Alumni Focus

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that there are no second acts in American lives. But clearly, he never met Samantha Power '99, who, after eight years in the White House, has returned to Harvard as the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at HKS and professor of practice at HLS.

The Harvard Law School Library uniquely owns and manages approximately one million pages of documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials: thirteen trials conducted just after World War II to prosecute leaders of the Nazi regime. To preserve the contents of these documents—which include trial transcripts and full trial exhibits—the library has undertaken a multi-stage digitization project to make the collection freely accessible online.

Bryan Stevenson has battled through the courts, defending the wrongly convicted and children prosecuted as adults, while condemning mass incarceration and racial bias in the criminal justice system; now, he is embarking on a fight to start a national conversation about the painful legacy of slavery, which he says “continues to haunt us today.”

Louis W. Fisher '16 has been selected as the inaugural Harvard Law Review Public Interest Fellow. He will spend a year working at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and will have the opportunity to have a piece relating to his work considered for publication in the Law Review’s online Forum.

Sarah Benzidi LL.M. ’17 has been named the national winner of the inaugural NYBSA/ACCTM National Championship Alternative Dispute Resolution Law Student Writing Competition. Benzidi received her award and $10,000 prize at a ceremony in New York on Oct. 26.

With jokes, songs and, yes, real talent, the annual Parody show has brought the HLS community together in laughter for more than 50 years.

A room that was meant to offer a respite from the rigors of the Harvard Law School curriculum became a portal to exploring some of the most important issues in American law.

Since April 1948, when the inaugural eight-page issue of the Harvard Law School Bulletin was sent to all graduates, the Bulletin has been covering the school, its students and—in more recent years—its alumni.

In September, as part of its bicentennial program, Harvard Law School celebrated the arts with a two-day festival featuring the work of alumni, staff, faculty and students.

During a late-night outdoor screening of “The Paper Chase,” a raucous audience of HLS students and faculty called out the lines “Rocky Horror Picture Show”-style. That evening, the story seemed to have a leavening effect.

The tradition of HLS graduates in the House of Representatives goes back to the mid-19th century. On Oct. 27, during Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit, the panel “HLS in the House’” gathered five graduates currently or formerly in the House.

Panelists at an HLS in the World seminar called “No Justice for Most: Brainstorming New and Old Ideas for Government, Professional, and Technological Solutions,” discussed the disparity in legal services available in urban and rural areas and other barriers to access to justice.

As part of Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit, a panel, “Special Prosecutors and Independent Counsels: Investigating the White House and the President of the United States,” gathered six Harvard alumni and faculty members who’ve been involved with nearly every high-profile investigation, from Watergate to Whitewater, to the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity.

“The Remarkable Evolution of American Environmental Law from Nixon to Trump and Beyond” panel during Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit focused on the uncertain future of the Environmental Protection Agency in the current administration. Panelists A. James Barnes ’67, Richard J. Lazarus ‘79, William Reilly ’65 and Gina McCarthy looked at the EPA’s distinguished history.

"A World (Dis)order," a panel with national security experts exploring the vulnerabilities of globalization and a changing world touched issues including climate change, cybersecurity, North Korea, ISIS, populism and authoritarianism.

As part of Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit, former Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch ’84 and Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 looked back on their time together at Harvard Law School and discussed their subsequent careers.

Executives representing the three most popular major sports leagues in the U.S. offered insights into the business and legal maneuvering behind the games, during the HLS 200 panel “A View from the Top.”

Ambassador Samantha Power ’99 and Yale Law School Professor Harold Koh ’80 discussed what it means to be professors and former government officials, as part of Harvard Law School's bicentennial celebration on Oct 27.

At a time when American politics are beset by deep divisions and regular paralysis, five U.S. senators--Tim Kaine, Jack Reed, Mark Warner, Tom Cotton, and Elizabeth Warren--told a Harvard Law School audience Friday that there is real reason for concern, yet some hope for their institution and the country.

Laurence H. Tribe ’66 and Kathleen Sullivan ’81 have teamed up on many cases since she was a student in his constitutional law class; now, for the first time, they will face off as adversaries in a reargument of the landmark case Marbury v. Madison, part of the Harvard Law School bicentennial celebration on Oct. 27.

On Sept. 19, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society hosted a public lunch talk with Monika Bickert, the Head of Global Policy Management at Facebook.