Media Mentions

Insurance companies may have found a way to skirt one of Obamacare's most popular promises: equal access to insurance coverage for patients with preexisting conditions…"Insurance companies have a long history of undertaking practices designed to restrict [high-risk pools]—through preexisting-protection preclusions, and higher premiums," said Robert Greenwald, director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. "All those options are now off the table clearly and explicitly. So what we're seeing instead are other practices—lack of transparency, failing to cover other medications, refusing to accept third-party payments, or the tiering of medicines."

…But how can schools attract and retain good principals? One education-policy think tank suggests that part of the answer may be making the role more like an executive and giving each principal a $100,000 salary raise...But while there’s certainly a “you-get-what-you pay-for” aspect to any profession, educators don’t necessarily correspond neatly to executives. Generally, bonuses work, so long as they don’t cause principals to focus on certain criteria at the expense of their job as a whole, according to Jesse Fried, professor of law at Harvard and co-author of Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation. “People going into teaching are obviously not motivated solely by the prospect of financial gain,” he says. “[But] if society substantially underpays principals, many good people will not seek these jobs or stay in them.”

An Illinois healthcare worker's legal challenge of mandatory union dues from public employees reaches a climax on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule in the case at the final session of its nine-month term. If the justices agree with the sweeping argument made by home healthcare worker Pamela Harris that compulsory union dues are forced association and speech prohibited by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, it would essentially establish a national right-to-work law and deliver a blow to public employee unions. Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs said that if the perception holds that the Supreme Court saves blockbuster opinions for the end, it will mean a union loss. "If the union wins, it means the Supreme Court is affirming longstanding precedent. That is less of a 'blockbuster' kind of opinion than overturning longstanding precedent," Sachs said.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Class-action securities litigation survived today -- and the big news is that it was saved not just by swing voting Justice Anthony Kennedy, but also by Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts wrote the opinion for the court affirming the presumption that, if you bought stock in a reasonably well functioning market, you relied on material information that the market knew. The decision showed once again the realism that has cost Roberts the admiration of hard-core conservatives ever since his pragmatist treachery in upholding the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act case.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Consider this hypothesis about modern presidential elections: Whenever American voters elect a new president, they choose someone who is, along a critical dimension, the antithesis of the incumbent. The Incumbent Antithesis hypothesis, as I’ll call it, fits recent history, and it may be correct. If so, it suggests a real challenge for the next Democratic nominee, even if it is Hillary Clinton -- perhaps especially if it is.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Perhaps, like me, you trust Mormon missionaries and enjoy chatting with them even if you already have your own religion. Even so, if you happen to see one with his hand in your mailbox, you should probably tell someone. Kevin Loughrin used phony LDS missionary cover to steal checks from boxes all over Salt Lake City. He then altered the checks, used them to buy stuff at Target, and later returned the goods for cash. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court held that he was guilty of federal bank fraud.

Earlier this month, digital rights activist and Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig launched Mayday PAC, a super political action committee aimed at reforming U.S. campaign finance laws. To date, the Super PAC has raised more than $1.2 million in pledges from 17,500 people. Through Mayday, Lessig hopes to turn the mechanism of corporate influence in politics against itself. “If we are effective,” he says, “we will reduce the power of money.”

Several Silicon Valley billionaires, many of them startup veterans, are getting behind an effort to ... reduce the influence of billionaires. The group, spurred into action by digital rights activist and Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, is funding a Super PAC, or political action committee, designed to obviate the need for Super PACs. "We are a crowdfunded SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs," reads the Super PAC's web site. "Ironic? Yes. Embrace the irony."

The mission is simple, if not counterintuitive: Design a super PAC to destroy all super PACs, huge political action committees that allow for unlimited contributions from people, corporations, associations, and unions. Mayday PAC was launched recently by Harvard Law School professor, author, and activist Lawrence Lessig, and, according to its website, is “a crowdfunded, kickedstarted super PAC to end all super PACs.”

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died 20 years ago today by the Jewish calendar, was easily the most important rabbi of the second half of the 20th century in the U.S. At his death, his legacy was uncertain: He left no successor, and his followers, the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidim, found themselves locked in a profound internal dispute about whether the man they expected to be revealed as the messiah had in fact died with the world unredeemed.

The 2005 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice is best remembered for his oft-quoted assertion that “judges are like umpires.” Few remember the line that preceded it: “A certain humility should characterize the judicial role.” The Supreme Court will soon complete its ninth term with Roberts at the helm. In “Uncertain Justice,” Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe and his former student Joshua Matz find much to analyze and explain in the “wondrous complexity” of the Roberts court. Their well-told story is not one of judicial modesty, however, either for the aspirations of the Roberts court or for its impact on American life.

