Supreme Court

Harvard Law Professor Carol Steiker ’86 discusses Furman v. Georgia, a 1972 landmark Supreme Court decision that declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

Ayesha Malik LL.M. ’99 has used her position, inside and outside the courtroom, to advocate for women in the legal system. “This is not a burden,” she says. “This is my calling.”

Retired United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer ’64 is returning to Harvard Law School, where he will teach seminars and reading groups, write, and produce scholarship.

In this installment of “Cases in Brief,” Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus ’79 discusses the landmark citizen-suit case, Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), which hindered the ability to bring environmental citizen suits for much of the 1990s.

To retain the public’s trust, Justice Breyer argued, changes should come not from political reform, but in recommitment to ideals within the Court itself and in the American people.

President Donald Trump taps alumni for White House and agency hires

Neil M. Gorsuch, a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, was sworn in today as the 113th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Neil M. Gorsuch, a 1991 graduate of Harvard Law School, is President Donald Trump’s pick as the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Gorsuch currently serves as judge on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. President George W. Bush nominated him to that court in 2006.

Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen, faculty director of the School's Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics spoke with the Harvard Gazette about Monday's ruling by the Supreme Court that overturned a Texas law requiring that abortion clinics maintain hospital-like standards at their facilities as well as admitting privileges at local hospitals.

Merrick Garland ’77—President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court—has been very much involved in the life of Harvard Law School since receiving his degree from HLS nearly four decades ago. Dean Martha Minow described as “an outstanding, meticulous, and thoughtful judge with a superb career of public service.”

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer ’64 visited Harvard Law School on Jan. 25 to discuss his new book, “The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities.” Breyer, who taught at HLS from 1967 to 1994, spoke about his analysis of U.S. courts’ role in an increasingly globalized world.

During a conversation Thursday with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow at Wasserstein Hall, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy LL.B. '61 addressed a wide variety of topics, including the American criminal justice system, teaching law abroad, and his opinion on being described as the high court's swing vote on major issues.

Sept. 29 of this year marked the 10th anniversary of the day Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ’79 took his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

At a September 15 event sponsored by the Harvard Law School Dean's Office, Greg Stohr '95, Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News, gave a talk to students, staff and faculty about how the public's understanding of legal news and developments has changed over his 17 years of reporting on the nation's highest court.

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the Radcliffe Medal on Friday, May 29. Since the 1970s, Ginsburg has constantly sought to break down traditional male/female stereotypes “that held women back from doing what their talents would allow them to do.”

John Coates argues that extending speech protections to corporations is bad—not just for democracy but for capitalism.

Daphna Renan, a scholar of administrative governance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in July.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court kicked off its line of “right to privacy” cases with Griswold v. Connecticut, which declared unconstitutional a state statute prohibiting couples from using contraceptives, a panel of three Harvard Law professors met to discuss the impact and legacy of the landmark case.

Last week, the nine justices of the Supreme Court peppered Tom Goldstein, veteran of 35 oral arguments before the Court and a cofounder of SCOTUSblog, with nearly 75 questions in 30 minutes – questions he was able to answer with the help of seven Harvard Law students who spent their January term working around the clock to research, write and edit the entire respondents’ brief in City of Los Angeles v. Patel.

On November 12, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman delivered a talk, “James Madison and Felix Frankfurter: Friends, Enemies, and the Meaning of the Constitution,” on the occasion of his appointment as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law.

Laurence Tribe discusses some of the implications of the decisions of nine men and women with regard to gay marriage, gun rights, N.S.A. surveillance, health care, emerging threats to privacy, immigration and more.

Do recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on class actions mean less security in numbers?

Credit: Martha Stewart [L-R] The Hon. Adalberto Jordan, U.S. Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit; the Hon. Antonin Scalia ’60, associate justice of the Supreme Court…

The final round of Harvard Law School's annual Ames Moot Court competition was held this year on November 18, and was presided over by the Hon. Antonin Scalia ’60, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; the Hon. Adalberto Jordan, U.S. Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit; and the Hon. Patricia Millett ’88, U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

In a discussion on the EPA's proposed regulations on power-plant emissions, HLS Professors Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman said that the proposed rules have the potential to both transform the national energy scene and invigorate international climate-change negotiations.

In an entertaining talk in HLS’s Wasserstein Hall with Dean Martha Minow on Wednesday, Associate Justice Elena Kagan '86 displayed her trademark wit and wisdom, honed during her years as a Harvard Law School student, professor, and dean, her work with the Clinton administration, and her stint as solicitor general.

