alumni held protests encouraging the university to divest from fossil fuels...Ted Hamilton, a second-year Harvard law student who was part of the Massachusetts Hall blockade, said he was "pretty disappointed" by the presidential panel. It was a "conversation in a bubble," he said, with lots of talk about solutions but "no imagination" about how to scale up the solutions to a global level...Hamilton's classmate Sima Atri, a third-year law student, said she's frustrated at the administration's refusal to hold open, on-the-record discussions about divestment. In contrast, she said, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—just a few miles down the road from Harvard—held a public debate last week about the pros and cons of divestment.

A letter by Charles Fried and Robert Mnookin. Your editorial entitled “Title IX and University Administration” argues the importance of uniform Title IX procedures across “One Harvard." Uniformity in some matters is good, but you do not say why it is needed for this one. The reason the law faculty drafted its own procedures was the overwhelming sentiment in our faculty that the university’s Title IX procedures were so unfair as to be unacceptable. At our meetings not a single faculty member spoke in defense of the university’s procedures. And, after all, procedure is what we do. If we had not been allowed to draft our own procedures a strong denunciation by the faculty would almost certainly have followed and would have made law suits by accused students a virtual certainty.

...John Iovine, his health still a work in progress, was finally sent home in April of last year, after several months in a rehab facility. And this moment in a patient's recovery--when they seemingly have to sink or swim on their own--is the one that everyone in the health system is paying attention to right now. For too long, too many Johns sunk, ending up right back in the hospital. The industry calls these preventable readmissions, and they are a huge drain, costing Medicare alone $15 billion annually..."I think there is a lot of interest in the area right now, and it is a great coming together of the healthcare world and the computer science world, as well as the patient experience world," says I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School, who has written about the legal and ethical concerns raised by the collision of health care and big data. He believes there are still gray areas, though, about ownership and control of the information. "Here there are questions of whether people whose data is going to be used to build the engine have the right to opt out, do they have to affirmatively opt in? Do they have to even be notified it's being used?"

An op-ed by Martha Minow and Sharon Browne. Although our economy is improving, the experiences of many truly poor people in this country remain very challenging. The legal rights of low-income Americans struggling with the many burdens of poverty must be protected, and that has been essential to the mission of the Legal Services Corporation since it was authorized in 1974 as one of the last acts of the Nixon Administration. Legal rights are not self-enforcing. The availability of legal advice and counsel can make all the difference to low-income Americans who are fighting to avert unlawful foreclosure, escape domestic violence, secure veterans’ benefits, or address many other legal challenges that go to the heart of their security and well-being.

For the second time in less than a year, the Yale School of Medicine is embroiled in charges of sexual harassment. A nephrology professor, Dr. Rex L. Mahnensmith, who worked at the university for over 20 years, has been accused of a pattern of sexual harassment while he was medical director of the New Haven Dialysis Clinic, where university physicians treat their patients...Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge who teaches at Harvard Law School, said universities that might have looked the other way when confronted with such accusations were “all of a sudden finding that there’s a realistic risk of losing funding if they don’t take complaints seriously.”

...Pastor Barclay’s story puts the recent flap about Religious Freedom Restoration Acts in perspective. Many supporters of both the Indiana and Arkansas laws claimed that new “religious liberty” legislation was needed to prevent Caesar from dragging ministers from the pulpit...Most of the furor surrounding the Indiana and Arkansas statutes has concerned “public accommodations,” meaning certain businesses holding themselves open to the public. Since at least the sixteenth century, English courts required certain businesses—inns, stagecoaches (and then railroads), companies that carried goods, surgeons, and even blacksmiths—to serve any customer who could pay. The rationale, according to Harvard Law Professor Joseph Singer, was that by “holding themselves open to the public,” they offered a binding contract to everyone, and had to honor it. In Singer’s account, the “traditional” right of a property owner to refuse service at whim is relatively recent. It arose after the Civil War, when newly freed African Americans were using the vote and access to the courts to seek inclusion in Southern politics and the economy.

An op-ed by Mihir Desai. Complaining about the complexity of the tax code has become a treasured ritual during spring tax season. The code has grown ever more complex and this complexity has considerable costs. As one example, the incredible complexity of tax incentives for education limits uptake and redistributes wealth away from those targeted and toward sophisticated taxpayers. How could we transform this ritual of complaining into spring cleaning? Addressing complexity in the tax code requires analogizing to other complex systems and drawing on the research that demonstrates how to manage that complexity. Indeed, there is a well-developed literature on how to manage complex systems that can provide the foundation for simplifying the tax code. In particular, we know a lot about how to manage the evolution of software codes. This analogy yields two primary lessons.

