Faculty Scholarship

The American Law and Economics Association announced at its annual meeting on May 17 that Professor Steven Shavell will be the 2014 recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Medal. Shavell is the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics and director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business at Harvard Law School.

In the May 21 edition of The New York Times’ ‘Room for Debate,’ Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried considers the question of whether the Obama administration’s actions against journalists in leak inquiries has protected national security or violated the First Amendment.

In April, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, a specialist in constitutional law and theory, was interviewed by his colleague and former collaborator Vicki Jackson on the new book “Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law” (Routledge 2012). Tushnet co-edited the book with Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Saunders.

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.

In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. When a spot opened up on CPCS's Youth Advocacy Project, Tan switched to working on juvenile cases and has spent her career doing so ever since. Tan was sworn in on May 3rd.

John F. Manning ’85, the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard, and an expert in administrative law, statutory interpretation, separation of powers law and the federal courts, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In the wake of Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings, experts across Harvard University analyzed the puzzle and potential of the attack’s aftermath.

As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea earlier this year. “One of the major messages of the Special Olympics is that having a disability need not be seen as being as limiting or disqualifying as some people might assume,” says Alford, director of East Asian Legal Studies and chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD).

On March 14, the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Society presented its annual Horizon award to Bruce Babbitt ’65, who previously served as secretary of the interior and governor of Arizona.The award is a means of recognizing great people who have accomplished great things in the field of environment and natural resources law, and to provide a forum in which to discuss those achievements.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, I. Glenn Cohen, a leading expert on the intersection of health care, bioethics and the law, will be promoted from assistant professor to tenured professor of law, effective July 1. Cohen has served as an assistant professor since 2008, and as co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics since 2009.

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Ashley Stein ’88 was awarded the 2013 Viscardi Award, which honors people living with disabilities for their work and influence in the global disability community.

More than 100 legal scholars gathered in Geneva, Switzerland for the Geneva-Harvard-Renmin-Sydney Law Faculty Conference, a three-day event that brought together faculty from Harvard Law School, the University of Geneva, Renmin Law School (China), and Sydney Law School (Australia) to explore property law in its many dimensions.

Lawrence Lessig, director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, remembered the late Internet luminary and social activist Aaron Swartz during remarks that were part moving eulogy and part urgent call to curb “extremism in prosecuting computer laws.” Lessig addressed a capacity crowd in Austin Hall on Feb. 19 at Harvard Law School in a lecture titled “Aaron’s Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age.” The talk marked Lessig’s appointment as Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at the School.

In commemoration of Black History Month, Harvard Law School Professors Lani Guinier and Charles Ogletree ’78 were recognized by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education as two of 28 noteworthy African-Americans who have contributed to the “world of words.”

On Tuesday, Feb. 19, Lawrence Lessig marked his appointment as Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School with a lecture titled "Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age." The lecture honored the memory and work of Aaron Swartz, the programmer and activist who took his own life on Jan. 11, 2013 at the age of 26. Swartz spent the last two years fighting federal charges that he violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.