Archive
Media Mentions
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Obama’s Dual View of War Power Seeks Limits and Leeway
February 12, 2015
In seeking authorization for his six-month-old military campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group, President Obama on Wednesday did something that few if any of his predecessors have done: He asked Congress to restrict the ability of the commander in chief to wage war against an overseas enemy...“In a way, that’s been the story of his presidency,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who, as a top lawyer in Mr. Bush’s Justice Department, was at the heart of the last administration’s debates about presidential power. “He’s been talking during his entire presidency about wanting to restrain himself. But in practice, he’s been expanding his power.”
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Kicked Out of Harvard and Defended Again by Same Professor
February 12, 2015
Convicted SAC Capital Advisors LP fund manager Mathew Martoma is getting help with his insider-trading appeal from the same Harvard professor who helped him fight expulsion for faking his law school transcript 15 years ago. Charles Ogletree Jr., a friend and former law professor of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, said Martoma visited him in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, office in October to ask for help...Ogletree agreed to join Martoma’s appeal.
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Hispanic areas lag in housing recovery
February 11, 2015
Hispanic communities were particularly vulnerable to unscrupulous lenders during the last housing boom and the hardest hit by the bust, experiencing the sharpest drop and slowest recovery in home values, according to a study to be released Monday...“They were basically the most innocent consumers on the marketplace,” said Eloise Lawrence, a staff attorney at Harvard Legal Aid Bureau who works with struggling Lynn tenants and homeowners. “They knew the least about what was happening, and they were the most eager to climb onto the first rung of the American dream.”
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The EPA Annexes Sweden
February 11, 2015
The diesel engine is a wonder of torque and thermal efficiency, but it emits soot and other unpleasantness. The Environmental Protection Agency is a wonder among regulatory agencies, having discovered authority to regulate diesel-engine pollution in other countries...Volvo will be supported by a National Association of Manufacturers friend-of-the-court brief written by none other than liberal superhero Laurence Tribe of Harvard.
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If you don’t have anything nice to say, management has a tip: Try harder. Fearing they’ll crush employees’ confidence and erode performance, employers are asking managers to ease up on harsh feedback. “Accentuate the positive” has become a new mantra at workplaces like VMware Inc., Wayfair Inc., and the Boston Consulting Group Inc., where bosses now dole out frequent praise, urge employees to celebrate small victories and focus performance reviews around a particular worker’s strengths—instead of dwelling on why he flubbed a client presentation. ... Showing people how they stack up is the “emotionally loudest” type of feedback, according to Sheila Heen, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and co-author of “Thanks for the Feedback.” Most employees feel unappreciated, Ms. Heen says, and criticism tends to overshadow appreciation or coaching, especially among young workers.
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Scofflaws in the White House
February 11, 2015
A book review by HLS Professor Sam Moyn: After the attacks of 9/11, the story goes, all the president’s men went over to the dark side. They redefined torture in a series of infamous memos in order to make brutal practices consistent with America’s domestic law and international agreements. They denied that the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the cornerstone of the law of war, should be applied to captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. And they made Guantanamo Bay a “law-free zone” where America denied prisoners the very human rights the country had contributed to the world. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, both within the Bush administration and on the U.S. Supreme Court. Then, Barack Obama was elected in 2008, and he went even further by shutting down the harsh interrogation program on his second day in office, winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and promising to make America stand on principle once more. This simplistic morality tale is rejected by Jens David Ohlin, a Cornell law professor, in “The Assault on International Law.”
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The Stanford Undergraduate and the Mentor
February 11, 2015
On a weekend in March almost three years ago, Ellie Clougherty flew from London to Rome with Joe Lonsdale. She was a 21-year-old junior at Stanford University, and it was her first trip to Italy. Lonsdale, then 29, was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and he booked a room for them for two nights in a luxury hotel — a converted Renaissance mansion in the shadow of the Pantheon...In November 2013, they attended a conference on gender-based violence at Harvard and heard a talk given by Diane Rosenfeld, a Harvard lecturer and lawyer. “Diane said, ‘You have these rights in Title IX,’ and that’s when it clicked,” Anne said. “I chased her into the bathroom and said: ‘You have to meet my daughter. We need your help.’ ” Rosenfeld agreed to represent Clougherty in negotiations with Stanford and Lonsdale over her allegations of sexual harassment and assault and gave her a refrigerator magnet with the slogan “You Are Pure Potential.”