Hundreds of students, alumni, faculty and community members joined forces in Harvard Yard on Sunday night to launch "Harvard Heat Week," a weeklong sit-in for fossil fuel divestment. As of 11:00 p.m., dozens of students and supporters were still blockading the doors of Massachusetts Hall, where Harvard President Drew Faust will show up for work on Monday..."Harvard's inaction is providing safe cover for those reluctant to change the status quo," said Ted Hamilton [`16], a student at Harvard Law School and organizer with Divest Harvard.

Amid a weeklong protest by environmental activist group Divest Harvard, at least 18 members of Harvard Faculty for Divestment intend to devote portions of their course meetings this week to the topic of climate change and divestment. A few faculty members—including Medical School assistant professor James M. Recht, English professor Nicholas J. Watson, and Law School professor Bruce Hay—passed out flyers to passersby Monday morning just steps away from a blockade around Massachusetts Hall, which houses offices of top Harvard officials including University President Drew G. Faust. Divest Harvard has stationed members outside of Mass. Hall entrances since Sunday night...Hay plans to hold an additional class session for students in his Extension School course LSTU E-160: "Art and the Law” to talk exclusively about issues of divestment and climate change.

An article by Heidi Gardner. Rainmakers inspire a certain degree of awe from their peers. Most partners recognize that the way the biggest rainmakers build an enormous portfolio is by generating work and referring it to others – a specific kind of collaboration. But in our research, we find that lawyers who observed strong collaborators often see the process as somewhat mysterious. They don’t understand how “mere mortals like me” (one lawyer’s actual words) could achieve such greatness. This post starts to demystify rainmakers’ collaboration – first by acknowledging some of the common myths, then by digging into our data to how they stand up to reality.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. What separates conservatives from liberals? In the past decade, the most illuminating answers to this question have come from Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist whose research bears directly on the emerging 2016 presidential campaign -- even if his answers might not be quite right. Haidt’s basic finding is simple. Throughout history, human beings have operated under five sets of moral commitments: avoidance of harm, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Conservatives recognize all five, but liberals recognize only the first two.

An op-ed by Alyssa Richardson `15. We all saw the horror film: unimpeachable video evidence that Walter Scott was shot repeatedly in the back while fleeing from North Charleston Police Officer Michael Sleger. Although this video was not captured through the official lens of a dashboard camera or a body-mounted camera, the footage is no less telling. There is little debate about what happened, and as a result, Officer Sleger has been arrested and many community leaders, including Scott family attorney Rep. Justin Bamberg, have beseeched the public to “let the justice process run its course.” But for Scott and countless other casualties of police brutality, ex poste justice comes a few gunshots too late. We are therefore confronted with a hard question: How can we stop the violence ex ante?...But put bluntly, all of these measures aimed at curbing police behavior do little to address the underlying perception that black people are inherently dangerous. Changing this belief is at the heart of solving the problem.

It's as if sportswriting has invaded the energy and environment beat. President Barack Obama’s actions on climate change are “sidestepping” or making an "end run” around Congress, critics and news accounts say – including some stories by this reporter. But that depiction, more applicable perhaps to a wide receiver than a Washington politician, is at best imprecise. And at worst, it's just plain false, some legal scholars contend...Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe – testifying opposite Revesz in a House hearing last month – went one further, accusing the administration of "burning the Constitution."...Others, however, argue that the Clean Air Act's language is “expansive,” in the words of Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, writing in the Harvard Law Review in March 2013. “The relevant language has lain largely dormant for decades, but is now ripe for a presidential awakening,” Lazarus argued.

“There is widespread agreement that the legal profession is in a period of stress and transition; its economic models are under duress; the concepts of its professional uniqueness are narrow and outdated; and, as a result, its ethical imperatives are weakened and their sources ill-defined.” That’s the premise put forth in a paper presented at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession conference today. Authored by former general counsel of the General Electric Corporation Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr., Wilmer Hale partner William F. Lee, and Harvard Law School Vice Dean of the Legal Profession David B. Wilkins, the paper contemplates lawyers’ ethical responsibilities and their role as the profession grows increasingly competitive.

