Media Mentions

An op-ed by Tomiko Brown-Nagin: Despite the toxic partisan politics displayed during the confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson last month, her likely ascension to the US Supreme Court – as an eminently qualified jurist and the first African American woman justice – marks a profound and positive change in the nation’s history. In 2022, we are closer than ever to the aspiration of equal protection promised in the US Constitution and our laws, even as race and gender inequities endure in many areas of American life. This is a moment worthy of celebration. But it also invites reflection on how individual success relates to the ideal of opportunity for all.  

Oklahoma lawmakers have approved a bill that would make performing an abortion a felony except in the case of a medical emergency. It's the latest conservative legislature to approve a new restriction on abortion, as Republican-led states across the country push to limit reproductive rights. ... "I think that this is just a reflection of the fact that lawmakers in Oklahoma, as in much of the country, are pretty confident that the Supreme Court is going to overrule Roe and that it's just a matter of time until a law like this can go into effect," Mary Ziegler, visiting professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told NPR. Ziegler said the law may even be blocked from being enforced in the short term, but that Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma are likely counting on the Supreme Court to toss out Roe in the summer, clearing the way for such a law to take effect.

On the March morning she officially became the chair of the board of directors of the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation, Martha Minow sat on a couch in the handsomely appointed apartment of her father and remembered the past. “In the summer after my freshman year at college, I worked as a copy clerk for the Sun-Times and Daily News,” she says, talking about the building that housed both newspapers, now the site of Trump Tower. “It was fascinating, carrying papers, learning layout. I was able to write a couple of obituaries. And I met so many great people, Lois Wille among them. And I used to get coffee for Mike Royko. He was fine but I think I did hear him growl once.”

To many of the women who belong to the Harvard Black Law Students Association, the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court has felt deeply personal. Judge Jackson, an alumna of both Harvard Law School and the association, is poised to become the first Black female justice in the court’s 233-year history when the Senate votes on her confirmation as soon as Thursday. ... [Featuring: Brianna Banks, Christina Coleburn, Catherine Crevecoeur, Regina Fairfax, Gwendolyn Gissendanner, Abigail Hall, Zarinah Mustafa, Aiyanna Sanders, Virginia Thomas, Mariah K. Watson.] 

Stock-market short-termism is that rare enemy that unites left and right, management and employees, and some of the world’s biggest fund managers and consultants. On the left, “quarterly capitalism” is shorthand for venal executives and greedy shareholders abusing workers and the environment in pursuit of unsustainable profits. On the right, critics fear short-term-oriented stockholders pressure management to make dumb decisions, depressing investment and the economy. Neither is correct, as a compelling short book from Harvard Law School Professor Mark Roe shows. And that matters for public policy, lawmakers and the dominant narrative in how America’s corporations are run. There are plenty of problems, but they need different fixes.

A major presidential scandal isn’t complete without missing evidence, though Donald Trump seems to have been the first president to swallow his own words, literally. The former president had a habit of tearing drafts and signed documents into small pieces to be thrown away—or flushing them down a toilet. And there have even been reports that, on occasion, he consumed them. ... The comparisons to Richard Nixon were immediate and inevitable—but they missed a key difference: What happened in those seven hours should ultimately be knowable, at least at some level. The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe tweeted that the gap in the record made “the infamous 18-minute gap in Nixon’s tapes look like nothing in comparison.” While that brazen presidential manipulation of the historical record ultimately didn’t help Nixon stave off the collapse of his presidency—indeed it likely backfired by creating skepticism toward the president among elite Republicans after its revelation—the gap in a crucial White House tape to this day remains stubbornly difficult to fill in. By contrast, the newly reported Trumpian gap may actually be easier to fill in, and therefore less of a threat to the historical record than Nixon’s.

On March 31, Washington became the first state in the US to guarantee rideshare drivers receive a minimum wage. The bill, signed into law by governor Jay Inslee, ensures all drivers in the state will earn at least $1.17 per mile and $0.34 per minute, including a minimum pay of $3.00 per trip with benefits such as paid sick leave and workers’ compensation insurance. The new law takes effect in January 2023. ... Terri Gerstein,  director of the State and Local Enforcement Project at Harvard Law’s Labor and Worklife Program, is concerned about the precedent that this could set for other state-level governments to thwart local attempts to enact labor protections, especially in the gig economy. “Seattle has been a leader nationally in regulating gig worker companies. And now, instead of celebrating the leadership and innovation of Seattle, the state is tamping down on them,” says Gerstein. “Maybe it will be limited to this one industry, but I think people are fooling themselves if they think other industries won’t come to state legislatures with similar proposals to preempt local regulatory power.”