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Support for seven from president’s climate fund
February 11, 2015
Seven research projects aimed at confronting the challenge of climate change using the levers of law, policy, and economics, as well as public health and science, have been awarded grants in the inaugural year of President Drew Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund...The seven winners and their projects are...Emily Broad Leib, lecturer, Harvard Law School: Reducing Food Waste as a Key to Addressing Climate Change...Forty percent of food produced in the United States goes uneaten, according to Emily Broad Leib, the director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC). Broad Leib and her team will use their award to continue addressing the global problem of food waste. The HLS team is identifying key legal and policy levers to reduce the emissions associated with food waste by investigating, amending, and enacting new polices ― such as tax incentives and liability protection ― that remove the barriers to food donation.
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Alabama’s Gay-Marriage Showdown
February 10, 2015
An op-ed by Noah Feldman. An outright confrontation between the state of Alabama and the U.S. Supreme Court on the question of gay marriage has come two steps closer in the past 24 hours. Last night, Roy Moore, the renegade Alabama chief justice, ordered the state probate judges who supervise all marriages to deny licenses to same-sex couples. This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay that would have delayed a direct conflict between Moore's order and that of the federal district court that has declared Alabama's prohibition of gay marriage unconstitutional. As of now, a federal court order effectively requires Alabama judges to issue marriage licenses -- while the chief justice of the state Supreme Court has ordered them not to do it.
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Why Jordan Is Islamic State’s Next Target
February 10, 2015
An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Jordan’s King Abdullah II was in battle gear last week, quoting Clint Eastwood and bombing Islamic State targets in retaliation for the horrific burning-alive of a Jordanian pilot. Is this a sign that Jordan is entering the war against the insurgent group in earnest, or is it a temporary show for a stunned Jordanian public? The complicated reality is that Jordan and Islamic State are enmeshed in an extended, dynamic, repeat-play game in which the rules are just now being set.
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Faced with dwindling sources for execution drugs and a pending Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of using the tranquilizer midazolam, some death penalty states are looking back to the future for alternative methods of killing inmates. ...Harvard law professor Carol Steiker said recently she believes the death penalty may be on its way out, but not for another decade or so. "It would not surprise me if the death penalty were constitutionally invalidated sometime in the next couple of decades," she said. "The Supreme Court has been on a trajectory of narrowing and questioning the death penalty. In 2002, it held that people with mental retardation, now called intellectual disability, couldn’t get the death penalty. In 2005, it held that juvenile offenders couldn’t get the death penalty. In 2008, it held that people who commit crimes other than murder — even the crime of aggravated rape of a child — couldn’t get the death penalty. These are really significant limitations on capital punishment."
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The Supreme Court on Monday gave its strongest signal yet that the legal fight for nationwide gay marriage has been won even before the issue is argued in April. The justices, with only two dissenting votes, turned down Alabama’s plea to delay same-sex marriages, clearing the way for gay couples to seek marriage licenses for the first time in the Deep South. A federal judge in Alabama had struck down in January the state’s law limiting marriage to a man and a woman...“It seems almost inconceivable that there are not five votes now for gay marriage, and I think a lot of us are wondering if the chief justice won’t be sorely tempted to be a sixth vote,” said Harvard law professor Michael Klarman, who has written about the fight for same-sex marriage.
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3 Tips to Improve Law Firm Websites
February 10, 2015
The best law firm websites are complete destinations, not pit stops. Many law firms focus more on the design aspect of their websites, rather than looking at the big picture...It is said that people hire attorneys as much as they hire law firms, and that they deeply value thought leadership. I interviewed Prof. David Wilkins of Harvard Law School and he had this to say about leading with content and ideas. “So I think that thought leadership is very important and I think it’s increasingly important and this is something I think is true at all levels, wherever a lawyer is practicing. That’s because clients understand that the world is becoming increasingly complex and that they are looking for lawyers who can demonstrate an understanding of that complexity and also an ability to help them to navigate that complexity.
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High marks — mostly — for Holder on environmental cases
February 10, 2015
As Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to leave the Obama administration after five years on the job, environmental attorneys are sizing up his record and generally applauding his efforts to protect public health and natural resources...Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor who wrote some of those early climate rules as White House counselor for energy and climate change from 2009 to 2010, said that ruling was critical to the Obama administration's global warming efforts. "This is a particularly important time," Freeman said. "For climate change, this is the beginning of the process. So if the department wasn't on its game defending these rules, they would run into serious problems implementing [the president's] climate agency. "We're going to see more of it," she added, referring to litigation challenging Obama's Clean Power Plan and proposed greenhouse gas standards for new and existing power plants.
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Students Prepare For Hearing To Dismiss Lawsuit Urging Divestment
February 10, 2015
A group of students suing the University to divest from fossil fuels is preparing for a hearing on motions by Harvard and the attorney general’s office to dismiss the case. The hearing was scheduled for Tuesday but has been called off due to inclement weather....“[The] Harvard Corporation should not be able to hide behind the fact that we are students who are here for four years,” Harvard Law School student and one of the plaintiffs Joseph E. Hamilton [`16] said. “They should still be accountable for their charitable duties.” Hamilton added that he expects the judge to return a decision on the motion to dismiss within a few months and if the case is dismissed, the Climate Justice Coalition will file an appeal.
