Media Mentions

Harvard Law School’s Perma.cc — a website dedicated to keeping internet URLs operable — has won the Webby Award for best legal site of 2015. Perma.cc, a website for organizations in the “forever” business, is an online preservation site that tackles the problem of inoperable links, a phenomena known as “link rot,” which can undermine research by scholars and courts. It was developed by Harvard Law School Library in conjunction with university law libraries nationwide. Project Manager Adam Ziegler explained that link rot is “hugely damaging” to legal scholarship, noting that prior to Perma.cc’s 2013 launch, Harvard researchers determined that half of the links in all U.S. Supreme Court opinions no longer worked and more than 70 percent of law journal links were defunct...Over the last 20 months Perma.cc has enabled the creation of nearly 100,000 permanent links, Harvard Library Innovation Lab director Kim Dulin told Big Law Business, and garnered participation by 91 law libraries and nearly 300 legal journals.

HBX Credential of Readiness (CORe)—the online business fundamentals program launched by Harvard Business School (HBS) last year to provide a strong foundation in the language and tools of business—will now be offered to entering students at Harvard Law School (HLS). Starting in June, CORe will be available on a first-come, first-served basis to applicants admitted to Harvard Law School’s Class of 2018 and to current students on a pilot basis. HLS will subsidize the $1,800 enrollment cost so that the program is available to its students for $250...“To assist clients or even to launch entrepreneurial ventures of their own, lawyers need to understand and use the tools and skills involved in growing and running a business,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. “We know from recent studies and surveys that law firms, businesses, and also public sector and non-profit employers increasingly value these skills. In the past several years we have added new curricular opportunities for students to develop business skills, and I am especially delighted that Harvard Business School’s innovative CORe program will now be available for Harvard Law School students.”

With current Harvard Law School Dean of Students Ellen M. Cosgrove set to depart for Yale Law School this summer, members of Law School student groups—including affinity groups and the Board of Student Advisers—are working with the school’s human resources office and an outside consulting firm to formulate the qualifications for Cosgrove’s replacement...“That’s something we really think is important, is finding a new dean of students who will make sure the diversity and inclusion issues that Harvard Law students have been expressing are a priority to them,” said Leland S. Shelton [`16], the president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association. Student leaders from groups that are not part the affinity coalition, including Isabel J. Broer [`16], the president of the Board of Student Advisers, also said issues of diversity and inclusion are primary concerns in the search process...But just how to ensure that student concerns convert into an ideal dean of students remains to be determined. “That’s the million dollar question,” said Rena T. Karefa-Johnson [`16], a co-president of Students for Inclusion, a student group at the Law School that focuses on the common concerns of different affinity groups.

Eighty-four percent of campaign contributions made by a group of 614 Harvard faculty, instructors, and researchers between 2011 and the third quarter of 2014 went to federal Democratic campaigns and political action committees, according to a Crimson analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. During the three years, the Harvard affiliates represented in analyzed public filings gave nearly $3 million to federal campaigns and candidates. Each of Harvard’s schools leaned to the left in the contributions made by their affiliates, many by wide margins. Ninety-six percent of donations in the data set from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which includes Harvard College, supported Democratic efforts. That figure was even higher—nearly 98 percent—at Harvard Law School. Harvard Business School was the most Republican, with 37 percent of its contributions supporting Republicans and 62 percent going to Democrats.

The relationship between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, the Party’s most likely Presidential nominee, goes back to the second half of the Clinton Administration. Warren told me recently that the most dramatic policy fight of her life was one in which Bill and Hillary Clinton were intimately involved. She recalls it as the “ten-year war.” Between 1995 and 2005, Warren, a professor who had established herself as one of the country’s foremost experts on bankruptcy law, managed to turn an arcane issue of financial regulation into a major political issue...In 1987, Warren moved on to a job at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, teaching contract law and bankruptcy; in 1995, she went to Harvard. “She broke the news about what the actual practices and effects of the bankruptcy law were,” Martha Minow, the dean of Harvard Law School, told me. “That put her on the map and made a lot of people interested.”

When Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig was named director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics in 2008, he said he would create a limited-time project to research the problem of institutional corruption in the United States. He launched that project, the Edmund J. Safra Research Lab, in 2010, as a five-year effort to study the issue and come up with tools to understand it and respond to it better. On Friday and Saturday, a two-day conference called “Ending Institutional Corruption” will mark the end of that project, with dozens of speakers from academia, law, government, media, mind sciences, and citizen groups discussing the topic...Harvard Law Today spoke with Lessig recently about the lab and his future plans.