Margaret H. Marshall, Harvard Law School senior research fellow and lecturer on law, will receive the American Bar Association’s 2014 Thurgood Marshall Award. A retired chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Marshall is being recognized for her long-term contributions to advancing civil rights, civil liberties and human rights in the United States.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that closely held, for-profit corporations have a right to exercise the religious beliefs of their owners and therefore cannot be required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide contraception coverage to employees if it conflicts with those views. The Gazette spoke with Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet  about the decision and what it means for future corporate challenges to the Affordable Care Act.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, upholding Michigan’s ban on the use of race in university admissions, Harvard Law School Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin appeared on MSNBC’s “Last Word” to discuss the divide in the Supreme Court’s on race.

Just days after the Supreme Court decided McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down aggregate limits on individual campaign contributions, U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes ’88 (D-Md.) delivered a keynote address at a Harvard Law School symposium on proposed legislation to reform campaign finance and dilute the influence of major donors.

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down aggregate campaign contribution limits, in a ruling that frees individuals to donate to as many candidates as they wish. Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the ruling, and what it means for elections and for the future of campaign-finance reform.

For the past several years, Harvard Law School students have spent their break time between semesters in Washington, D.C., parsing reams of heady data and crafting nuanced legal arguments to cases headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Harvard Law School Professor Benjamin Sachs, a labor law specialist who focuses on unions in politics, sat down with a reporter for the HLS News office to reflect on the Supreme Court's increased involvement in labor cases and the state of labor law today.

Randall Kennedy has tackled plenty of controversial issues in his five previous books, ranging from interracial marriage to the intersection of race, crime and the law. The Harvard Law professor comes to the defense of affirmative action in his latest book, “For Discrimination.” In an interview with the Bulletin, Kennedy described his own evolution on the issue and the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which was announced after his book went to print.

However much presidents want to influence the future through their judicial appointments, the problem, Professor Mark Tushnet writes in his new book, “In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court” (Norton, 2013), “is that things change.”

With more and more people deeply concerned about what they’re eating and what it means for our health, the economy, the environment, social justice, and even national security, Harvard Law School has created a new focus on food law.

The Harvard Gazette recently spoke with Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet about two upcoming challenges to the Affordable Care Act involving for-profit companies that object on religious grounds to providing contraceptive coverage to their employees.

On Oct. 23, Professor Kenneth Mack ‘91 delivered a lecture at the Supreme Court as part of the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2013 Leon Silverman Lecture Series. This year’s theme was “Litigants in landmark Supreme Court cases of the 20th century.”

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman will give a Master Class on the 1927 Supreme Court Ruling Buck v. Bell on Oct. 9, at an event sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. The lecture will be streamed live from the Barker Center, Room 110, Harvard University beginning at 6:00 p.m.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his appointment to the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer visited Harvard Law School on Oct. 1 for an informal chat with HLS Dean Martha Minow, and later took part in a panel discussion with several HLS professors who examined his tenure and some of his most notable opinions.

During a Sept. 26 discussion at Harvard Law School, moderated by Dean Martha Minow, four of the School’s constitutional experts offered their thoughts on a trio of critical U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action.

“The Morphine Dream,” by Donald L. Brown ’89, with Gary S. Chafetz (Bettie Youngs Books). The title of this memoir is literal—and relates to Harvard Law School. While on morphine, recovering from an operation meant to restore his ability to walk after an accident, the author imagined he would graduate from the school. And walk across the country. His doctor thought he was delirious. After all, Brown had few prospects and only a ninth-grade education. But the dream did indeed come true; he tells the story of his long walk both literal and metaphorical.

Rachel Brand ’98 is leading the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s campaign to roll back government regulations while also serving as a charter member of a government Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

When you next have a free moment online, visit the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite, launched by the Harvard Law School Library early…

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.

In October, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice sponsored a two-day conference looking back at Cooper v. Aaron and the impact it’s had on law and education over the course of 55 years. The event brought together legal scholars, students, and civil-rights lawyers and featured a moot-court proceeding involving U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and nine appellate judges, to revisit the legal questions raised by Cooper.

“Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities,” by Marjorie Corman Aaron ’81 (Oxford). No one likes to deliver bad news—attorneys included. But oftentimes providing honest and difficult advice is a crucial part of the job, and Aaron offers her own advice on how best to do it.