Media Mentions

An unlikely alliance of liberal intellectuals, big donors and Republican strategists has hit on a solution to the influence of big money in politics: even more money. Starting Monday, the recently formed Mayday “super PAC” began a $12 million advertising campaign to help elect lawmakers of both parties who support proposals to diminish the influence of big donors. The PAC is the most ambitious effort yet to turn dismay over supersize contributions into a winning political issue. “Inside-the-Beltway people don’t think this issue matters, they don’t think voters vote on the basis of this issue, and they advise their politicians not to talk about it,” said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School with ties to Silicon Valley who is a founder of the Mayday PAC with Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to President George W. Bush. “We think this issue does matter, and we want to prove it.”

A federal appeals panel on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi law that would have shut the sole abortion clinic in the state by requiring its doctors to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals, something they had been unable to do…Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, said that the principle of state responsibility enunciated by the circuit court “is deeply established and fully entrenched.” “It goes not only to the issue of reproductive freedom but to the very character of the federal union,” he said.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. While we endure endless speculation about who will run for president in 2016, an important question is being left unaddressed: How will the ultimate winner be able to take any useful action?

If a U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage looks inevitable, perhaps it is. Since a pivotal high court ruling 13 months ago, gay-marriage advocates have tallied more than two dozen lower court victories without a single defeat. With this week’s decision in Virginia, two federal appeals courts have now backed same-sex marriage. Courts have consistently read last year’s ruling, U.S. v. Windsor, as undercutting any rationale for state bans. “I can’t think of any Supreme Court decision in history that has ever created so rapid and broad a lower-court groundswell in a single direction as Windsor,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School. “Nor can I think of any historical examples in which lower courts have so overwhelmingly and universally read a Supreme Court decision one way, only to have the court say ‘Never mind, you’ve all gotten it wrong.’”

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, recently said, “I love America.” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, wrote an opinion article saying, “Investing in America still produces the best return.”Yet guess who’s behind the recent spate of merger deals in which major United States corporations have renounced their citizenship in search of a lower tax bill? Wall Street banks, led by JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs…“This is an economic game. There are no virgins anywhere,” said Stephen E. Shay, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former deputy assistant Treasury secretary for international tax affairs in the Obama administration. “We can’t look to the banks to stop inversions. They will not look at this based on morality. They will look at it on the basis of fees.”

An op-ed by Charles Ogletree. I have wondered countless times over the past 30 years whether I would live to see the end of the death penalty in the United States. I now know that day will come, and I believe that the current Supreme Court will be its architect.

The chorus of voices on Capitol Hill calling for an end to corporate inversions grew louder on Tuesday as the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the issue of American companies reincorporating abroad, and legislators proposed new punitive measures against inverted companies…But while agreeing that the current system is broken, Mihir A. Desai, a professor of law at Harvard University, said punitive legislation could be counterproductive. “Legislation that is narrowly focused on preventing inversions or specific transactions runs the risk of being counterproductive,” he said. ”For example, rules that increase the required size of a foreign target to ensure the tax benefits of an inversion can deter these transactions but can also lead to more substantive transactions.”

An op-ed by Nathan G. Cortez, I. Glenn Cohen, and Aaron S. Kesselheim. Medicine may stand at the cusp of a mobile transformation. Mobile health, or “mHealth,” is the use of portable devices such as smartphones and tablets for medical purposes, including diagnosis, treatment, or support of general health and well-being…However, mHealth has also become a challenge for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the regulator responsible for ensuring that medical devices are safe and effective. The FDA's oversight of mHealth devices has been controversial to members of Congress and industry,10 who worry that “applying a complex regulatory framework could inhibit future growth and innovation in this promising market.”11 But such oversight has become increasingly important.

The much-admired Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black may be rolling in his grave at the prospect of a merger between 21st Century Fox and Time Warner Inc., which would reduce control of the major Hollywood studios to five owners, from six, and major television producers to four, from five…“The situation is already terrible and this would make it worse,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School. Coupled with giant cable and Internet distributors, like Comcast and AT&T, “you’ve got two highly concentrated markets that need each other to survive and protect their profits,” Professor Crawford said. “The public interest side of this conversation is hopelessly outgunned.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Just when you thought it was safe to get back in the water, the judges in Washington took another big chomp out of the Affordable Care Act. No, not the Supreme Court -- this time it was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In a 2-1 panel decision on partisan lines, the appeals court ruled that the tax subsidies for insurance coverage purchased from federal exchanges are illegal. The effect of the decision is to drastically undercut Obamacare by enabling all 36 states that don’t have their own exchanges to exempt millions of people from the individual mandate that they buy insurance. Meanwhile, across the Potomac River, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled the opposite way.

