Media Mentions

An op-d by Noah Feldman. The correct ethical response to the video of Officer Michael Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back is to condemn the crime -- with one exception. The exception is Slager’s attorney, who has an ethical obligation as a lawyer to defend his client, not to abandon him or harm him by a public act of distancing. Yet in an interview with the Daily Beast, Slager’s lawyer did just that, dropping his client like a hot potato and strongly implying that Slager either had been set on a course of perjury or was simply too repulsive to represent. Obviously, the overwhelming cause for outrage here is the apparent murder of an unarmed, fleeing black man by a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. But the whole point of having defense attorneys is that they’re especially necessary when the whole world considers their client immediately guilty. It’s therefore worth spending a moment examining what Slager's lawyer did and said -- and why it was an ethical mistake for him to act like any other ordinarily moral person.

Republican Senator Rand Paul officially announced he's running for president this week, and he has pledged to get rid of the US Department of Education if he's elected. We reached out to famous Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe to find out whether Paul would have the Constitutional ability to shutter the DOE for good. The DOE was created in 1979 through the Department of Education Organization Act, which was passed by Congress, and Tribe told us that "it would of course require another Act of Congress to eliminate the United States Department of Education." "There is no Constitutional obstacle to the enactment of such a law," added Tribe, a legendary professor who counted President Barack Obama among his research assistants.

Rapid technological innovation has revolutionized warfare; it has pulled soldiers away from war’s front lines and gradually replaced them with advanced weaponry. Drones, for instance, covertly strike targets around the globe as their operators sit safely elsewhere. But humanity is now on the cusp of developing “killer robots,” or fully autonomous weapons capable of killing without operators, and human rights defenders want them banned. In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Harvard Law School jointly call for the weapons to be declared unlawful by international treaty before they become a reality. Though fully autonomous weapons do not exist yet, technology is moving in that direction; Israel’s Iron Dome is programmed to respond to incoming explosives on its own and projects looking to enhance the autonomy of drones are in the works. The authors of "Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots" assert that under existing law, humans who manufacture, program and command the lethal robots of the future would escape liability for any suffering caused.

An op-ed by Matthew Thiman '16, Courtney Svoboda `16, and Tyler Giannini. Shortly after his daughter’s death, Brang Shawng sat down to write the first of two letters that would eventually get him convicted. He wrote to the president of Myanmar first, and then to the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission, wanting to know what had happened to his daughter, whom he believed had been shot by the Myanmar military. “A submission is made with great respect,” he wrote to the president, “to find out the truth in connection with the killing, without a reason, of an innocent student, my daughter Ma Ja Seng Ing, who wore a white and green school uniform.”

An international legal expert says the settlement between the world's biggest gold miner and a group of women who were raped by security guards and police at the company's Pogera mine in Papua New Guinea has wider significance. The 11 women, and the families of three other people, were planning to file a lawsuit against Barrick Gold in the United States but the parties reached an out-of-court settlement. The confidential settlement means the women and their lawyers at Earth Rights International can't say much publicly. But one person who can is Tyler Giannini, a clinical professor of law and Co-Director of Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program. He has written widely about abuses related to the mining industry and carried out investigations in many countries including PNG. Mr Giannini says even though the details of deal can't be publicised, the deal by Barrick Gold is still highly significant.

A federal appeals court's ruling siding with tobacco companies on Wednesday could be devastating to Florida smokers' tort lawsuits, says a Miami law professor following the cases. This week's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit tossed a verdict won against tobacco companies by the estate of a Florida smoker. A three-judge panel held that the practice of using jury findings from an earlier tobacco class action conflicted with federal law on cigarettes...So the Eleventh Circuit's ruling, that federal law doesn't allow the use of those findings, "is almost like a neutron bomb for the Engle-type cases," said Sergio Campos, a law professor at the University of Miami who is not involved in the cases but has been following them closely. Campos, who is visiting at Harvard Law School right now, allowed that the Eleventh Circuit decision says plaintiffs may proceed on their claims as long as they do not rely on the class jury's findings. "But," he predicted, "a lot of cases are going to just disappear."

Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises Ray Halbritter spoke with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow on April 6 about the R-word...Oneida Nation Representative and CEO of Oneida Nation Enterprises Ray Halbritter returned to Harvard Law School—where he earned his J.D. in 1990—on April 6 to talk to students and faculty about racial slurs promulgated by the names of mascots and sports teams in today’s America. The Oneida Nation and the National Congress of American Indians launched the Change the Mascot campaign two years ago to pressure the National Football League’s Washington “Redskins” team to change its name.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges in the Boston Marathon bombing trial and may now face the death penalty. Harvard Law School professor Ron Sullivan offers analysis.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. The first phase of the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was supposed to be about liability. In reality, it felt like a penalty hearing, albeit in slow motion. Now that Tsarnaev has been found guilty for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the jury will deal directly with the only critical question — should Tsarnaev get life in prison or the death penalty? But, even at this late stage, the real question is: Why was this trial necessary? Why did the US attorney general insist on the death penalty here, while calling for its moratorium elsewhere? Why did the US government press for the death penalty when the defendant would have pled to life without parole? That was, after all, the defense message from the outset with the opening statement of Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev’s lawyer — “it was him.” “We will not sidestep Tsarnaev’s responsibility for his actions,” she said, actions which were “incomprehensible” and “inexcusable.”

In 2009, 40 percent of Harvard Law School’s entering class, according to data provided the school’s Admissions Office, arrived directly from their senior year of college, maybe even still sporting the odd T-shirt from last year’s big rivalry football game. It was the continuation of a years-long trend: From 2005 to 2009, between 39 and 45 percent of each incoming class were just recently undergraduates, with the remainder having spent at least one year working or studying elsewhere. But the next year, in 2010, the young students matriculating straight from undergrad only constituted 28 percent of the entering Law School class. More than two-thirds had post-graduate experience...“When I became dean, I directed our admissions team to give extra weight to applicants with experience since college,” [Martha] Minow wrote in an email. Now, since after 2009, roughly three-fourths of each incoming class of Harvard Law students comes to campus having spent some time beyond their college campuses. It’s a change Minow and Jessica L. Soban ’02, chief admissions officer at the Law School, broadcast as a way to enhance the Harvard Law School experience for students, allowing them to cultivate a better sense of their interests and bring a more experienced perspective to the classroom.

Fully autonomous weapons, already denounced as “killer robots”, should be banned by international treaty before they can be developed, a new report urges the United Nations. Under existing laws, computer programmers, manufacturers and military commanders would all escape liability for deaths caused by such machines, according to the study published on Thursday by Human Rights Watch and [the International Human Rights Clinic at] Harvard Law School. Nor is there likely to be any clear legal framework in future that would establish the responsibility of those involved in producing or operating advanced weapons systems, say the authors of Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots. The report is released ahead of an international meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems at the UN in Geneva starting on 13 April.

...On Wednesday, Tsarnaev was found guilty of all 30 counts against him..."It will give some sense of closure for people," said Ronald Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law professor and director of the school's criminal justice institute. "Healing is a more difficult concept."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It was sleeting hard in Boston on Wednesday afternoon as the jury returned a guilty verdict on all 30 counts against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed an 8-year-old and two women and wounded at least 260 people. Somehow the weather seems appropriate, even though it’s after Easter. Throughout this intensely cold, snowy winter in Boston, the specter of the Tsarnaev trial has been a constant and unwelcome reminder that for all its liberalism and toleration, this city isn’t immune from the troubles that plague the rest of the world.

The Harvard Food Law Society and the Food Literacy Project hosted the “Just Food? Forum on Justice in the Food System” at Harvard Law School recently. Margiana Petersen-Rockney, director of the Food Literacy Project, and Alexandra Jordan, a second-year student at HLS, organized the forum under Harvard’s yearlong Food Better initiative, which was created to discuss issues surrounding what we eat...“Justice requires that there be a possible vision of food quality and availability,” said HLS Dean Martha Minow, who is also the Morgan and Helen Chu Professor of Law, in her welcoming address. “We are all here because we want to see a more inclusive food movement. We are all consumers, we all have a say, and we challenge you to be an active participant.”

