Faculty Scholarship

In 2006, a series of coordinated uprisings in 74 detention centers and attacks on police stations and public buildings left 43 state officials and hundreds of civilians dead and brought São Paulo—South America’s largest city and financial capital—to a standstill. Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic and the leading Brazilian human rights group Justiça Global have now released a comprehensive study of the attacks.

In an op-ed published in The Huffington Post on May 5, Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz assessed the decision made by the Obama administration not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s dead body for public scrutiny. 

In the Washington Post ‘Opinions’ section on May 5, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried and his son, Suffolk University Philosophy Department Chair Gregory Fried, discussed the killing of Osama bin Laden. The authors argued that torture apologists are undermining what the pair call a “great victory” for the U.S. by calling into question the circumstances under which bin Laden was felled during the firefight in his compound in Pakistan—a “risible” notion, by the authors’ standards.

Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler ‘94 has received a Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, it was announced April 29. The award was created in recognition of the 75th Anniversary of the Ford Foundation to celebrate social innovators from a variety of fields.

HLS Lecturer on Law Juan Zarate ’97 was interviewed in the Washington Post today on national security threats after Osama bin Laden's death. From 2005 to 2009, Zarate served as the deputy assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism and was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. Government’s counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats.

In an opinion piece published in The New Republic on April 28, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy takes the stance that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 and Stephen Breyer ’64 should retire soon, suggesting that a calculated and timely exit would ensure the Democratic selection of justices who share their judicial philosophies.

Over five seasons on HBO, the show "The Wire" tackled topics such as the drug war, wiretapping, corruption, and intergenerational incarceration—all topics worthy of examination inside and outside the classroom, according to Professor Charles Ogletree '78. That is why he established a new class based on the show—“Race and Justice: The Wire”—whose curriculum includes readings and discussions on drug policy, police practices, and legal tactics.

Harvard Law School Professor Carol Steiker ’86 has been appointed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to a three-year term on the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS). The 15-member committee oversees the statewide provision of public defense services and other legal representation for indigent persons in criminal and civil court cases and proceedings in Massachusetts.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has proposed changes to its rules governing markups, commissions and fees, partly in response to a study by Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell. The study, published April 7, is titled “The Law and Finance of Broker-Dealer Mark-Ups.”

In an article published in the April 20 Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law School Professor Hal S. Scott takes a look at the overregulation of private offerings by the Securities and Exchange Commission, following a recent statement by SEC Chair Mary Schapiro that the agency is investigating ways to reduce regulatory burdens on small-business capital formation. According to Scott, this should prompt a review of the regulation of offerings in both private and public markets.

Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. One of 212 new members, Gordon-Reed joins leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts among the ranks of the Academy.

In an April 18 op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 addresses how budget cutting in Congress threatens to undermine the Special Olympics—an organization whose history, according to Alford, “is one of how civil society and government working together can create results that neither could wholly attain on its own.”

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.  

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, who serves on the board of directors for the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), was selected as co-chair of an LSC task force to develop additional resources to help low-income Americans facing serious civil legal problems.

Harvard Law School Professor Hal S. Scott, Director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, testified before the House Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 at 10am. Scott warned that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission need to make major changes in coordinating the development of new rules required under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The rules will be aimed at better regulating the derivatives market.

On March 31, Professor Henry Smith delivered his Chair Lecture in honor of his appointment as Fessenden Professor of Law. His lecture, entitled Equity Revisited, explored the relationship between law and equity. He examined, through the lens of economic analysis, equity as a solution to opportunism on the part of those who exploit bright-line law, with a focus on equitable maxims, defenses, and remedies.

In an open letter published recently in The New York Review of Books, Harvard Law School Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 and co-author Bruce Ackerman, professor at Yale Law School, detail the detention of Bradley Manning, a US soldier charged with providing government documents to Wikileaks, and call on President Obama and the Pentagon to document grounds for what the authors describe as “illegal and immoral” confinement.

In an Apr. 4 op-ed published in The Boston Globe’s Opinion Blog “The Angle,” Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and co-author John Broderick (dean and president of the University of New Hampshire School of Law) address impending Congressional budget cuts that would force programs that provide pro bono legal aid to close their doors.