Media Mentions

In this turbulent midterm election year, two academics decided to practice what they preached. They left the classroom, confronted the reality of down-and-dirty politics, and tried to replace moneyed interests with the public interest. Neither was successful -- this year, at least -- but on this week's show, Bill talks with them about their experiences and the hard-fought lessons learned about the state of American democracy. Lawrence Lessig, who teaches law at Harvard, is a well-known Internet activist and campaign finance reform advocate. This election cycle, he started a crowd-funded SuperPAC aimed at reducing the influence of money in politics. Lessig tells Bill: "Our democracy is flat lined. Because when you can show clearly there's no relationship between what the average voter cares about, only if it happens to coincide with what the economic elite care about, you've shown that we don't have a democracy anymore."

An op-ed by Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford. According to a recent Harris poll, Americans ages 18 to 44 believe that five years from now most interactions with cashiers, cab drivers, and waiters will be handled by online apps. They think there will be “big data” health services that provide real-time medical monitoring and alert their doctors when they’re in danger. And they’re confident they will be asking for help from companies who can send them needed products before they have to order them. This streamlined future will happen on the streets of America’s cities, where more than 80 percent of us live. Municipalities are just starting to use data to improve urban conditions.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. In recent years, many federal judges have voted to strike down bans on same-sex marriage, in part because no one has defended them well. This month, however, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, produced the most powerful defense to date -- one that will give the Supreme Court a serious test. Judge Sutton acknowledged that “the question is not whether American law will allow gay couples to marry; it is when and how that will happen.” Nor did he lament what he saw as history’s arc. Instead he argued that, for federal courts, the only question is: Who decides? His answer: not judges, but the democratic process.

The insurance company MetLife is unhappy that it has been added to the list of firms that get special attention from regulators for being too big, or too interconnected, to fail. It appears to want to fight the designation by arguing that the government has not provided the numbers supporting its analysis, and that this failure to do the math makes the designation unreasonable, and, therefore, illegal....In short, the government did not use math to defend its designation. Should it be required to do so? Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s first regulatory czar and now a law professor at Harvard, has said he believes that agencies should make the quantitative case whenever possible. Another Harvard Law professor, John Coates, on the other hand, argues that the assumptions involved in assessing the costs and benefits of financial regulation look too much like ever-changing guesstimates.

An op-ed by by Robert C. Bordone and Sara E. del Nido [clinical fellow]. On Tuesday, Nov. 12, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China announced a climate accord that demonstrates real promise in making progress to stem global climate change. The climate accord also represents something that is rarely achieved in the struggle to come together around environmental issues: a long-term agreement that meets the interests of both parties; lays the groundwork for future actions by other key players; fundamentally changes the strategic negotiation game; and takes substantial steps toward solving the problem of collective action.

The facts were undeniable: The defendant, one Abraham (no known surname), had teetered on the brink of stabbing his son Isaac to death, only to be stopped by divine intervention. Luckily he had a lawyer with a thirst for tough cases, not to mention a jury pool consisting exclusively of people who proudly claim to be descended from the accused...For the prosecution: Eliot Spitzer, a former governor and attorney general of New York. For the defense: Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School professor who was one of Mr. Spitzer’s former professors but is perhaps better known for defending O. J. Simpson and other notorious clients.

Time flies. It’s four years since Margaret Marshall retired as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and we haven’t heard much from her in the interim. It’s less than two years since Tony Lewis died, and there’s so much we should have heard from him in that time...She spoke about something she and her husband loved almost as much as each other: the First Amendment. “Tony had strong feelings — very strong — about the First Amendment, about law, justice, and liberty,” she said. “Tony spent a great deal of time with judges and lawyers. It was a close call, but in the end, I think Tony admired journalists more than he admired lawyers and judges.” She paused, as lawyers are wont to do, before adding, “But he did marry a judge.”

In the fierce debate about campus sexual assault, Harvard University’s policy has come under particular scrutiny, assailed by some professors as a product of political correctness that stacks the deck against the accused. But a range of specialists who help colleges handle misconduct allegations say Harvard’s policy is decidedly mainstream...Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus Harvard Law professor who was among those who signed the article, said colleges have adopted broadly similar policies on sexual assaults in keeping with federal mandates, which he said are biased against the accused. “It’s really not a criticism of Harvard,” he said. “It’s a criticism of the federal government. It’s a criticism of the Obama administration.”

Legendary music industry executive Clive Davis described his transformation from Harvard Law School student to president of Columbia Records at a lecture in Wasserstein Hall on Friday afternoon. Answering questions from HLS Dean Martha L. Minow and audience members, Davis talked extensively about his work with Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, and other artists before a crowd of several hundred event attendees.

It’s not often that Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow gets rattled. But then, it’s not every day that Clive Davis, the legendary record label executive, producer, and talent nurturer, stops by Wasserstein Hall to reminisce about his illustrious, six-decade career in the music industry. “I have interviewed Supreme Court justices, I’ve been with presidents of countries, I am so nervous!” Minow told Davis, LL.B. ’56, Friday afternoon as they chatted about Davis’ improbable journey as a poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn who made it to Harvard Law School (HLS) on a scholarship and went on to become one of the most successful and revered figures in music business history.

Valerie Jarrett is the most talked-about White House aide in Washington — and that’s not always a good thing. Jarrett has come under attack after the midterm elections, with critics charging that she wields too much influence over her boss. Part of her mystique stems from the fact that, as other top aides have come and gone, Jarrett has survived. Her longevity and proximity to President Obama and Michelle Obama have made her something of a Beltway legend — and have conjured up a series of misconceptions about her...Complaints about presidential advisers have a long tradition. “In almost every presidency you can name a powerful White House figure who had informal power of one kind or another that was the subject of dispute,” said Kenneth Mack, a Harvard historian. “Sherman Adams had an immense amount of power in Eisenhower’s White House; same with Harry Hopkins and Franklin Roosevelt.”

