Media Mentions

...In an amicus brief in the high court's same-sex marriage challenges, ten LGBT student organizations—six from law schools at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, UCLA and New York University—argue that so-called non-recognition laws impose special harms on their members as they try to begin new careers in a highly mobile nation...At Harvard Law, Sean Cuddihy and Lior Anafi, co-presidents of Harvard Lambda, submitted the draft brief to its members before signing. "Over 20 of our members read the brief and discussed it in an online forum," Cuddihy said.Because the justices will only get to the non-recognition issue if they say "no" to the broader constitutional question, the Harvard group asked Sanford Heisler to emphasize more strongly the members' view that the high court should recognize a Fourteenth Amendment right to marriage for same-sex couples. The group also sought the views of faculty members. Cuddihy and Anafi called the brief "an innovative and interesting" treatment of the issue. "The perspective it represents, highlighting the harmful effects of patchwork marriage laws on young professionals and academics at the mercy of unpredictable hiring systems, is also highly relevant to many of our members and we're grateful for the opportunity to participate," they said in a statement.

The billions of dollars in pension obligations faced by cities and states across the country have politicians from many of them calling for some type of reform. A commission appointed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie wants to freeze the state's current pension plan, while in California, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill that increases the retirement age, among other things. In Illinois, Gov. Bruce Rauner wants to eliminate overtime in the determination of pension benefits...Little more than seven years ago, the idea of touching pensions in bankruptcy "was treated as a little short of crazy," said bankruptcy historian David Skeel, currently a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. But the Detroit and Stockton cases were not the first time cities flirted with impairing pensions, Skeel wrote in an October 2013 paper for The Federalist Society's White Paper Series.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. University of Oklahoma President David Boren has expelled two members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity on his campus for leading a horrifying racist chant. Does his decision violate their First Amendment rights? And if it does, what’s wrong with this picture, in which a public university wouldn’t be able to sanction students who not only bar blacks from their organization, but also refer to lynching in the process?

In 2014, the European Union’s Court of Justice determined that individuals have a right to be forgotten, “the right—under certain conditions—to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them.” It is not absolute, but meant to be balanced against other fundamental rights, like freedom of expression. In a half year following the Court’s decision, Google received over 180,000 removal requests. Of those reviewed and processed, 40.5% were granted. Largely seen as a victory in Europe, in the U.S., the reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. Was this ruling a blow to free speech and public information, or a win for privacy and human dignity? Debaters include: Jonathan Zittrain.

Bob McDonnell suddenly has a lot of friends. An unlikely coalition of current and former politicians from both parties, prominent legal scholars, and even retired federal judges has gone to bat for the former Virginia governor in his appeal of federal corruption charges...Another brief, signed by retired judge Nancy Gertner and Charles Ogletree, a former professor of and mentor to President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, argues that the definition of official acts used to convict the former governor is “ill defined” and “unconstitutionally vague.” Gertner told Politico that she believes the issue of what acts and what receipts constitute corruption raises an important constitutional question and could end up in the Supreme Court. Though she understands that people may be “uncomfortable” with the size of the gifts, she does not believe that the former governor’s actions met the quid pro quo requirement. “The theory of the prosecution was too broad,” Gertner said.

Last month, a North Carolina sheriff announced that people on the state’s sex-offender registry could not attend church services in the community. Instead, Sheriff Danny Millsaps said, they could go to church at the county jail....Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, says such laws are sound as long as there is a consistent approach between secular and religious contexts. “If the county’s policy is to permit registered sex offenders to attend school events like ball games as long as school administrators have warning and the offenders are monitored,” he says, “then a similar exception needs to be made for church attendance as long as pastors are aware and agree to monitor the offenders.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Does the ever-deepening public conflict between state and federal courts in Alabama serve or hinder the cause of gay marriage nationally? This difficult question faces federal District Judge Callie Granade, who must now choose the next move in her legal chess match with the Alabama Supreme Court. Her answer will affect more than the gay couples who want to marry in Alabama between now and when the U.S. Supreme Court decides the issue in late June. It may affect the nature of the Constitution itself.

Former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell’s appeal has spurred some unusual alliances. John Ashcroft, attorney general under President George W. Bush, and Gregory Craig, who spent several years as counsel to President Barack Obama, found common ground in arguing that McDonnell was wrongfully convicted...Harvard Law School professors Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge, and Charles Ogletree Jr., along with John Jeffries Jr. of the University of Virginia School of Law, filed a brief together. Represented by William Taylor III of Zuckerman Spaeder, they wrote that previous U.S. Supreme Court cases showed the “erroneous breadth” of the trial judge’s jury instructions.

It’s been just a year since Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” turned the respected French economist from the University of Paris into an academic and publishing rock star. Few could have imagined that a nearly 700-page text tracing wealth and income-distribution patterns in 20 countries as far back as the French Revolution would become a worldwide million-plus seller...Piketty’s status showed little sign of fading during his March 6 visit to Harvard to speak about the book before an overflow crowd inside Austin Hall at Harvard Law School...Sven Beckert, Laird Bell Professor of American History in the Faculty Arts & Sciences (FAS), Christine Desan, Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at HLS, David Kennedy, Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at HLS, and Stephen Marglin, Walter S. Baker Chair in the Department of Economics, later offered assessments of Piketty’s work.

A Harvard Law School student group has signed an amici curiae brief—an independent legal document to lobby the Supreme Court—that advocates for the recognition of same-sex marriages in states that do not do so currently. Members of Lamda, an LGBTQ student group at the Law School, collectively signed the brief after Sanford Heisler Kimpel LLP, the law firm that wrote the brief, asked for the group to endorse it, according to Sean M. Cuddihy ’11, co-president of the group.

