Faculty Scholarship

Since U.S. forces started taking alleged terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of crafting American detention policy has migrated decisively from the executive branch to federal judges. These judges, not experts in terrorism or national security and not politically accountable to the electorate, inherited this responsibility because of the Supreme Court's intervention in detention policy. Over time they maintained it because legislative and executive officials of both political parties refused to craft a comprehensive legislative approach to this novel set of problems that cries out for decisive lawmaking.

HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren was named the “Bostonian of the Year” for 2009 by the Boston Globe. The annual award, which recognizes people who have made the greatest impact on the region, was awarded to Warren for her role as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Professor Mark Roe's op-ed entitled “End bankruptcy priority for derivatives, repos and swaps,” appeared in the Dec. 16, 2009, edition of the Financial Times.

In their book,“No Place to Hide: Gang, State, and Clandestine Violence in El Salvador” (Harvard University Press, 2009), Clinical Professor James Cavallaro and Spring…

Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott's op-ed, “Do we really need a systemic regulator?” appeared in the December 11, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal.

HLS Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren discussed the future of the foreclosure crisis in the United States and what should be done to improve the current situation on a National Public Radio program that aired December 9.

To prevent domestic violence, do we now overregulate the home? A scholar raises some provocative questions.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain's op-ed, “Work the new digital sweatshops,” appeared in the December 8, 2009, edition of Newsweek Magazine.

The op-ed, “Bankers had cashed in before the music stopped,” was co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, Visiting Professor Alma Cohen, and Lecturer on Law Holger Spamann S.J.D. ’09. It appeared in the December 7, 2009, edition of the Financial Times.

HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren's op-ed entitled “America without a Middle Class,”  appeared in the Dec. 2, 2009 edition of The Huffington Post. Warren is chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

This op-ed by Harvard Law School Professors Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D ’84. and Jesse Fried, entitled “Taming the Stock Option Game,” appeared in the November 2009 edition of Project Syndicate. This article builds on their study “Equity Compensation for Long-term Performance.” Bebchuk and Fried are co-authors of “Pay without Performance: The Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation.”

This year's outbreak of the H1N1 influenza has demonstrated that contagions know few boundaries and spread wherever they can find an available host. Likewise, because of their broad jurisdictional rules, U.S. courts can be easy targets for "forum shopping" by foreign plaintiffs seeking redress against American companies for torts they claim have taken place abroad.

Milton Hershey had no children so he said he would make the “orphan boys of the United States” his heirs.To that end, the chocolatier founded the Milton Hershey School, which today serves 1,700 underprivileged children and has an endowment of $6.2 billion. In 2005, Hershey had the nation’s fifth largest endowment, which was about half the size of Princeton’s and Stanford’s but larger than that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow was honored at the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC) on November 13, along with Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, and the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials.

HLS Professor David Kennedy ’80, Faculty Director of the new Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School, co-chaired a major conference on financial regulation in China on October 29 and 30, at Peking University in Beijing. 

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, the Massachusetts Association of Women Lawyers and the Women’s Bar Association have recognized Professor Deborah Anker, LL.M. ’84, one of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of immigration law, as a 2009 Woman of Justice.

Harvard Law School Professor Robert Sitkoff has been reappointed to serve a new five-year term on the Uniform Law Commission by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Sitkoff is one of three commissioners representing the Commonwealth.  He has served as an interim commissioner since March of 2008.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor Jed Shugerman has received the prestigious American Society for Legal History Cromwell Prize for his Ph.D. dissertation, “The People’s Courts: The Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial Power in America.” The award was presented at the Society’s annual conference this past weekend.

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried will serve as one of two Republican co-chairs of a new bi-partisan ABA Administrative Law Section task force examining possible improvements to lobbying regulation. The task force will look at deficiencies in current rules governing lobbying and suggest ways to strengthen the rules.

A year after the United States government allowed the investment bank Lehman Brothers to fail but then bailed out AIG, and after governments around the world bailed out many other banks, key question remains: when and how should authorities rescue financial institutions?