Media Mentions

Whether you’re rich or poor, famous or obscure, if you have a will, chances are it says something to the effect of, “pay my debts before you pay my heirs.”…State law offers some protection with what’s called a creditor period – a certain length of time (ranging from two months after the start of probate to five years from the date of death) after which the executor can pay beneficiaries without worrying about creditors’ claims, explains Harvard Law professor Robert H. Sitkoff.

This past May, center-right GOP strategist Mark McKinnon and Harvard Law School professor, author and activist Lawrence Lessig announced the launch of what sounded like a real contradiction — a super PAC to end all super PACs. Called “the Mayday PAC,” McKinnon and Lessig’s creation was something of an experiment, an attempt to see if the power of big money in post-Citizens United American politics could be wielded in order to, well, end the post-Citizens United era of big money in American politics…This week, Salon called up Lessig in order to discuss some of the details of the Mayday PAC and the vexing problem of money and democracy in America more generally.

Even as Democratic Party leaders denounce billionaire Republicans Charles and David Koch for filling the airwaves with misleading commercials, they’re also playing with the facts…“Harry Reid’s in a difficult position,” said Harvard Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who started a super-PAC focused on campaign-finance reform. “It’s hard to see the difference between what he’s attacking and what he’s doing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is majestic, immensely powerful and deceptively fragile. It commands by the power of reason, and its justices are, as the great Robert Jackson once observed, not "final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." And yet Americans today increasingly regard the court in an unfavorable light. In 2001, almost two-thirds of Americans approved of the court's work; by last year, that number had dropped to less than half. "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution" takes the measure of the court at this puzzling juncture. The book is full of bright and unconventional wisdom, as one might expect from its author, the venerable law professor Laurence Tribe, here teamed with a young collaborator, Joshua Matz. They portray a court tip-toeing into new areas of constitutional law, divided and without a clear sense of mission or purpose.

No one likes getting criticism. But it can be a chance to show off a rare skill: taking negative feedback well...Tempering an emotional response can be hard, especially "if you're genuinely surprised and you're getting that flood of adrenaline and panic," says Douglas Stone, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and co-author of "Thanks for the Feedback."

The Harvard Law School Library is a launching point for well-trained modern lawyers, but it is also a time machine….The latest exhibit drawn from the collections is “Spanning the Centuries,” open in Langdell Hall’s Caspersen Room through Aug. 22 and curated by collections manager Karen S. Beck. Two glass cases contain items from 1579 to 1868, most of them added during the three years she has been on the job. “It gives a taste of the breadth and depth of our collections and what we’re adding,” said Beck.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Everyone knows that under Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court often divides 5-4 -- an even split between liberals and conservatives, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the swing vote. But here’s a puzzle. Over recent decades, and under many different chief justices, the share of 5-4 splits in the Court’s docket has been fairly constant -- on average, in the vicinity of 20 percent. Is the Court always split between liberals and conservatives, or is there some other explanation?

The nation's 350 largest law firms showed the biggest headcount growth during 2013 since the nosedive of the recession years, with a respectable 3.9 percent increase...Among leaders of the bigger firms, an international game plan is the focus, said Harvard Law School professor David Wilkins. "It is so clear that all the growth is going to come from outside the U.S.," said Wilkins, whose scholarship focuses on law firms. "Everyone is trying to figure out what their strategy is."

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Several years ago, I abandoned my Verizon Wireless subscription for a phone from Sprint, thinking I'd get a better deal from a smaller player. Earlier this year, I left Sprint for T-Mobile, drawn by the maverick carrier's no-contract, no-subsidy approach and applauding the idea that international data service -- slow but nonetheless valuable -- came with my new subscription. When I opened the door of the T-Mobile store in my neighborhood, I silently praised the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission for blocking the proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. in 2011. Because of that, I had choices. For the same reason that deal didn't go through, a Sprint Corp./T-Mobile joinder shouldn't be permitted: No matter how the deal is conditioned, it will cause a reduction in competition.

This month marks the first anniversary of the Edward Snowden leaks that changed our understanding of online privacy…So this week, we're posting a short series about all that data. Every day we'll bring you another number that reminds us how much we have learned in the last year about online surveillance and the reach of the NSA. $278,000,000 spent in 2013 by the NSA on "corporate-partner access project "This is the amount spent by the NSA in fiscal year 2013 under what it calls its corporate-partner access project," Says Susan Crawford, visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. "What they're doing is reimbursing telecommunications companies for domestic surveillance of all internet traffic."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. State constitutions are law’s Cinderellas. Ignored most of the time by their cruel stepsisters in the federal courts, they emerge suddenly as belles of the ball when a spectacular state court decision puts them front and center. The latest Prince Charming is the California judge who struck down teacher tenure as violating the right to education and equal protection. Unfortunately, the glass slipper doesn’t fit. The decision yesterday by Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu is terribly reasoned -- and it should be reversed.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Antioxidants got you down? They would if you were POM Wonderful LLC, which makes pomegranate and blueberry juices that have to compete with the Coca-Cola Co. Coca-Cola makes its own juice product that mentions pomegranates and blueberries on the label but has only 0.3 percent of the former and 0.2 percent of the latter. POM sued Coke alleging false advertising. Coke replied that the government regulates food labeling, and that its label was fine. Who should win?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Bankruptcy courts are the mark of an advanced legal society. Think of the alternatives. Debt-slavery is inhumane. Debtors’ prison is inefficient. And breaking a trader’s bench and banning him from the market doesn’t get anybody’s assets back. But how far should the jurisdiction of special bankruptcy courts reach? The U.S. Supreme Court has been grappling with this question for several years; today, in Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Arkison, it came a step closer to a common-sense answer.