…Fleming’s case is one of many that are now under review at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office since District Attorney Kenneth Thompson took charge last January. Eight have already been exonerated out of scores of potentially wrongful convictions. Under Thompson’s direction, the old Conviction Integrity Unit has expanded to become the Conviction Review Unit. The objective of the new unit is simple: to bring the innocent to justice and restore faith in the legal system…Thompson has brought in Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., a Harvard law professor, as a consultant on the design and operation of the new unit. As both a professor and attorney, Sullivan has real-world experience and a sophisticated eye for the legal process.

Last month, as you’ve probably heard, a closely divided Supreme Court ruled that corporations with religious owners cannot be required to pay for insurance coverage of contraception. The so-called Hobby Lobby decision, named for the chain of craft stores that brought the case, has been both praised and condemned for expanding religious rights and constraining Obamacare. But beneath the political implications, the ruling has significant economic undertones. It expands the right of corporations to be treated like people, part of a trend that may be contributing to the rise of economic inequality…Minority shareholders have little power to influence the choices that corporations make. Benjamin I. Sachs, a law professor at Harvard University, notes that while federal law lets union members prevent the use of their dues for political purposes, shareholders do not have similar rights. “If we’re going to say that collectives have speech rights, then we should treat unions and corporations the same,” Sachs told me.

The rush is on for big U.S. companies to lower their tax bills. They do it by merging with foreign companies in countries with lower rates and officially moving their home base. The strategy is called "inversion," and it's legal. But is it un-patriotic? …The trend of U.S. companies moving abroad is more a testament to, among other things, "the importance of non-U.S. markets for U.S. firms," said Mihir Desai, a Harvard professor of finance and law. "Rather than questioning the loyalties of executives it is critical to understand these underlying ... forces."

An op-ed by Cass. R. Sunstein. While Representative Paul Ryan’s new anti-poverty plan has provoked significant discussion, little attention has been given to his ideas for regulatory reform. Those ideas deserve separate analysis and also considerable credit. They point in helpful directions, and they suggest the possibility of bipartisan cooperation on some important questions.

Millions of Americans are not entitled to government health insurance subsidies under Obamacare because of the way the law is written, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday…Court rules allow any active member of the appeals court to vote for an en banc hearing, according to I. Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School. “There is nothing in the rules that say that people who were confirmed after the decision was taken up but before it was issued do not get to sit, so I imagine it means the now-Democrat stacked group will vote for en banc rehearing,” he said.

Pay phones, often thought of as things of the past, may see new life as Google is considering a plan to turn them into in Wi-Fi hotspots in New York City, according to published reports. Susan Crawford, a visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School and a former Obama administration technology adviser, told KCBS that she thinks it’s a great idea to use pay phones as 21st century infrastructure. “They’re magic in a sense. They’re connected to telecommunications lines and power. So you can imagine having pay phones all over the city that have been turned into Wi-Fi hotspots and also charging stations and information kiosks for tourists,” she said.

Secretary of State John Kerry presents his ceasefire plan to Israel and Hamas and it raises an important underlying legal question: are these war crimes? Professor Gabriella Blum, a former attorney for the Israel Defense Forces and a Professor of international humanitarian law at Harvard and Ronan Farrow debate.

President Barack Obama could act without congressional approval to limit a key incentive for U.S. corporations to move their tax domiciles abroad in so-called "inversion" deals, a former senior U.S. Treasury Department official said on Monday. By invoking a 1969 tax law, Obama could bypass congressional gridlock and restrict foreign tax-domiciled U.S companies from using inter-company loans and interest deductions to cut their U.S. tax bills, said Stephen Shay, former deputy assistant Treasury secretary for international tax affairs in the Obama administration. He also served as international tax counsel at Treasury from 1982 to 1987 in the Reagan administration.

As legislators across the country pass anti-heroin bills and health officials hold community summits, prosecutors in more states are pursuing homicide, and similarly serious charges, against those who provided the deadly doses…"It's a growing trend, but still a tactic used in a minority of states around the country," said Ron Sullivan, director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School.

We’re living in the era of the activist investor. Last year Carl Icahn and his ilk launched initiatives at 200 companies—including Microsoft, Dell, and Dow Chemical—aimed at sprucing up management, improving operations, selling off certain units, and ultimately improving the share price. That’s a sevenfold jump compared with a decade earlier, according to Harvard research, and the ranks of prominent megaphone-wielding investors seem only to be growing. That prompts an obvious question: When Icahn leaps, should you jump too? The short answer: Yes. Evidence shows that buying stocks after change-oriented campaigns are instigated can yield superior returns for several years…Lucian Bebchuk, a Harvard Law School professor who also heads the university's Program on Corporate Governance, found similar initial gains.

By Margaret H. Marshall. During the long years that I was unable to return to South Africa, where I was born, raised, and lived for the first 25 years of my life, I could spend time with Nadine Gordimer only when she visited Boston. She often stayed with close friends of hers in their home on a quiet, leafy street, close to the center of Harvard. She seemed to thrive during those visits, tasting the freedom that we who are privileged to live here too often take for granted. It was a response I knew well: I had endured the offensive restrictions of apartheid, and breathed deeply on my few visits to the United States before I settled here.