Themes
Alumni Focus
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A Starring Role
May 10, 2016
In last year’s Academy Award-nominated film “Bridge of Spies,” Tom Hanks plays a lawyer who defends an accused Soviet spy in the U.S. The Hanks character appears to be dumbfounded that he has been asked to take on such an assignment. “I’m an insurance lawyer,” he says. The real lawyer whom Hanks portrays, James B. Donovan ’40, was that—and much more.
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A Senior Rookie
May 10, 2016
Bert Rein '64 came to Supreme Court advocacy later in life and has focused on litigation challenging race-based protections.
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He Was Not a Crook
May 10, 2016
When he was a student at HLS, a friend made Geoff Shepard ’69 a campaign button that said “Nixon Shepard,” representing Shepard’s enthusiasm for the presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon and his hope that he would join Nixon in the White House. Shepard still has the button today and is still advocating for the president he served and defended.
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A Mensch on the Bench
May 10, 2016
A judicial temperament involves many qualities. For Merrick Garland, patience is one of them.
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Seizing the Opportunity
April 28, 2016
Since graduating from Harvard College in 1985 and then getting his law degree, Alan Jenkins '89 had been on a career fast track, but he felt frustrated about the forces of injustice and inequality he saw around him.
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Uniting in Diversity
April 8, 2016
President of the European Court of Justice Koen Lenaerts LL.M. ’78 keeps a photo engraving of Austin Hall in his home office in Leuven, Belgium. The image reminds him of the course he took from then HLS Professor Stephen Breyer ’64 (a 2L named John G. Roberts was also in the class), his LL.M. thesis with Duncan Kennedy, and hours spent perusing newspapers from around the world at Out of Town News in the Square. HLS is also now the alma mater of one of his six daughters.
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Former national security adviser Juan Zarate on money laundering in real estate industry
April 4, 2016
Harvard Law School Visiting Lecturer Juan Carlos Zarate ’97, a former deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury for terrorist financing and financial crimes, recently spoke with The Harvard Gazette about the problem of money-laundering in the real estate industry—the scope of it, and what new oversight might portend.
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Star Negotiator: Law School event highlights James B. Donovan, alum at center of Cold War drama
March 30, 2016
How can you defend a foreigner who came to the United States with the likely intent of causing harm to Americans? For attorney James B. Donovan, a 1940 graduate of Harvard Law School, the real question at the height of the Cold War was: How can you not?
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Counsel from a councilor: An interview with Michelle Wu ’12
March 23, 2016
Earlier this year, Michelle Wu '12 was elected president of the Boston City Council, making her the first Asian American to hold that role. Wu recently spoke with Harvard Law Today about her time at HLS, her experience as a woman in politics, and vision for her new role on the Boston City Council.
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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.”
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At HLS symposium, military and academic leaders explain legal and cultural issues in counterterror operations
March 11, 2016
Harvard Law School hosted the first-ever Legal, Cultural and Strategic Issues in Counterterror Operations Symposium bringing together military officers from the 3rd Legal Operations Detachment and academic scholars whose work focuses on areas of Islamic and human rights law as well as on cultural and international security issues.
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On Feb. 24, a panel of Harvard Law School professors, all of whom had personal or professional connections to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, gathered to remember his life and work.
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A Writer in the Spotlight
February 29, 2016
Being an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter was not something Josh Singer '01 expected when he was at Harvard Law School.
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Inside baseball: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred ’83 on rules, rulings and marketing ‘the American pastime’
February 4, 2016
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred '83 recently spoke with Harvard Law Today reporter Jonathan Topaz ’18 about his time at HLS and some pressing issues facing the MLB.
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During HLS visit, Attorney General Lynch makes the case for criminal justice reform
January 19, 2016
In a recent talk at Harvard Law School, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch ’81, J.D. ’84 discussed criminal-justice reform “a transformative issue of our generation.”
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Jorge Gonzalez S.J.D ’13: A career shaped by interdisciplinary and global perspectives
January 6, 2016
Inspired by the interdisciplinary approach so many at Harvard Law School brought to studying law, Jorge Gonzalez S.J.D '13 is deploying that same approach in his own teaching and curricular development, translation work, and research.
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At HLS, DOJ’s top national security lawyer discusses U.S. vulnerability to cyberterrorism
December 8, 2015
John P. Carlin ’99, assistant attorney general for National Security, spoke last week at Harvard Law School on the National Security Cyber Threat, at an event hosted by the Harvard National Security Journal.
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Panel on ‘Spotlight’ film explores priest sex abuse scandal, institutional cover-up and advocacy for victims
December 1, 2015
A recent panel discussion of the movie "Spotlight" at Harvard Law School touched on legal issues, secrets and shame, and even a potential lawsuit against the filmmakers.
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The plight of the Roma: Activists press to end centuries of European discrimination
November 25, 2015
Taking a leaf out of the American Civil Rights Movement’s book, Roma rights activists undertook a legal battle in European courts to challenge the pervasive discrimination that has kept them living on the fringes of society.
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In Scalia lecture, Kagan discusses statutory interpretation
November 25, 2015
On Nov. 17, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Elena Kagan ’86, former dean of Harvard Law School, discussed statutory interpretation in a conversation with Professor John Manning ’85 as part of the Scalia lecture series at Harvard Law School.