“Net neutrality” — you hear those two words a lot these days....To understand the concept of net neutrality you first have to understand the backdrop of the Internet itself, says Jonathan Zittrain who heads the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The Internet is kind of a collective hallucination. It is only a set of protocols that say if somebody joining this network, connecting however it can, speaks those protocols, it’s a full-fledged member of the network. That’s one reason why the Internet has no main menu, it has no CEO, it has no business plan,” says Zittrain.

It was a father-son hiking trip gone terribly wrong. When they reached the mountain peak, the father tied up his son, placed him on a pile of firewood and prepared to slash the boy’s throat—until he heard a voice telling him to stop. On Sunday, the father—also known as the biblical patriarch Abraham —will be brought up on charges of attempted murder and endangering the welfare of his son, Isaac, in a mock trial at Temple Emanu-El synagogue on the Upper East Side...Presiding over the Old Testament-inspired case will be U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan. Representing Abraham will be high-profile defense attorney Alan Dershowitz. Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer will lead the prosecution.

The international community watched closely this week as representatives from the U.S. government defended its compliance with the Convention Against Torture (CAT) in front of the United Nations Committee against Torture...Groups like the Advocates for U.S. Torture Prosecutions say that the United States is shielding those responsible, which is in direct violation of its CAT obligations. “It’s is at the heart of everything,” Deborah Popowski, a clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and a member of Advocates for U.S. Torture Prosecutions said in an interview with Newsweek. Referring to what she called the “legal framework the U.S. government built to shield itself from liability” (a mixture of legal opinions that distort laws governing torture and the use of the Military Commissions Act to retroactively redefine war crimes to impede prosecution), she added that by “choosing to immunize those responsible, [the U.S. government] legitimizes their actions and the legacy lives on, the precedent is set.”

In his pronouncement on the open Internet Monday, President Obama called for the most stringent option among rules being contemplated – treating Internet providers like public utilities such as electricity companies and subjecting them to tight regulations....It would have the most solid legal grounds to ban "paid prioritization" deals, ones in which ISPs get payments to offer "fast-lane" Internet connections to deep-pocketed content providers that can afford them while others get to deal with slower speeds. "They have to be standing on legal authority," says Susan Crawford, a visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School.

Obamacare -- the law that refuses to die -- is suddenly under attack again...Harvard Law Professor Einer Elhauge says some states, to protect themselves against possible health care chaos, might finally decide to set up their own arrangements or partner with the federal exchange. "The prospect of that disruption is sufficiently problematic that I would not be surprised to see a lot of states adopt exchanges," said Elhauge, who authored a book on the original Obamacare Supreme Court case.

An op-ed by Janet Halley. Students have rightly protested shoddy and outright malign handling of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct claims and demanded fairer procedures on college campuses. Many of the resulting reforms will improve things by sending the clear message that sexual abuse will not be tolerated or condoned. But, as often happens when public indignation and government power combine to force reform, it is easy to go too far and to make hasty fixes that threaten values that are forgotten at the moment of crisis...We have reached that point in the institutional, political and governmental demand for stricter enforcement of sexual harassment policies by institutions of higher education. Harvard University’s new Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment Policy, and its new procedures for student discipline, exemplify this trend.

Vice Provost for Advances in Learning Peter K. Bol, who authorized a now-controversial lecture attendance study that involved photographing students without their knowledge last spring, notified the students who took the affected courses by email on Wednesday...Kyros Law in Hingham, Mass. is actively seeking faculty and students to take part in a potential class action lawsuit against the University for allegedly violating privacy and breaking state and federal laws through the attendance study....“A lawsuit is an awful way to sort out a situation like this one,” Computer Science and Law Professor Jonathan L. Zittrain wrote in an email Monday to The Crimson, adding that “there may be reasons to rethink how studies of this sort are done—who approves them, and who's informed about it before, during, and after —but I don't see any useful role for a lawsuit here, and I suspect the plaintiff's firm is rather hoping to simply settle, banking on the University not wishing ongoing bad publicity.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Barack Obama has made headlines by announcing that he favors net neutrality -- and in particular that he wants the Federal Communications Commission to designate Internet service providers as common carriers that would be regulated like utilities. What's weird about the president's announcement is not the policy perspective, about which reasonable people can differ. What's weird is that the president’s statement has no legal effect. He appointed a majority of the FCC’s commissioners -- but he can't fire them short of malfeasance, and they won't ever run for election. What kind of democracy is this?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Do you earn any money outside your state? Whether you’re an NBA player or a lowly lecturer-consultant like some of us, you know the drill: Pay income tax where you earned the money, then get a credit from your home state when you file your return. Unless, that is, you live in Maryland. Maryland refuses to credit residents for part of the money they earn elsewhere, choosing instead to double-tax them. The U.S. Supreme Court now has to decide whether this is constitutional. Depending on the outcome, copycats probably won’t be far behind.

The company's new policy has given hope to both supporters and opponents of efforts by the United Auto Workers to unionize its first foreign-owned plant in the region. The outcome of the union drive at the Chattanooga plant is being closely monitored by other German and Asian automakers in the region, and by Republican officials who dread the prospect of a UAW breaking its losing streak among what the union refers to as the "transplants."...Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard University, said Volkswagen's new policies "could be important to the United Auto Workers' organizing efforts" in Chattanooga. Voluntarily providing access to the plant for meetings, notices and other activities is a departure from the practices of most companies where "the worksite is off limits for union organizing, by and large," Sachs said.