Back during the height of the novel coronavirus pandemic, online gaming platform and creation system Roblox (NYSE:RBLX) fit almost perfectly in the new normal. But as the global health crisis fades into the rearview mirror, investors are getting down to the financial brass tacks — putting RBLX stock in an uncomfortable light due to executive compensation information that a securities filing revealed. ... Still, other research regarding the return on investment on CEO compensation is mixed, according to Harvard Law School. “Prior studies conclude that CEOs are responsible for as little as 4 percent and as much as 36 percent of company performance. Corporate directors estimate that CEOs are responsible for 40 percent of performance.”

Amazon (AMZN) warehouse workers at a Staten Island, N.Y., facility on Friday established the first U.S. union in the company's 28-year history, delivering a blow to the e-commerce giant and intensifying a wave of labor organizing nationwide. The astonishing victory of a worker-led, crowdfunded union over the nation's second-largest employer became an immediate symbol for resurgent worker strength. But for now, a symbol is just about all that it is. ... Federal law requires employers to bargain with representatives of unionized employees in "good faith," but the penalties for violating the law are "negligible at best," said Sharon Block, a former Biden administration official and the executive director of Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program.

Two years ago, on the day Christian Smalls led a walkout demanding better Covid safety protections at his Amazon.com Inc. warehouse in New York City, the company fired him, saying he himself violated safety rules. There were some copycat protests scattered around the country shortly afterward, and the company’s public relations took a hit, but its grip on its labor relations appeared very much intact. For longtime labor advocates, Smalls’s firing seemed like one more example of a targeted dismissal that achieves its goal of scaring other workers away from organizing, even if it gets reversed. ... ALU could still fail to get any further with Amazon, and the company could prevail in the rematch slated to occur at a second Staten Island warehouse later in April. Overall U.S. unionization declined last year, despite 2021’s wave of prominent strike authorizations, mass resignations, and other organizing efforts. But Smalls’s win signals that there’s an opening for workers, one that many others are now more likely to explore. “The psychological and symbolic importance of a win can’t be overstated,” says Sharon Block, a former Obama Labor Department policy chief who now directs Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program. “The wonderful thing about the beginning of a wave is that you don’t know that it’s a wave.” —With Michael Tobin and Matt Day

Perhaps it was the way the lifeless bodies, bloodied by bullets, and some with hands bound, had been left strewn about or shoveled into makeshift mass graves. Or the reality of seeing them up close in widely circulated photographs and videos. There have been other atrocities in the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, concentrating much of its firepower on the dwellings and gathering spots of ordinary Ukrainians, but the international outrage they provoked has been eclipsed by the reaction to revelations that retreating Russian soldiers left many slain civilians behind near the Ukrainian capital. ... “What’s different here is that you have images of civilians with their hands bound and executed — that’s a completely different kind of crime,” said Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who has worked on international war crimes prosecutions. “This very much looks like a crime.”

An article co-written by Ashley Nunes: Procurement incentives are a widely leveraged policy lever to stimulate electric vehicle (EV) sales. However, their effectiveness in reducing transportation emissions depends on the behavioural characteristics of EV adopters. When an EV is used, under what conditions and by whom dictates whether or not these vehicles can deliver emissions reductions. Here, we document that replacing gasoline powered vehicles with EVs may—depending on behavioural characteristics—increase, not decrease, emissions. We further show that counterfactual vehicle inventory—how many vehicles a household would own absent an EV purchase—is an important influencer of these effects. We conclude that achieving emissions reductions using EVs requires redesigning procurement incentive programmes in a manner that (re)distributes incentives towards the second-hand EV market. Doing so would not only facilitate emissions reductions but also address fiscal prudency and regressivity concerns associated with these programmes.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday called for the prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes over the discovery in Bucha, Ukraine, of mass graves and bodies of bound civilians shot at close range, but various challenges stand in the way. ... Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, said the latest images will make the case easier to prosecute. “The question then becomes, who’s responsible and how high up does it go?” he said. Cases will be easier to build against soldiers and commanders but they can also pursue heads of state, experts said.

