Faculty Scholarship

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?

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ’65 will testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on November 6 regarding the “Human Rights of Unparented Children and International Adoption Policies” in the Americas. The hearing comes after a request made by the HLS Child Advocacy Program (CAP) and the Center for Adoption Policy.

 HLS Professor John Coates'  article “A costly lesson in the rule of ‘loser pays’ appeared in the Nov. 1, 2009, edition of The Financial Times. On September 3, Coates joined more than 20 other corporate law and finance professors in filing an amici curiae brief in the case of Jones et al. v. Harris Associates, now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

David Wilkins, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law and director of the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard LawSchool, was selected to receive the first-ever J. Clay Smith Award from Howard University School of Law.  A member of the Harvard Law School faculty since 1986, Wilkins specializes in studying the structures, norms, and practices of the legal profession, as well as legal ethics.

GQ Magazine recently named HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren to its 2009 list of the “50 Most Powerful People in D.C.”  Placing her at number 30, GQ recognized her for her role as the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

In the three-day Holmes Lecture entitled “Dignity and Defamation: The Visibility of Hate” at Harvard Law School this October, New York University Professor Jeremy Waldron argued for the regulation of hate speech to reinforce society’s collective commitment to uphold one another’s personal dignity.

On Oct. 14, HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren, an expert on consumer and bankruptcy law, received the 2009 Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. The Robinson Award, named after the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts bar, recognizes women who are engaged in groundbreaking work in the legal profession, and who have served as mentors and role models for other female attorneys.

On Saturday, October 10, 2009, Professors Mark Roe ’75 and Michael Klarman were inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This year the academy, an honorary society of scholars and an independent policy research center, selected 210 new members for “pre-eminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large.”

Ashish Nanda, Robert Braucher Professor of Practice at HLS, wrote “Lawyers should be recruited like doctors,” an op-ed that appeared in the October 13, 2009, issue of The American Lawyer. Nanda is the faculty director of executive education, and research director at the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School.

This op-ed co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and Holger Spamann, “Reducing incentives for risk-taking,” appeared in the October 12, 2009, edition of the New York Times. Bebchuk is a professor of law, economics and finance and director of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, and Spamann is co-executive director and a fellow of the HLS corporate governance program. Their op-ed builds on their joint paper, “Regulating Bankers’ Pay.”

Camp Julien is surrounded by reminders of Afghanistan’s past. The coalition military base--which sits in the hills south of Kabul, just high enough to rise above the thick cloud of smog that perpetually blankets the city--is flanked by two European-style palaces built in the 1920s by the modernizing King Amanullah. Home to Soviet troops and mujahedin during the past decades of war, the now-crumbling palaces are littered with bullet holes and decorated with graffiti in multiple languages. Uphill from Julien is the old Russian officers’ club, dating from the Soviet invasion and featuring a recently refilled swimming pool that overlooks the southern half of the city. The pool is said to have been the site of executions in the 1990s; the condemned were apparently shot off the diving board.

The family stories of black Americans and the findings of population geneticists make clear that Michelle Obama’s family history is far from unique. The vast majority of black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in North America have some degree of mixed ancestry.



A group of Harvard Law School professors gathered on Sept. 29 for a panel discussion on the year-old global economic crisis and the prospects for recovery. 


The op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, entitled “Unblocking corporate governance reform,” appeared in Project Syndicate. This op-ed is the most recent installment of Bebchuk’s commentary, which he offers monthly in a series of columns entitled “The rules of the game.”

Harvard Law School Professor John Palfrey ’01 will testify before the House subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security today regarding two pieces of legislation designed to address cyberbullying and other online safety issues for children. A live webcast of the testimony will be available beginning at 3 p.m.

The following column by Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott,“Regulatory reform needs rethink,” appeared in the Sept. 21, 2009, edition of Financial News Online. Scott is the Nomura Professor of International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School and the director of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation and Harvard Law School’s Program on International Financial Systems.

Two Nobel Prize-winning economists—Harvard Professor Amartya Sen and Michael Spence—joined development expert Clotilde Fonseca, and HLS Professor Yochai Benkler ’94, co-director of the HLS Berkman Center for Internet & Society, for a discussion of the role of information and communication technologies in human development, growth and poverty reduction.

The resilience of the U.S. Constitution, the nation’s founding document, was put to the test Sept. 17 by a number of scholars who challenged its legacy and effectiveness.

On Sept. 3, four HLS professors joined more than 20 other corporate law and finance professors and scholars in an amici curiae brief filed in the case of Jones et al. v. Harris Associates, now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.