Media Mentions

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?

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. The vast majority of Americans—more than 90 percent in recent polls—believe it “important” to “reduce the influence of money in politics.” But is the business model of the reformers actually consistent with winning reform? This is the fair but hard question raised by the strategy planned by Senate Democrats this summer to force a vote on New Mexico Senator Tom Udall’s proposed constitutional amendment to give Congress the power “to regulate the raising and spending of money” in elections.

I. Glenn Cohen, Harvard Law School professor specializing in medical ethics, talks with Rachel Maddow about the objections of medical professionals to doctors lending their expertise to assisting states in killing prisoners.

Whether you’re rich or poor, famous or obscure, if you have a will, chances are it says something to the effect of, “pay my debts before you pay my heirs.”…State law offers some protection with what’s called a creditor period – a certain length of time (ranging from two months after the start of probate to five years from the date of death) after which the executor can pay beneficiaries without worrying about creditors’ claims, explains Harvard Law professor Robert H. Sitkoff.

This past May, center-right GOP strategist Mark McKinnon and Harvard Law School professor, author and activist Lawrence Lessig announced the launch of what sounded like a real contradiction — a super PAC to end all super PACs. Called “the Mayday PAC,” McKinnon and Lessig’s creation was something of an experiment, an attempt to see if the power of big money in post-Citizens United American politics could be wielded in order to, well, end the post-Citizens United era of big money in American politics…This week, Salon called up Lessig in order to discuss some of the details of the Mayday PAC and the vexing problem of money and democracy in America more generally.

Even as Democratic Party leaders denounce billionaire Republicans Charles and David Koch for filling the airwaves with misleading commercials, they’re also playing with the facts…“Harry Reid’s in a difficult position,” said Harvard Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who started a super-PAC focused on campaign-finance reform. “It’s hard to see the difference between what he’s attacking and what he’s doing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is majestic, immensely powerful and deceptively fragile. It commands by the power of reason, and its justices are, as the great Robert Jackson once observed, not "final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." And yet Americans today increasingly regard the court in an unfavorable light. In 2001, almost two-thirds of Americans approved of the court's work; by last year, that number had dropped to less than half. "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution" takes the measure of the court at this puzzling juncture. The book is full of bright and unconventional wisdom, as one might expect from its author, the venerable law professor Laurence Tribe, here teamed with a young collaborator, Joshua Matz. They portray a court tip-toeing into new areas of constitutional law, divided and without a clear sense of mission or purpose.

No one likes getting criticism. But it can be a chance to show off a rare skill: taking negative feedback well...Tempering an emotional response can be hard, especially "if you're genuinely surprised and you're getting that flood of adrenaline and panic," says Douglas Stone, a lecturer at Harvard Law School and co-author of "Thanks for the Feedback."

The Harvard Law School Library is a launching point for well-trained modern lawyers, but it is also a time machine….The latest exhibit drawn from the collections is “Spanning the Centuries,” open in Langdell Hall’s Caspersen Room through Aug. 22 and curated by collections manager Karen S. Beck. Two glass cases contain items from 1579 to 1868, most of them added during the three years she has been on the job. “It gives a taste of the breadth and depth of our collections and what we’re adding,” said Beck.

An op-ed by Cass R. Sunstein. Everyone knows that under Chief Justice John Roberts, the U.S. Supreme Court often divides 5-4 -- an even split between liberals and conservatives, with Justice Anthony Kennedy providing the swing vote. But here’s a puzzle. Over recent decades, and under many different chief justices, the share of 5-4 splits in the Court’s docket has been fairly constant -- on average, in the vicinity of 20 percent. Is the Court always split between liberals and conservatives, or is there some other explanation?

The nation's 350 largest law firms showed the biggest headcount growth during 2013 since the nosedive of the recession years, with a respectable 3.9 percent increase...Among leaders of the bigger firms, an international game plan is the focus, said Harvard Law School professor David Wilkins. "It is so clear that all the growth is going to come from outside the U.S.," said Wilkins, whose scholarship focuses on law firms. "Everyone is trying to figure out what their strategy is."

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Several years ago, I abandoned my Verizon Wireless subscription for a phone from Sprint, thinking I'd get a better deal from a smaller player. Earlier this year, I left Sprint for T-Mobile, drawn by the maverick carrier's no-contract, no-subsidy approach and applauding the idea that international data service -- slow but nonetheless valuable -- came with my new subscription. When I opened the door of the T-Mobile store in my neighborhood, I silently praised the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and the Federal Communications Commission for blocking the proposed merger of AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. in 2011. Because of that, I had choices. For the same reason that deal didn't go through, a Sprint Corp./T-Mobile joinder shouldn't be permitted: No matter how the deal is conditioned, it will cause a reduction in competition.

This month marks the first anniversary of the Edward Snowden leaks that changed our understanding of online privacy…So this week, we're posting a short series about all that data. Every day we'll bring you another number that reminds us how much we have learned in the last year about online surveillance and the reach of the NSA. $278,000,000 spent in 2013 by the NSA on "corporate-partner access project "This is the amount spent by the NSA in fiscal year 2013 under what it calls its corporate-partner access project," Says Susan Crawford, visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. "What they're doing is reimbursing telecommunications companies for domestic surveillance of all internet traffic."

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. State constitutions are law’s Cinderellas. Ignored most of the time by their cruel stepsisters in the federal courts, they emerge suddenly as belles of the ball when a spectacular state court decision puts them front and center. The latest Prince Charming is the California judge who struck down teacher tenure as violating the right to education and equal protection. Unfortunately, the glass slipper doesn’t fit. The decision yesterday by Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu is terribly reasoned -- and it should be reversed.