Media Mentions

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. In the tiny town of Jun, Spain, (population: 3,000) meeting rooms in city hall have their own Twitter accounts. When residents want to reserve them, they send a direct message via Twitter; when it's time, the door to the room unlocks automatically in response to a tweet. Jun's mayor, Jose Antonio Rodriguez, says he coordinates with other public servants via Twitter. Residents routinely tweet about public services, and city hall answers. Every police officer in Jun has a Twitter handle displayed on his uniform. Now the New York Police Department, the largest in the U.S., is starting a broad social media initiative to get every precinct talking and listening online via Twitter, to both serve citizens and manage police personnel. The question is whether the kind of positive, highly local responsiveness the residents of Jun expect is possible across all parts of local government -- not just from the police -- in a big city. If it works, the benefits to the public from this kind of engagement could be enormous.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Just what, exactly, is going on with the advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran? That's a question U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder doesn't want answered. Yesterday the Department of Justice asked a federal district court to dismiss a defamation suit against the group on the ground that a trial might reveal state secrets. How, you ask, could a nongovernmental, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization be in possession of classified information so important that revealing it would materially harm U.S. interests? The government -- big shock -- won't tell you. In the absence of any public justification whatsoever, we're left to parse through the possibilities by speculation -- and to ask whether such a dismissal is compatible with the rule of law.

An op-ed by Alan Dershowitz. Part 4. President Obama recently announced that the United States had targeted and killed Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader of an Al Qaeda-linked group of terrorists in Somalia, and that it is now targeting ISIS leaders for assassination. We have, of course, targeted several alleged terrorists in the past, including at least one US citizen. Although our government’s official position is that we would prefer to capture and detain wanted terrorists, rather than kill them, the way the Navy SEAL team went after Osama bin Laden strongly suggests we preferred him dead rather than alive. But his killing may have been an exception — because of his high visibility — to the salutary general rule that it is better to capture than to kill, if for no other reason than that a live detainee is a potential source of valuable intelligence. But what should a democracy, constrained by the rule of law, do if a dangerous terrorist cannot be captured, or can only be captured with undue risk to our soldiers?

An op-ed by Lucian Bebchuk. Wall Street is eagerly watching what is expected to be one of the largest initial public offering in history: the offering of the Chinese Internet retailer Alibaba at the end of this week. Investors have been described by the media as “salivating” and “flooding underwriters with orders.” It is important for investors, however, to keep their eyes open to the serious governance risks accompanying an Alibaba investment. Several factors combine to create such risks. For one, insiders have a permanent lock on control of the company but hold only a small minority of the equity capital. Then, there are many ways to divert value to affiliated entities, but there are weak mechanisms to prevent this. Consequently, public investors should worry that, over time, a significant amount of the value created by Alibaba would not be shared with them.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner. At the 11th hour, the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committee received an extraordinary letter from U.S. District Judge John Bates of Washington purporting to represent the federal judiciary. In it, Bates criticized the Senate proposal to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and implied support for the House version. The Senate bill would create a permanent special advocate tasked with challenging the government’s presentations before the FISA court and is more protective of civil liberties and privacy than the House version. But whatever the merits of Bates’ concerns—and other judges have dissented from it—he most assuredly does not speak for the Third Branch.

An anonymous school-gossip website that saw a sharp rise in popularity over the past year has become a campus cause célèbre since an enterprising journalism student outed the site's top-secret editor..."Anonymity has a storied relationship with American democracy," said Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law professor who co-founded the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "It's a way for the powerless and disadvantaged to speak without fear of repercussion. Of course, that same lack of repercussion can make for a license for abusive behavior."

