Harvard Federalist Society

For Trenton Van Oss ’17, coming to Harvard Law School meant adapting to a different culture and experience as a student who had been educated at Christian schools, and whose strong allegiance to the GOP put him in a distinct minority at a secular school with a predominantly liberal student body and faculty.

In March, University of San Diego Law School Professor Lawrence Alexander visited HLS to deliver a talk titled "Law and Politics: What is their relation?" as part the Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture Series and Academic Panel, co-sponsored by the HLS Federalist Society.

In a debate hosted by the Harvard Federalist Society, two constitutional scholars—Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe and Professor Jack Balkin of Yale Law School—debated whether Cruz’s birth in Calgary, Alberta, to a Cuban father and an American mother disqualifies him to serve as president.

Mitt Romney ’75, former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee, visiting Harvard Law School (HLS) for a QandA session hosted by Dean Martha Minow, encouraged a renewed civility in politics and society, emphasizing the difference one person can make through serving others.

SCOTUS Blog co-founder and Tom Goldstein, visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School, joined HLS Professor Charles Fried last week in discussing the Court's current docket at an event co-sponsored by the Harvard Law chapters of the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the Federalist Society.

Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk '02 received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award from the Harvard Federalist Society in April. The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of that professor's ideological leanings or favored theories of jurisprudence.

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, the Harvard Federalist Society and the Harvard Black Law Students Association co-sponsored a discussion about race and redistricting with Dr. Abigail Thernstrom of the Manhattan Institute and Professor Randall Kennedy, the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

On Feb. 1, the Harvard Law School Federalist Society sponsored a debate on the philosophical and legal issues surrounding the field of embryonic research. The event, “Embryo Ethics and the Law,” featured Christopher Tollefsen, a philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina, and HLS Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen, co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Eugene Volokh, professor at UCLA School of Law, well known to some law students for his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, gave a lecture on slippery slope arguments at an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School Federalist Society on September 20th.  He was joined by Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, who provided a response.

The Federalist Society and the Journal of Law & Public Policy will present the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award to Professor Jed Shugerman at the Federalist Society’s annual banquet on April 14th.  

Debating what Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow called “one of the most important public policy issues and one of the most important constitutional issues,” three law professors offered different perspectives on whether the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) violates the commerce clause of the Constitution and infringes on personal liberties.

With the fall elections, Republicans now control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Conservative thinkers are influencing policy and law across the nation.

Twenty years ago, the Federalist Society was founded to change the way people think about the law. It has done its job well, say members of a new HLS student organization that champions liberal values in the law.