An article by Cass Sunstein. Pop quiz: When you hear the term “PSA,” what comes to mind? Many people will answer: Public Service Announcement. For men of a certain age, another likely response is more ominous (prostate-specific antigen, to be precise). Only a select few will say “Professional Squash Association,” which refers to the organization that oversees squash, a fiercely competitive racquet sport played in an indoor court with a squishy little black ball that goes up to 170 miles per hour. In the United States, squash remains pretty obscure, but it has a realistic chance of becoming an Olympic sport, and the PSA sponsors a tour, organizing more than 200 tournaments annually all over the world. Last week, the tour found its way to Charlotte, North Carolina. In an act of extraordinary generosity, the promoters invited me to participate as a wild-card entry.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s pretty unusual for oral arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court to be interrupted by a protester -- but that happened Tuesday during the gay-marriage case. As Solicitor General Donald Verrilli got up to make a pro-gay-marriage argument on behalf of the U.S., a protester called out, “If you support gay marriage, you will burn in hell!” Then he said, “It’s an abomination!” at which point he was forcibly removed from the courtroom. The official transcript records the protester's words only as “interruption,” but reporters in the room relayed the content. After the incident, Chief Justice John Roberts graciously asked Verrilli, “General, would you like to take a moment?” (The solicitor general is addressed as “General,” at the Supreme Court, if nowhere else.) Verrilli said he would, then said he was ready to proceed if the court was. Roberts replied, “Well, we’re ready. OK.” Justice Antonin Scalia then piped up: “It was rather refreshing, actually.” The official transcript records “laughter” in the room.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Chief Justice John Roberts isn't a politician -- and he wants you to know it. That's the message of a surprising 5-4 decision issued Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court in which Roberts provided the deciding vote. The court held that Florida may prohibit judges running for office from directly soliciting money from contributors. Ordinarily, as in the Citizens United decision, campaign-finance cases in the Roberts court go 5-4 the other way, and the court strikes down legal restrictions as violating free-speech. The other eight justices all voted consistently with their usual views. Only Roberts flipped in the judicial elections case -- and therein hangs an important tale about Roberts himself and the legacy he hopes to produce.

With around 250 in attendance, the event room at Civic Hall is packed. I’m actually part of the overflow, watching Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig’s presentation on massive closed-circuit TVs in the foyer, in merciful proximity to the hors d’oeuvres and wine... The breathless cadence of a TED Talk is unmistakable, and Lessig’s impassioned case for Elizabeth Warren is fraught with urgency. There is no mention of electoral strategy or political details, but the presentation is highly visual, with a powerpoint on the monitors behind him that opens with a clear blue sky and rolling clouds. It looks a desktop wallpaper for Windows 98. Words and phrases flash on the monitors behind him for emphasis–”standup,” “most powerful” and “brand,” to name a few, while Lessig expounds on inequality, money in politics and the forgettable neologism, “Tweedism,” a reference to Boss Tweed’s manipulation of politics. To his credit, his jokes get laughs. Lessig’s emphatic-but-never-antagonistic oratory stylings were in fact forged in the fires of TED, an origin betrayed by an overly-earnest tone, an unchallenging vocabulary and an anti-elitist denunciation of “wonks.” “It is a moral challenge, not a nerd’s challenge,” he proclaims–a strange sentiment at an event in celebration of Elizabeth Warren, a brilliantly wonky nerd herself.

Senator Ted Cruz, who wants to be the Republican Party's lead crusader against gay marriage, ducked the opportunity to play a critical role in turning back the movement in its infancy. In 2003, the year Cruz became Texas's top government litigator, the state lost a crucial case as the U.S. Supreme Court decided that state laws banning homosexual sex as illegal sodomy were unconstitutional. The decision in Lawrence v. Texas paved the way for the court's consideration of gay marriage...Cruz has consistently opposed gay rights and defended religious liberty laws, dating to his days as a Harvard University law student. One of his professors, Laurence Tribe, had argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of overturning a Georgia law deeming gay sex as illegal sodomy and lost. Tribe used the 1986 case as a discussion point in his class, encouraging students to voice their opinions on the ruling. Most, he said, "seemed to share the hope" that it would eventually be overruled. Cruz was a notable exception. "I can't truthfully say I recall any specific comment Ted made about why sexual intimacies in private between consenting adults should be subject to government regulation," Tribe said. "But that was quite clearly his view."

...Defense attorneys began their case by telling jurors no punishment could ever equal the pain that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev caused to others. But, they said, a quick death might well be letting Tsarnaev off easier than making him spend decades locked away, forgotten and thinking about what he did. They showed jurors a picture of the supermax prison where Tsarnaev would serve a life sentence. Ron Sullivan: This was a very aggressive start by the defense to say, this is a serious, scary place, and to many, it's even worse than death. [Tovia] Smith: Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan says Tsarnaev's lawyers were especially shrewd, suggesting to jurors that Tsarnaev himself may prefer to be a martyr, even though all signs suggest he's fully cooperating with his attorney's efforts to save his life.

Emily Rooney and Adam Reilly of WGBH News have the latest in the ongoing Tsarnaev trial. Lawyer and professor at Harvard Law, Carol Steiker, who has argued death row cases before the Supreme Court; criminal defense attorney, Robert Sheketoff, who represented Gary Lee Sampson; and former U.S. Attorney, Michael Sullivan share their first hand experience and insight on the death penalty.