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Decade-old lawsuit brings windfall to aid agency
February 9, 2015
Lori Cain, chief operating officer of HomeStart Inc., listened in disbelief as a lawyer on the other end of the phone told Cain she had practically hit the lottery. A check for $188,000, the result of a class-action legal settlement with the Boston Housing Authority, was on its way to the nonprofit agency that aids the homeless. Cain had never heard of the case...The check did come through, but it reached its destination only after a decade-long court battle that pitted the Boston Housing Authority against lawyers representing the tenants at the Charlestown and Bunker Hill housing developments, among the largest public-housing complexes in New England...“When you fight, the legal process has to take its course,” said Rafael Mares, who represented the tenants through what was then called the Hale & Dorr Legal Services Center, a clinic affiliated with Harvard that offers legal assistance to the poor. “It can take time.”...Colon, the mother of four, received $15,000 for initiating the complaint, and the Harvard legal clinic, now named WilmerHale Legal Services Center, received $35,000 to cover its costs.
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A Prickly Partnership for Uber and Google
February 9, 2015
When Google’s venture capital arm poured more than $250 million into Uber in 2013, it looked like a match made in tech heaven. Google, with billions of dollars in the bank and house-by-house maps of most of the planet, seemed like the perfect partner for Uber, the hugely popular ride-hailing service...Certainly, one day they could both be leaders in the self-driving car business. But for now, they are not only stuck with each other — they also need each other. “It’s a good example of ‘co-opetition,’ ” said Jonathan Zittrain, law professor and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
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Next Witness: Will The Yellow Smiley Face Take The Stand? (audio)
February 9, 2015
Emojis can be a lot of fun. Little pictures on our phones seem to express sentiments when words just fall short. Sometimes we need to punctuate our sentences with a sad cat, floating hearts, maybe an alien head. They aren't complicated when they appear in our personal email or texts, but emojis are now popping up in a place where their meanings are closely scrutinized: courtrooms...."The judge actually found that the emojis should be read into the testimony and that the jury should have the ability to read the texts or online messages themselves so that they could see the emojis in context," Dalia Topelson Ritvo says. Topelson Ritvo, an assistant director of Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, tells NPR's Rachel Martin that context is crucial for understanding just what an alien head might mean.
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Talking Like Grownups About Climate Change
February 9, 2015
An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Are Americans worried about climate change? Do they want their government to regulate greenhouse gases? A recent survey -- from Stanford University, the New York Times and Resources for the Future -- found that strong majorities say “yes” to both questions. But there’s a big catch, which isn't getting the attention it deserves: A strong majority also say that they oppose increasing taxes on either gasoline or electricity in order to reduce climate change. That’s important, because any serious effort to lower emissions is going to raise prices (certainly in the short run).
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‘The Tyranny of the Meritocracy’ by Lani Guinier
February 9, 2015
We all understand the importance of college in the modern economy. This signal economic importance leads to the SAT becoming the sole difference between getting into a great school and potentially being set for life, or not. Students sweat the process. Families spend thousands to prepare children, and schools pride themselves on their students’ average SAT scores. It’s time, writes Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier, that we question not just the value of that one test, but frankly, the entire system that claims this test measures merit. “[W]e need to change our understanding of merit,” she says--it is too narrow. Her new book, “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy,’’ “propose[s] a new framework, one focused on advancing democratic rather than testocratic merit.” It is a scheme that reminds colleges that their duty “is to give students an educational experience in which merit is cultivated, not merely scored.”
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New Harvard Law School program aims for ‘systemic justice’
February 9, 2015
From the first day, it’s clear that law professor Jon Hanson’s new Systemic Justice class at Harvard Law School is going to be different from most classes at the school. Hanson, lanky, bespectacled, and affable, cracks jokes as he paces the room. He refers to the class of 50-odd students as a community; he even asks students to brainstorm a name for the group. But behind the informality is a serious purpose: Hanson is out to change the way law is taught. “None of us really knows what ‘systemic justice’ is—yet you’re all here,” he points out. The new elective class, which is being taught for the first time in this spring term, will ask students to examine common causes of injustice in history and ways to use law and activism to even the field...The class is part of a new Systemic Justice Project at Harvard, led by Hanson and recent law school graduate Jacob Lipton. They’re also leading a course called the Justice Lab, a kind of think tank that will ask students to analyze systemic problems in society and propose legal solutions. Both classes go beyond legal doctrine to show how history, psychology, and economics explain the causes of injustice. A conference in April will bring students and experts together to discuss their findings.