The cameras came on, and America stopped to watch. O.J. Simpson was in the back of a white Ford Bronco, former college and National Football League teammate Al Cowlings behind the wheel, and police cars were trailing slowly behind. Around 95 million viewers tuned in, reality playing out on jostling helicopter cameras, on handmade signs draped onto overpasses of Los Angeles freeways, Friday night programming interrupted on televisions across America. “White, black, immigrants who were from different races, women and men, rich and poor — and everyone was glued to the television,” said Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School who directs the school’s Institute for Race and Justice.

Ever since the International Criminal Court (ICC) began bringing suspected war criminals to The Hague, it has been criticised for not taking crimes involving sexual violence seriously enough…Alex Whiting, a professor at Harvard Law School, believes that one of the challenges facing ICC prosecutors is that pre-trial judges have required them to charge suspects under a single mode of liability, rather than several.

The al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) announced Friday that a Shariah-based system of governance will be imposed in Mosul and other cities and towns in Iraq that have been overtaken by militants…“Today’s advocates of Shariah as the source of law are not actually recommending the adoption of a comprehensive legal code derived from or dictated by Shariah — because nothing so comprehensive has ever existed in Islamic history,” says Noah Feldman…a law professor at Harvard University...“To the Islamist politicians who advocate it or for the public that supports it, Shariah generally means something else. It means establishing a legal system in which God’s law sets the ground rules, authorizing and validating everyday laws passed by an elected legislature.”

Newsmax Media CEO Christopher Ruddy announced the signing of an agreement with best-selling author and legal expert Alan Dershowitz to host “You and the Law,” a weekly TV series offering practical legal advice to ordinary Americans.

On a rain-drenched night in the summer of 1997, Sherwin Gibbons was shot dead, murdered as he sipped a beer in the vestibule of a building in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It was, law enforcement officials said at the time, a case of mistaken retribution: Someone had stolen a gold chain at a dice game; someone had to pay, and someone did — even if Mr. Gibbons was not the intended target. A suspect, Roger Logan, was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the murder. Almost 17 years later, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office took on the task of discovering what really happened in the vestibule, at 373 Chauncey Street, on that July 24...Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard Law professor who directs the criminal justice institute there, is a consultant to the district attorney on the design and operations of the unit; a panel of three independent lawyers reviews the unit’s recommendations before Mr. Thompson makes the final decisions.

We are a nation of law. Change the law, change the country. The ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the country is changing. On campaign finance. Money politics. Corporate power. Unions. Guns. Health care. Gay marriage. Race. In 5-4 decision after decision, the Roberts court is changing the country. Critics call it a politicized high court, not above polarization but part of it. My guest today, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, says it’s more subtle than that. More interesting. This hour On Point: the Roberts court, and where it is taking the country.

Nothing about the narrow cream-coloured lobby at 160 Aldersgate Street in the City of London financial district gives a hint of its role at the centre of the offshore oil industry. That's because the building is occupied by a law firm. Yet, on paper at least, it is also home to Rowan Companies, one of the largest operators of drilling rigs in the world…"The UK has made a very clear policy decision to engage in tax competition for multinationals. It's fair to say it's rivalling Ireland," said Stephen Shay Professor of Law at Harvard University who has testified to Congressional investigations into corporate tax reform.

An op-ed by Jonathan Zittrain. More than a decade ago, researchers at Boston College interviewed people from both sides of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, promising each contributor to the Belfast Project that his or her interview recording wouldn’t be released until the contributor died. In the meantime, the tapes would be deposited at the college’s rare books library under lock and key. On the basis of those promises, some people spoke for the first time about painful actions that remain murky in the public eye, including unsolved murders that they’d helped commit or cover up. When the British government learned of the Belfast Project about 10 years later, it invoked a mutual legal assistance treaty to demand immediate access to some of the tapes...Are we stuck with either having to destroy our secrets or leave them exposed to near-instant disclosure? It might be possible to split the difference: to develop an ecosystem of contingent cryptography for libraries, companies, governments, and citizens.