In an ever-changing legal market, more than 96 percent of Harvard Law School’s class of 2014 is employed, continuing a years-long trend that, Mark A. Weber, the assistant dean for career services at the Law School, said he thinks will persist when the class of 2015 crosses the stage in May. Employment numbers, published on the Law School’s website, for the class of 2014 track employment 9 months after graduation, and are mostly consistent with figures for the classes of 2013 and 2012. Once again, the total employment rate hovered around 96 percent and the majority—60.92 percent—of Law School graduates moved on to work at law firms, earning a median salary of $160,000.

Dozens of students gathered on the steps of Langdell Hall on Tuesday night for a brief vigil commemorating the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Md. The vigil, organized by the Black Law Students Association and the Harvard Ferguson Action Coalition, consisted of two speakers and spanned from 9:45 to 10 p.m. in order to coincide with the 10 p.m. city-wide curfew announced by the mayor of Baltimore following the governor of Maryland’s declaration of a state of emergency. “We’ve gathered here today just to ask for peace,” said Leland S. Shelton [`16] in the opening remarks of the vigil. Shelton is a Law School student, member of BLSA, and resident of Baltimore who helped organize the event. “Peace is what we ask our police officers, those who have sworn to serve and protect, those who we have sworn to keep the peace,” said Shelton. “It’s ironic because those same people are the ones who have been harassing and brutalizing us.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. No one really believes that Tuesday's oral argument in the gay-marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, is an occasion for the justices to make up their minds about how they're going to vote. Rather, it's an exercise in making certain points, not so much to their colleagues as to the public. According to reports from the first section of the questioning, the justices had some messages they want you to hear. The first and most important came from Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote and the man who has written the jurisprudence of gay rights for the past 20 years. Kennedy wanted to talk about time -- specifically, whether enough time has passed for gay marriage to become a fundamental right.

A New York clean energy developer is suing Connecticut over its renewable energy subsidy program, claiming the state’s policy violates constitutional rules about regulating business across state lines...Legal experts say the challenge to Connecticut’s renewable incentives is unique for many reasons. While the dormant Commerce Clause has been cited in cases regarding clean energy policies, it has not been used against a state that limits its renewable energy to the region, rather than the individual state. “It’s an issue that has been discussed in academic circles, but nobody had filed the challenge,” said Ari Peskoe, an energy fellow at Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative, which tracks litigation. He said the case is also unique in that the plaintiff is a clean energy developer. Peskoe said Connecticut has good arguments for its renewable subsidies, but if the case is heard on its merits, its effects could ripple through the country. “A lot of states have a similar regional deliverability requirements, and a judgment that went for Allco in this case could be broadly applicable,” Peskoe said.

The Supreme Court today heard arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, a case which is likely to go down in the history books alongside other landmark civil rights cases. This one centers on two questions: first, whether there is a constitutional right to gay marriage, and second, if not, whether states that have bans on gay marriage have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states where it’s legal. Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Harvard Law School professor Michael Klarman about the significance of Obergefell v. Hodges and where it fits in with other landmark Supreme Court cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.

It was the early 1980s, and Mary Bonauto was a college student in upstate New York, struggling to come out as gay. She turned to a priest for help but left convinced her church would not accept her. Unsure where to turn, she felt her life might “be over.” “The law was one way of making sure my life wouldn’t be over,” she recently recalled. “I could either just suffer from the system or change the system. I decided to opt on the change-the-system side.” ...“Mary Bonauto’s contributions to the gay rights movement are analogous to those of Thurgood Marshall to the civil rights movement and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the women’s rights movement,” Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor, said in an e-mail.

A service that enables courts and researchers to make permanent links to research found on the Web has won a Webby Award for best legal site of 2015. Perma.cc, developed by the Harvard Law School Library and supported by a network of more than 60 law libraries, takes on the widespread problem of broken or defunct Web links, also known as “link rot,” which can that can undermine research by scholars and courts. The problem was explained in a 2013 paper by Harvard Law professors Lawrence Lessig, Kendra Albert and Jonathan Zittrain. Their research detailed in, “Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations,” revealed that 50% of URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions no longer link to the originally cited material. Perma.cc has developed a process to preserve and “vest” links used in research.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Predicting exactly what the justices will say at oral argument is a tricky business -- but predicting the reaction is more tractable. After the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in the gay-marriage cases Tuesday, you can expect a moment of serious anxiety among those who hope that the court is about to declare a fundamental constitutional right to marry the partner of one’s choice. The reason is simple: Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't going to declare from the bench how he’s going to rule. At least some questions from some justices are likely to raise the question of whether the court should decide the issue now or wait for some unspecified time. The result will be a feeling of letdown and nervousness among gay-marriage supporters. Because expectations are so high right now, anything short of a Supreme Court lovefest is going to produce a feeling of vertigo -- and the worry that perhaps, after all, Kennedy might not be ready to do the right thing.