Starting in May 2013, in Syria’s war-torn cities of Aleppo and Idlib, specially trained operatives moved from door to door with a singular purpose. Seeking willing participants, they were armed, but only with questions. Months of canvassing resulted in hundreds of survey respondents. After three waves of interviews along the front lines of battle, patterns of the psyche started to emerge. Gathered within a 47-page compilation of data are the collective thoughts of four demographic groups: Syrian civilians, Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters, Islamic militants, and ex-fighters. Vera Mironova, a graduate research fellow at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, was one of the lead authors of the “Voices of Syria” project, which covered topics such as current living situations, safety concerns, the future role of religion — among other key issues in Syria’s government.

A federal judge on Tuesday said lawyers representing alleged underage sex-abuse victims of Florida financier Jeffrey Epstein improperly aired accusations against Prince Andrew and retired Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra of Florida struck from the record claims against the British royal and the American lawyer that surfaced in a civil lawsuit over the government’s handling of the Epstein sex-abuse scandal.

A judge has dropped Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School emeritus professor, from the legal proceedings in Florida in which a woman named him as one of several men with whom she had sex as a minor. Dershowitz has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “categorically false.” Despite the judge’s decision, he has vowed to pursue a defamation lawsuit he brought against the woman’s lawyers for filing the allegations in court. “This is great news because it means I am legally vindicated,” Dershowitz said by phone on Tuesday, after the ruling was released. “I will be factually vindicated in the defamation lawsuit.” In his 10-page ruling, US District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra described the allegations as “lurid” and “immaterial and impertinent” to the underlying lawsuit. He ordered them stricken from the case.

The Harvard-run New England Primate Medical Research Center has come under additional scrutiny following allegations that between 1999 and 2011, a dozen monkeys were found dead in their cages or euthanized at the center...However, critics of the center question Flier’s justification for the closure. Alicia M. Rodriguez [`15], president of the Harvard Law School Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, said she did not think it was a “coincidence” that the closure of the center was announced in the midst of scrutiny surrounding the monkey deaths. “[With] multiple violations, it doesn’t seem to me that it was feasible for them to continue running the lab,” Rodriguez said. “I think the legacy was already a negative one, and the new documents that have come out have added to the negative press and the negative reputation the primate center has.”

Corporations with religious objections have already been granted relief from Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, but religious colleges and charities are still fighting the administration in court, saying that, as of right now, they’re getting even worse treatment. Two Baptist colleges take their case to a federal appeals court in Houston on Tuesday, and another appeals court in Denver is expected to rule any day now on an appeal from the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns that also objects to the mandate...“I do not think that nonprofits can look to Hobby Lobby and say we should be exempt too, like for-profits, because for-profits are only temporarily exempt,” said Holly Lynch, a health and ethics expert at Harvard Law School. “The question is whether the accommodation that has been offered to nonprofits, and soon to certain for-profits, can withstand an RFRA challenge.”

Laurence Tribe's days as a liberal icon are over for green groups and many environmental law professors. One of the country's best-known constitutional scholars, the Harvard law professor has made headlines for his two-fisted attack on President Obama's proposed greenhouse gas standards for power plants, a pillar of the administration's effort to combat climate change...In an email exchange about the outrage his recent comments have generated, Tribe said "strong criticism comes with the territory if you don't let your lawyering follow the political winds or be influenced by how it might affect your image. I've always done what I thought was right and let the chips fall where they may," he added. "I've never let the fact that my opinions might prove unpopular with many, including with some people who are my allies in many a political and legal fight, deter me from speaking my mind. As long as I (and those who know me best) don't doubt my integrity or my motives, I'm okay with the situation."

Laurence H. Tribe, the highly regarded liberal scholar of constitutional law, still speaks of President Obama as a proud teacher would of a star student. “He was one of the most amazing research assistants I’ve ever had,” Mr. Tribe said in a recent interview. Mr. Obama worked for him at Harvard Law School, where Mr. Tribe has taught for four decades...Which is why so many in the Obama administration and at Harvard are bewildered and angry that Mr. Tribe, who argued on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, has emerged as the leading legal opponent of Mr. Obama’s ambitious efforts to fight global warming...“The administration’s climate rule is far from perfect, but sweeping assertions of unconstitutionality are baseless,” Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School, and Richard Lazarus, an expert in environmental law who has argued over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court, wrote in a rebuttal to Mr. Tribe’s brief on the Harvard Law School website.