Just ahead of Anthony Brown [`92] in Rockville’s Memorial Day parade, his opponents in the Maryland gubernatorial primary strutted their stuff…Now, as he completes his apprenticeship under Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), Brown is far ahead in the polls, fully expecting to win the June 24 Democratic primary and the November general election. He would be Maryland’s first black governor and the first lieutenant governor to ascend to the top spot…“Anthony was always somebody who knew where he was going,” says Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who knew Brown and predicts he will be the nation’s second black president. “His approach was always, ‘I’m going to be competitive wherever I can.’ ”

Catharine MacKinnon was a law student at Yale University in the mid-1970s when she had a radical idea: Sexual harassment on campus was discrimination, and it interfered with a woman's ability to attend college. MacKinnon would put that theory to the test in a court case that her side would eventually lose, but that would have far-reaching effects. In recent months the issue of sexual assault and harassment at college has attracted the scrutiny of the White House and Congress. But some four decades ago, the gender equity law on which many federal inquiries into college sexual assault are based, Title IX, pertained primarily to sports. So in 1977, when MacKinnon advised a group of Yale students alleging harassment on campus to file their lawsuit, Alexander v. Yale, the legal argument was an untested theory.

The Obama administration has told the United Nations that Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected ringleader of the 2012 attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was plotting additional attacks on Americans and that the United States conducted the weekend raid that seized him under its right to self-defense…Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who was a senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, wrote Wednesday that the critics “don’t have a legal leg to stand on” and that “civilian trial appears to be the only legally available option.”

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Last week, the city council of Portland, Oregon voted to approve Google Fiber, the high-speed Internet service that Google plans to roll out in 34 cities across the country. I recently traveled to Kansas City, the first city to get Google Fiber, to talk to people there about the arrival of the service. Google learned some lessons in Kansas City that will likely be useful in Portland, such as lowering the barriers as much as possible to less-affluent “fiberhoods” so that they get service as well.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Bruce Abramski bought a handgun for his uncle, hoping to use his expired police officer ID to get a discount. When the seller asked, as required by law, if the gun was for him, Abramski said yes. C’mon, wouldn’t you have done the same for a bargain? Next time, don’t. Abramski was convicted for making a false statement “material to the lawfulness of the sale” and a false statement with respect to information required for the dealer’s records -- and today a divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld the convictions.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Was a vote for the Affordable Care Act a vote for "taxpayer-funded abortion"? Sounds like a question of opinion, doesn't it? But when a pro-life advocacy group called the Susan B. Anthony List said as much about then-Congressman Steve Driehaus’s vote during the 2010 election cycle, Driehaus filed an action charging them with making a false statement about his voting record, a crime under Ohio law. Driehaus lost the election, and the case was never decided. But the SBA folks still wanted the federal court to strike down the Ohio law as unconstitutional. Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed their challenge case to go forward -- and that tells us something important about the future of election law.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. What do you dread more than a summons from the IRS? The tax authority is the closest thing to Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor that our democracy allows. And today the U.S. Supreme Court made the Internal Revenue Service just a little bit stronger, overturning an appeals court opinion that would have allowed you to examine the IRS agents who summon you to find out if they have improper motives. The court established a reasonable-sounding rule: You can question the agents only if you can point to specific circumstances plausibly raising the inference of bad faith. In reality, however, it’ll be hard to pass this bar unless the courts share the skepticism of the IRS that is natural to most taxpayers.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Since 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court first announced some protection for government employees’ free-speech rights against the risk of retaliation, the trend in its decisions has been to cabin and limit that right almost to nothingness. Today the court gently reversed that trend. Its holding -- that a government employee can’t be sanctioned for testimony given in court outside his job responsibilities -- sounds intuitive and obvious. But under past case law, it wasn’t. The decision is therefore not only a victory for common sense, but also a modest win for the First Amendment in the government workplace.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Score two for the gamblers. Today the Supreme Court handed a double defeat to the Republic of Argentina in its effort to default on sovereign bonds issued in 1994. That means a double win for NML Capital, that so-called vulture fund that holds $1.33 billion of those bonds bought for pennies on the dollar in the hopes that the U.S. courts would eventually try to make Argentina pay.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. In many of its most important cases, the modern U.S. Supreme Court has divided 5-4. By a single vote, the court guaranteed the presidency to George W. Bush, upheld the Affordable Care Act and affirmative action in university admissions, and ruled that government cannot prevent corporations from spending money in political campaigns. As the court prepares to issue this year’s most significant decisions, it’s a good bet that several of them will show 5-4 divisions as well. Is this a problem?