An op-ed by Alan Dershowitz. Part 3. How should a nation committed to the rule of law deal with captured terrorists who are believed to be dangerous but who cannot realistically be brought to trial? This issue has arisen in the context of the debate over whether to close the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, which candidate Barack Obama promised to do, but President Obama has not yet done. A major reason why Guantanamo remains open is that it contains several detainees — the precise number is unknown — who, if released, would almost certainly return to a life of terrorism. Indeed, some have, and many in detention have overtly stated their malignant intentions. Others have histories that suggest the likelihood of recidivism. But even some of the most dangerous detainees cannot be tried, either because there is insufficient admissible evidence of a specific crime or because the evidence comes from undercover sources the government is unwilling to out. If Guantanamo were to be closed, as it should be, and the detainees transferred to other facilities, the basic problem would still remain.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Does the Barack Obama administration have the legal authority to use military force against Islamic State? Some constitutional scholars, and some members of Congress, have been skeptical, even dismissive. But as a matter of law, the president has a strong justification...In 2001, Congress gave the George W. Bush administration broad authorization to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks. The Authorization for Use of Military Force explicitly says the president can “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks, or even that “harbored such organizations or persons.” For present purposes, the most important word here is “organizations,” and the key phrase is “he determines.”

Judge Robert Wilkins was formally sworn in on Friday as the 61st judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit at a ceremony dedicated to the African American judges who preceded Wilkins on the bench...Four of Wilkins’ friends and former colleagues spoke. Kenneth Mack, a professor at Harvard Law School and a friend of Wilkins since the two were law students at Harvard, spoke about Hastie, Robinson and the legacy of other black federal judges in history, who strived to deliver justice at a time when they faced discrimination outside the courthouse. Their service meant that Wilkins “would not be faced with the kinds of dilemmas that they faced every day,” he said.

The Obama administration is moving to ease access to student loans for parents with damaged credit, a policy reversal that could saddle poor families with piles of debt but also boost college enrollment...Credit counselors say they have seen a rise in borrowers who took out large sums despite being on limited incomes. "This debt will remain a huge problem for the rest of their lives," said Toby Merrill, head of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at Harvard University's Legal Services Center.

An op-ed by Alan Dershowitz. Part 2. The recent disclosure by Edward Snowden of the US government’s wide net of surveillance has stimulated an emotional debate about security, privacy, and secrecy. We have learned from Snowden that the National Security Agency engages in virtually unchecked monitoring of all sorts of communications that were thought to be private but that we now know are maintained in secret government databases. Three fundamental issues are raised by these disclosures: Was it proper for the government to conduct such massive surveillance and to maintain such extensive files? Was it proper for the government to keep its surveillance program secret from the public? If not, did this governmental impropriety justify the unlawful disclosure of so much classified information by Snowden?

An op-ed by Alan Dershowitz. Part 1. When democracies seek to protect their citizens against new threats posed by terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and Boko Haram, the old rules — designed for conventional warfare among nations — sometimes become anachronistic. New balances must be struck between preserving people’s civil liberties and protecting them against terrorist violence. As Aharon Barak, the former president of the Supreme Court of Israel — a nation that has confronted this issue over many decades — once put it: “Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand.”

It started with the iPod. In 2001, Apple promised to do away with stacks of CDs and put 1,000 songs in your pocket. Thirteen years later, the music industry is unrecognizable: most brick-and-mortar record stores have shuttered and a pocket-sized hard drive filled with music seems quaint in a world with YouTube and Spotify. ...Susan Crawford, an Internet policy expert and visiting professor at Harvard Law School, sees the payment system as a way of locking in increased loyalty for already-adoring Apple fans. If Apple can leverage its customers' preexisting trust to help consumers jump over their privacy concerns associated with e-payments, she says, the company may have made one more reason for users to keep their iPhones clutched tightly in their hand at all times. "Really this is all about affection for these devices, which are literally very close to people's hearts," Crawford says.

Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley joined a panel of journalists and academics Thursday night in a discussion of the new pope that was part of an event marking the launch of The Boston Globe’s new website Crux, which will cover the Roman Catholic Church across the world...The cardinal was joined on stage by Globe associate editor John L. Allen Jr., of Crux; Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand professor of law at Harvard University and the former US ambassador to the Holy See; Robert Christian, editor and blogger; and Hosffman Ospino, a Boston College assistant professor of Hispanic ministry and religious education.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society held a kickoff event for its Digital Problem Solving Initiative, a year-long program that brings together students and mentors from across the University to solve campus-wide issues through technology, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Gutman Library on Thursday. Following an introduction from Law School Dean Martha L. Minow and a lecture on best practices for entrepreneurship from Business School professor Thomas R. Eisenmann, students and advisors split up into eight teams focused on particular on-campus problems...Law School professor and Berkman Center Director Urs Gasser said the initiative not only aims to tackle problems across the University but also seeks to develop students “digital literacy skills.”

An op-ed by Jaimie McFarlin `15. In both tragedies of domestic violence and alleged police brutality, the victim can be silenced. Cameras can't. In a domestic violence incident, the victim can be silenced through the psychological trap of the relationship. In cases of alleged police brutality, victims can be silenced through death. So let the cameras talk.

As President Obama made his case for deepening U.S. military involvement in Syria and Iraq and the country prepared to mark the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, scholars from Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Harvard Law School (HLS) came together to explore the circumstances surrounding the recent upheavals in the Middle East and the complex forces driving the many strategic challenges to peace. In a Tuesday panel moderated by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, Nicholas Burns, Michael Ignatieff, and Meghan O’Sullivan assessed the global threat now posed by the Sunni jihadist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig just learned a lesson: It takes more than some money to win an election. It takes a lot of money. Earlier this year, Lessig announced the creation of MayDay, a super PAC that would take advantage of newly loosened campaign finance laws to spend lots of money supporting candidates who commit to tightening those same campaign finance laws. The big bet was New Hampshire, where MayDay spent $1.6 million supporting long-shot candidate Jim Rubens in the state’s Republican Senate primary. That’s nearly six times the $270,000 that Rubens’s own campaign spent through Sept. 10 and more than any other outside group spent on the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. But it was far less than Scott Brown, a former U.S. senator, had at his disposal, and only a fraction of the total that a coalition of other outside groups poured into the race, including Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, and the liberal Senate Majority PAC.

More than a million comments have been filed with federal regulators urging the government to begin requiring publicly traded corporations to report on their political spending....“The overwhelming support from public comments the petition has attracted, and the strength of the arguments for transparency put forward in the petition, provide a strong case for SEC initiation of a rulemaking process,” Lucian Bebchuk, director of the corporate governance program at Harvard Law School and one of a group of academics who, in 2011, submitted the original petition on the issue, said at a press conference here last week. “Furthermore, opponents of the petition have failed in their comments to provide any good basis for avoiding such a process.”

For the past 29 years, Joel Cohen has been an accomplished litigator at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in New York City. He is also the author of a regular column in the Law Journal. And he has somehow found time to write four works of fiction, three of which tackle religious subjects. Blindfolds Off is his first non-fiction work, and it sets out to "examine what goes on in a judge's mind that may not be reflected in the record."...Cohen's technique is the probing interview. Thirteen federal judges, all but two of whom are still sitting, agreed to be interviewed about a significant case over which they presided...Judge Nancy Gertner talks about awarding Peter Limone and others $100 million in their wrongful conviction lawsuit arising out of the FBI's insidious relationship with Whitey Bulger.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. The new Apple payment system has extraordinary promise. With Apple Pay, you might not need a wallet, and you can leave your credit and debit cards at home. In terms of ease and convenience, payment cards represented a big leap from the era of cash. Apple hopes its system will be a comparable leap from the era of cards. Skeptics have focused on questions of security and privacy, but prospective users might want to pause over a different problem: When payment becomes easier, and when people don’t see the money they’re handing over, they tend to spend a lot more. And as payment becomes more automatic, people become less sensitive to what they’re losing. Apple Pay users might find that their thinner phones are making their bank accounts thinner as well.