As first reported by Bloomberg's Josh Rogin, a group of 47 Republican senators signed a letter addressed to "the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran," warning them not to be too optimistic about ongoing negotiations with the Obama administration over Tehran's nuclear program...On the Lawfare blog, Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith describes the letter as "embarrassing," because it's technically wrong: The letter states that “the Senate must ratify [a treaty] by a two-thirds vote.” But as the Senate’s own web page makes clear: “The Senate does not ratify treaties."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is often called the second highest court in the land, because its judges decide most of the important cases involving the vast reach of the modern administrative state. Every so often, however, the U.S. Supreme Court likes to remind the D.C. Circuit who’s the boss by reversing one of its administrative law principles. That happened Monday, in a 9-0 decision in which the court repudiated a perfectly serviceable doctrine the D.C. Circuit invented and has used sensibly since 1997. The decision won’t make headlines -- but it’s wrong anyway, and it gives far too much power to administrative agencies.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. Is law just a form of politics? Is the Supreme Court highly politicized? If you focus on the court’s anticipated divisions over Obamacare and same-sex marriage, you probably think so. But the court’s two dissent-free decisions Monday offer a different picture. They are a triumph for the ideal of a Supreme Court that focuses on law.

...The legal profession is due for a rethink. There’s a new idea on how to do that, and it starts with flipping the legal education on its head. Rather than teach students the law and how to apply it to the world, they want students to focus on problems — income inequality, climate change, racism — then see how they can use the law to solve them. It’s called systemic justice and it’s a new program at Harvard Law School. Guests: Jon Hanson, professor at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Systemic Justice Project. Jacob Lipton, program director of the Systemic Justice Project.

An op-ed by Lani Guinier. I was raised from an early age to be skeptical of how admission to elite schools works. My father, a black man who had been accepted to Harvard College in 1929, was told on arrival that he was not eligible for scholarship aid because he had not submitted a photograph with his application. He was also not allowed to live in the dormitories. This, he later discovered, was a ruse to discourage his matriculation. Harvard’s official policy was one in which “men of white and colored races shall not be compelled to live and eat together nor shall any man be excluded by reason of his color.” But Harvard’s unofficial policy was to admit one black student per class — a policy it had inadvertently exceeded by accepting my father’s photograph-less application. Harvard University no longer excludes people because of their color; nor does it reject students who come from poor or working class families. But, like other elite universities, Harvard’s official policy still remains far removed from how it unofficially admits students.

In the third season of "House of Cards," President Frank Underwood attempts a clever scheme to fund his $500 billion America Works jobs program...Simultaneously, he tries to convince Congress to cut Social Security drastically. The fictional president aims to reallocate all that money to fund the biggest jobs program since Roosevelt's New Deal. Leaving aside whether this is a good idea, we wanted to know if it would be possible. The answer we got from a number of legal experts was surprising...Gutting Social Security and using the money for a jobs program would require Congressional support, and the show gets that much right. It would be difficult to get that support — but it would be possible. Laurence H. Tribe, a Constitutional law professor at Harvard and a devoted fan of the show, explains how hard this would be: If money for a program like Social Security has been appropriated by a Congressional enactment, there is only one Constitutional way for the Treasury Department, under the direction of the President, to spend it on some different program, like the hypothetical “America Works” of the imaginary Underwood administration in House of Cards.

“Sir, when did you first meet Tamerlan Tsarnaev?” asks prosecutor Mary Kelly. It’s the fall of 2013 and Mustafa Ozseferoglu, then 29 years old, is sitting before the U.S. Immigration court in Boston with his hands cuffed behind his back and a chain tied around his waist. He’s representing himself...Even though the appeals court argued that Ozseferoglu had an “obligation” to come forward, failing to inform on your old co-workers is not a crime. “It is a crime not to tell on your neighbors in Soviet countries but not here,” according to former federal judge and Harvard law professor Nancy Gertner.

Last week’s oral arguments in King v. Burwell suggest that the United States Supreme Court will uphold the Affordable Care Act, according to several Harvard Law School professors...“I would say for people who hoped that the Court would permit the subsidies to be paid, it was a very encouraging oral argument,” said Richard H. Fallon, a law school professor...In particular, professors said Kennedy’s line of questioning suggests that he could vote to uphold the ACA. Einer R. Elhauge, a professor at the Law School, said it seemed “very likely” that Kennedy would vote to uphold the law as it exists now, providing the required fifth vote...Noah R. Feldman ’92, another professor at the Law School, also identified Kennedy as a potential vote in favor of the Obama Administration. “The clear news was that Justice Kennedy is thinking seriously about a problem with the challengers’ interpretation,” he said...For his part, University Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 predicted a 6-3 decision in favor of upholding the ACA.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. The controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail account while serving as secretary of state raises issues that go beyond partisan positioning and any single official. The issue involves the arcane area of records management and its complicated role in the era of electronic communications. As a starting point, the idea of transparency is helpful, but it is far too simple to capture all the values and interests at stake. The public and the government alike benefit from clear, simple rules designed to increase efficiency, reduce costs and protect the historical record.

Just months after the Obama administration cracked down on mergers that helped U.S. companies skirt domestic taxes, a wave of foreign takeovers is steering more tax revenue away from Uncle Sam. In deals known as “tax inversions,” which spiked in 2014, U.S. companies acquired foreign rivals and redomiciled in low-tax countries, reducing the taxes paid back home. ...Taxes “aren’t the afterthought” anymore in deal making, said Mihir Desai, a Harvard business and law professor, at a recent tax conference. “They are, in fact, a leading thought in the design of these [cross-border] transactions.”

The Justice Department’s scathing Ferguson report shows that the government is paying attention, Harvard law scholar Charles Ogletree told DW. He says Ferguson is not an isolated case and suggests what to do about it.