An op-ed by Alan M. Dershowitz, Neal K. Katyal, Theodore B. Olson and H. Jefferson Powell. Constitutional arguments stand or fall on their merits. That principle is as old as the Republic, but a recent debate suggests that it is worth restating. The issue is the constitutionality of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, with Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe arguing that the EPA’s proposed actions would violate constitutional principles of separation of powers and federalism, and might require just compensation payments to energy companies; his critics vigorously dispute each of Tribe’s claims. But it is not the substance of their disagreement that has caught our attention...The great Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1805 that in debate over “any political proposition,” an individual’s judgment will be greatly “influenced by the wishes, the affections, and the general theories of those by whom” it is to be discussed and decided. He might have added that less dignified, self-interested motives can be at play as well...we can and should emulate Marshall and draw a line between public critique, however vigorous, and the public invocation of private suspicions.

Former Massachusetts Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney spoke about the importance of experience in the private sector, the 2016 presidential campaign, and his time as a student at Harvard Law School during a public question and answer session at the Law School Friday. Law School Dean Martha L. Minow joined Romney on stage and questioned him on topics ranging from modern-day political polarization to finding a work-life balance. She later handed the microphone over to members of the crowd in a packed Milstein East Hall. Romney graduated from the Law School in 1975 and Harvard Business School in 1974.

Robin Steinberg, a New York public defender who was initially disinvited in February as an honoree of a separate Law School event, addressed her connection to a controversial online video that some say endorsed killing white police officers in retribution for police violence against black men at a Harvard Law School lecture Friday...The decision to revoke Steinberg’s honor prompted outcry from some in the Law School community, and Professor Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., who directs the Criminal Justice Institute, said it was “a very unfortunate episode that occurred [there].”

Campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Mitt Romney, J.D./M.B.A. ’75, decided he would spend one day every week doing someone else’s job. He cooked hot dogs at Fenway Park, worked at a day care center, took a turn on a paving crew. One day he hung off the back of a garbage truck making its rounds through the city of Boston. “It was really educational,” Romney said, recalling the experience for a Harvard Law School audience on Friday. “We’d pull up to a corner and there’d be people waiting to cross the street, and I’m not more than two feet from these people. And they don’t see you. You’re invisible. If you’re on a garbage truck, you’re an invisible person. “I thought, wow — we don’t see each other as we ought to in society.” The former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, visiting Harvard Law School (HLS) for a Q&A session hosted by Dean Martha Minow, encouraged a renewed civility in politics and society, emphasizing the difference one person can make through serving others.

When the United Kingdom resoundingly approved mitochondrial replacement therapy in February, it became the first country to give people this new medical option. In parallel it gave the United States serious cause to reflect on how it handles matters of reproductive innovation, argues a trio of experts in the journal Science. "We have fundamentally different regulatory cultures," said co-author Dr. Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown University. The essay's other authors are I. Glenn Cohen of Harvard Law and ethicist Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford.

When the jury in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rendered their guilty verdict Wednesday afternoon, there was one thing that eluded even the most avid followers of the coverage: a look at Tsarnaev’s now-famous face...Harvard Law School professor and former federal judge Nancy Gertner finds the rule incredibly out of date and inconsistent with the modern media landscape, which relies on much more than a pen and paper. “It’s preposterous and it says something more about the power of the leadership of the federal courts to block this in the face of congressional pressure, public pressure, the pressure of some judges,” Gertner said. To Gertner, the arguments against cameras aren’t based on the realities of the situation. “Everyone sees the issue in terms of O.J. Simpson, which is absurd,” she says of opponents who fear that broadcasting a trial could result in a media frenzy that alters the outcome. “It’s absurd on so many levels. One, because that was a badly tried case. Two, because the cameras were much more intrusive in that case. It was 20 years ago.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. So-called conversion therapies to make gay people straight are based on poor science or none, and U.S. President Barack Obama was right to condemn them. But the president was wrong to encourage the passage of more laws like the one in California that bans the use of such therapy on minors. Legislatures, whether state or federal, make terrible judges of the scientific validity of medical therapies. And setting a precedent for lawmakers to prohibit treatments because they consider them to be morally mistaken is even worse. It opens the door to the legislation of morality in the guise of protecting public health and safety.