The nonprofit ReFED, in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC), recently updated and relaunched the Food Waste Policy Finder. This online tool provides a comprehensive database of legislative and regulatory policy at the federal, state, and local levels pertaining to food waste prevention, recovery, and recycling. Aiming to serve as an educational platform, the database highlights the role policy plays in supporting food waste reduction goals. Policymakers and advocates can find regular updates of policies, read about best practices in supporting food waste reduction goals, and search for case studies. The relaunch of the database follows the publication of the U.S. Food Loss & Waste Policy Action Plan for Congress and the Administration, which ReFED co-authored along with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and the Harvard Law School FLPC.

President Biden has called Vladimir Putin a "war criminal," and said Monday the Russian leader should face a trial over the alleged atrocities in Ukrainian city of Bucha. Yes, but: While similar calls have echoed worldwide, Putin is unlikely to be held criminally accountable, at least as long as he remains in power. The big picture: War crimes have been historically hard to investigate and often even more challenging to prosecute. This is especially true when prosecutors seek to hold leaders or former leaders accountable. For clear cases of war crimes, often the main challenges are determining who is responsible, and what evidence exists that can establish culpability, according to Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law School visiting professor and deputy specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague.

A conversation featuring Professor Laurence Tribe and Congressman Adam Schiff.

This week on Under the Radar with Callie Crossley: The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Two million people are in the nation’s prisons and jails. According to The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy center, that’s a 500% increase over the last 40 years at an annual cost of $80 billion. That reality has helped drive a movement for criminal justice reform which is now front and center in the national conversation. The cause has drawn together a motley group of advocates, from grassroots organizers to celebrities like Kim Kardashian and the conservative Koch brothers, where they are part of a roiling debate about systemic racism, reformative justice, no-knock warrants and sentencing policies. More recently, the formerly incarcerated have become major voices in the reform movement. How can their leadership help shape the effort to fix the broken system? Guests: John Valverde is the president and CEO of the global nonprofit YouthBuild USA. Dehlia Umunna is a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and the Faculty Deputy Director of the law school’s Criminal Justice Institute.

Amazon workers have voted to unionize for the first time in the company's history in the United States, securing a sweeping and unexpected victory in a National Labor Relations Board election for a group of around 8,000 workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York. Amazon Labor Union secured 2,654 "yes" votes to Amazon's 2,131 "no" votes. The union won the election with 55% of the vote, a lead of 523 votes. The union and Bloomberg both declared victory for unionization Friday morning. ... "Amazon is a corporation with massive essentially unlimited resources which it has deployed to stop workers from exercising their right to organize, and that nonetheless the workers have been able to do it. And they deserve enormous credit for that," Benjamin Sachs, a labor and industry professor at Harvard Law School, told Protocol immediately after the Staten Island victory was announced.

With a judge declaring that Donald Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony in his attempt to overturn the Presidential election, the congressional committee investigating January 6th is racing to finish its work before the looming midterm elections. Amy Davidson Sorkin and the legal scholar Jeannie Suk Gersen talk with David Remnick about the law and the politics of holding Trump accountable. Ben McGrath explores the troubled but remarkable life of Dick Conant, the subject of his new book, “Riverman: An American Odyssey.” And the music writer Sheldon Pearce shares three artists who didn’t get their due in the Grammy nominations.

Civil rights defenders on Thursday welcomed a ruling by a federal judge who struck down parts of a Florida voter suppression law, calling racism “a motivating factor” in the GOP-backed legislation’s passage. In a 288-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked provisions of Florida’s Senate Bill 90, a massive attack on voting rights signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2020. The law empowers partisan poll watchers, imposes strict voter ID requirements, criminalizes so-called “ballot harvesting,” limits ballot drop boxes, and bans advocacy groups from handing out food or water to voters waiting in long lines. ... “We’ve seen other district courts do aggressive things in election law cases, and we’ve seen a lot of those decisions get reversed by appellate courts or the Supreme Court,” Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor and election law expert, told The New York Times.” I wouldn’t be shocked if this litigation falls into that pattern.”

The decor of the Nushama Psychedelic Wellness Clinic was designed to look like bliss. "It doesn't feel like a hospital or a clinic, but more like a journey," said Jay Godfrey, the former fashion designer who co-founded the space with Richard Meloff, a lawyer turned cannabis entrepreneur. The "journey", in this instance, is brought on by ketamine, administered intravenously, as a treatment for mental health disorders, albeit one that has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). ... "There's nothing suspicious" about off-label prescription use in general, said Mason Marks, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School specialising in the regulations around psychedelics, but ketamine providers need to be careful about over-promising the drug's benefits, particularly when there's limited evidence of its efficacy.