Media Mentions

The federal government is on the brink of lifting restrictions put in place more than three decades ago when regulators, alarmed by the spread of the virus that causes AIDS, barred men who had sex with other men from donating blood. A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel will begin a two-day meeting on the issue Tuesday, amid growing calls from medical groups, gay rights activists and lawmakers to jettison the ban as outdated and discriminatory...“They really are out of step with the rest of the world,” said Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor who with two colleagues recently argued in the Journal of the American Medical Association for a new U.S. policy. Cohen noted that numerous countries have abandoned blanket bans and put in place shorter deferral periods.

An op-ed by Alica M. Rodriguez [`15]. If you are one of the lucky ones, you have glimpsed a turkey walking around Harvard’s campus, totally out of place but strutting its stuff nonetheless. Turkeys have long graced the North American wilderness, but there’s a reason tourists and students routinely stop to photograph them: It’s rare to spot a wild turkey because the majority of turkeys are now raised in factory farms, without ever having seen the light of day. The Harvard turkey is, therefore, among the luckiest of its kinsmen. Each year, a whopping 46 million turkeys are killed for Thanksgiving celebrations. Unlike wild turkeys that are free to roam, forage, and live their lives naturally, these turkeys have been through the worst types of cruelty imaginable.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. The airwaves are alive with Thanksgiving and Christmas calorie stories. Makes sense. But are those pecan pie dissections really all that relevant? After all, holidays come around once a year. What's more important is what you take in on normal days...A new rule from the Food and Drug Administration will require calorie and other nutrition information to be disclosed by chain restaurants -- including bakeries, cafeterias, coffee shops, convenience stores, movie theaters and vending machines. The rule might turn out to be one of the most important regulatory initiatives of the past decade, with a significant effect on consumer behavior and public health.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It's official: As of this week, Israel is no longer the only democracy in the Middle East. The immediate reason is that Tunisia, which has a newly minted democratic constitution, held a free presidential election to follow its successful legislative elections. That’s a happy story: the more democracies in the Middle East, the better for its peoples. But there's another reason to keep a close eye on Israel's democracy: a draft basic law -- in essence, a constitutional amendment -- approved by the Israeli cabinet that represents a big step backward from Israel's traditional self-identification as both Jewish and democratic.

The Harvard Law School professor says there is a racial divide in this country that is not going to end with Ferguson.

It's not as if lawyers are lacking industry publications to read, but the folks at Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession say its new digital magazine offers something different. Called The Practice (wasn't that a television show – about doctors?), the digital magazine launched in November and a new issue will post every two months. What makes it different than other legal publications is that the articles are based on the center's empirical research, Bryon Fong, The Practice's managing editor, told me.

President Obama could leave office with the most aggressive, far-reaching environmental legacy of any occupant of the White House. Yet it is very possible that not a single major environmental law will have passed during his two terms in Washington. Instead, Mr. Obama has turned to the vast reach of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which some legal experts call the most powerful environmental law in the world...Jody Freeman, director of Harvard University’s environmental law program, and a former counselor to the president, said Mr. Obama was using the Clean Air Act “to push forward in a way that no president ever has.”

"This was a strategic and problematic use of a grand jury to get the result he wanted," said Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University. "As a strategic move, it was smart; he got what he wanted without being seen as directly responsible for the result." Sullivan called the case "the most unusual marshaling of a grand jury's resources I've seen in my 25 years as a lawyer and scholar."

Monday, a grand jury decided not to indict a police officer for fatally shooting an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Missouri. Protests have been held nationwide, and across New England, after people learned Darren Wilson would not be charged in the death of Michael Brown. ... Tuesday, retired U.S. district court judge Nancy Gertner weighed in on the decision when she joined Jim Braude on Broadside.

Encourage policy makers to create and foster a food system that serves consumer health and the environment. Improving labeling policies and practices can decrease confusion for consumers, leading to a reduction in food waste. A recent report by Emily Broad Leib, Director of Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, states, "Congress, federal administrative agencies, state legislatures, and state agencies should work towards a system of date labeling that is more standardized, more easily understood by consumers, and less arbitrary."

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Both sides in the debate over President Barack Obama's immigration reforms have offered simple legal arguments. According to critics, the president is acting unlawfully by defying acts of Congress and arrogating the authority of a king. According to supporters, Obama is acting within his broad discretion as chief executive to deport those he thinks should be deported and let others stay in the U.S. But the administration's own legal analysis is much subtler and more precise. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel argues that the Department of Homeland Security does indeed have the authority to “prioritize” the removal of certain categories of undocumented aliens, and it can create a “deferred-action program” to let some people remain in the U.S. for a specified period. But it has to be careful about how it decides who gets to stay.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When was the last time you heard of a grand jury decision causing a riot? Well … never. That's because grand juries are obscure relics of past practice, not designed to bear the full weight of a politically and symbolically important decision like the nonprosecution of police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The decision by St. Louis County Chief Prosecutor Robert McCulloch to put the issue neutrally before the grand jury was intended to create a sense of public legitimacy for whatever result followed, and also no doubt to deflect blame from the prosecutor's own exercise of discretion. It failed on both counts -- and with good reason.

Emphasizing the importance for host nations to develop infrastructure, services, and policy that last after the conclusion of major sporting events, Brazilian Vice-Minister of Sports Luis Fernandes discussed Brazil’s preparation for both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics at a panel on Monday evening. Held at the Law School and moderated by Law School professor Charles R. Nesson ’60, the panel opened with Nesson noting that the event was relevant to Boston’s current bid to host the upcoming Olympic Games in 2024.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. It isn’t surprising that a grand jury on Monday ruled against indicting police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown last August in Ferguson, Mo. Although many are saying that the decision may have to do with race, it is more likely that Wilson is not facing charges because courts have decimated the law that holds officers accountable for excessive force, rulings that make incidents similar to Ferguson all the more likely. For example, two months before the Brown shooting, the US Supreme Court ruled in Plumhoff v. Rickard that even egregious police conduct is not “excessive force” in violation of the Constitution.

An op-ed by Johanna Wald. For weeks this summer, after black teenager Michael Brown was gunned down by Darren Wilson, a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo., the nation was witness to many disturbing images. We saw police in riot gear jumping out of armored trucks as if they were an occupying army, citizens being tear gassed in their own yards, and community members gasping in horror and disbelief. But the image that is seared forever in my consciousness is of the lifeless body of Michael Brown, lying on the ground in the street, alone, uncovered, in the middle of the afternoon, with blood spilling from his head. He was left by the police to lie like that for four hours. No grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson can erase that image. No amount of justifications or rationalizations by the Ferguson Police Department about procedures or protocols will ever convince me that they would have allowed a white body to linger on the street like that. That image gave the permanent lie to any notions that we have somehow transformed into a “post-racial” society. It powerfully conveyed what those of us who examine the research on a regular basis have long acknowledged. In this country, we have two systems of justice: one for White America and one for Black America, particularly for Young Black Male America.

The Constitution is not a math problem, but numbers can play a role in the Supreme Court’s calculations. When the court struck down bans on interracial marriage in 1967, such unions were still illegal in 16 states. When the court struck down laws making gay sex a crime in 2003, 13 states still had antisodomy measures. Should the court take up the question of same-sex marriage this term or next, as it seems likely to, the unions will be against the law in no more than 15 states. ...But the comparisons are not completely airtight, said Michael J. Klarman, a legal historian at Harvard Law School. The decision on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia, he said, followed democratic consensus. State legislatures, not judges, had done almost all of the work in driving down the number of bans to 16.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. “Global warming strikes America! Brrrr!” So tweeted Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler last week, as much of the U.S. experienced extreme cold. (In Buffalo, it was a full Snowpocalypse.) Do frigid temperatures give you doubts about global warming? You wouldn't be alone. When people think the day’s weather is exceptionally cold, research shows, they're less likely to be concerned about global warming. And when the day seems unusually hot, concern jumps.

Harvard divestment advocates caught national attention when they took their fight to court last week, but legal experts say the case’s claims may ultimately be too tenuous to be heard....Responding to legal experts arguments, Alice M. Cherry [`16], a plaintiff and second-year student at the Law School, maintained on Sunday that the case was intended to expand upon tort precedent. “We are arguing for an expansion of the law,” she said. “There is a long history in tort law of expansion of liability...to address new social problems.”

Amid the quarterly reports of law firm performance and rankings in various league tables, three vaunted lawyers are calling on firms, in-house counsel and law schools to re-evaluate their priorities and obligations. Ben Heineman Jr., the former general counsel of General Electric Co.; William Lee, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP; and David Wilkins, a professor at Harvard Law School, have co-written “Lawyers as Professionals and as Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st Century.” The essay, prompted by a discussion with Harvard Dean Martha Minow, is intended to address the current state of legal practice and education. The three write that there is “widespread agreement that the legal profession is in a period of stress and transition; its economic models are under duress; the concepts of its professional uniqueness are narrow and outdated; and, as a result, its ethical imperatives are weakened and their sources ill-defined.”

Contrary to claims that activism hurts a company’s long term outlook, Lucian Bebchuk, speaking at the Federalist Society Conference in Washington DC, said activism actually helps. Bebchuk, author of a forthcoming study with Alon Brav, and Wei Jiang titled “The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism,” due out in June 2015 from the Columbia law review, says the claims by myopic activists are just wrong, specifically pointing out one activist critic by name – Marty Lipton.

An article by Sean Mirski `15. On July 1, 2014, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet engaged in a dramatic constitutional reinterpretation. Traditionally, Japan’s constitution had been read as imposing pacifism on the country: Japan could not engage in military force except in absolute self-defense. But under Abe’s new reading, the constitution would grant Japan the right to engage in collective self-defense—in other words, to come to the aid of allied forces under attack even if Japan itself is not targeted. This update may seem minor when set alongside the robust military campaigns launched by other nations like the United States. But for Japan, Abe’s reinterpretation represents a significant shift away from the island-nation’s postwar pacifism—a shift that will have important and largely beneficial consequences for the U.S.-Japanese alliance. By the end of the year, the two states will release revised Guidelines for Defense Cooperation, which will build in part on Prime Minister Abe’s constitutional reinterpretation and update the framework that governs the U.S.-Japanese alliance in times of both peace and war.