Faculty Scholarship

With a little help from your friends: Amicus briefs are meant to offer judges some extra information. But is amicus practice getting out of hand?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer '64 talks with the Bulletin in chambers.

In "Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways" (W. W. Norton, 2006), Professor Alan M. Dershowitz examines America's increasing reliance on pre-emptive action to control destructive conduct, and discusses the implications for civil liberties, human rights, criminal justice, national security and foreign policy.

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s opponents have seized upon two memorandums he wrote when he was a junior lawyer in the office of the solicitor general....

Today, approximately 80 private and public sector financial leaders will meet in Armonk, N.Y. to discuss issues affecting the future of the financial relationship between the EU and the U.S. The fourth annual "Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century: An Agenda for Europe and the United States" is sponsored by HLS's Program on International Financial Systems, along with the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Lucian Bebchuk, director of HLS's Program on Corporate Governance, was named as one of this year's "100 most influential people in finance" by Treasury and Risk Management magazine. The list recognizes leaders in corporate finance, ranging from CEOs to regulators to academics.

When Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor left the bench last year, conservatives were in an anxious mood: though pleased at the prospect of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, they were worried by the record of past Republican appointments. The refrain in conservative commentary, repeated with special intensity during the Harriet Miers affair, was: Not another Souter. Not another Kennedy. Not another O’Connor.

Professor Charles Fried writes: I am convinced of the urgent necessity of such a surveillance program. I suppose but do not know -- the revelations have been understandably and deliberately vague -- that included in what is done is a constant computerized scan of all international electronic communications.

When it comes to Supreme Court nominees, conservatives are in agreement: Situation matters. Pundits on the right shouted down Harriet E. Miers over concerns that her evangelical backbone would whither under Washington winds. Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. stepped into her spot seeming of far more stalwart vertebrae, but as his backers have stressed recently, he is a creature of situation as well.

On December 6, an international panel of experts will gather to discuss the current state of corporate governance in the global marketplace. The discussion will focus on particular hypothetical situations related to recent problems involving investor trust and corporate scandals.

Professor Lucian Bebchuk, director of the HLS Program on Corporate Governance, recently delivered the John R. Raben Fellowship Lecture at Yale University. The lecture was based on a working paper titled "The Myth of the Shareholder Franchise," in which Bebchuk argues that shareholders rarely, if ever, successfully vote to replace the board of a public company.

Professor Mary Ann Glendon has been named a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. She will be presented with the award tomorrow at an Oval Office ceremony with President Bush. Glendon is among a small number of Americans to receive the humanities medal this year, which was revealed yesterday in conjunction with the announcement of the National Medal of Arts recipients.

Professor Charles Fried writes: What is indispensable is that [Miers] be able to think lucidly and deeply about legal questions and express her thoughts in clear, pointed, understandable prose. A justice without those capabilities -- however generally intelligent, decent, and hardworking -- risks being a calamity for the court, the law, and the country.

Professor Mary Ann Glendon writes: At first glance, it is hard to see why these side-glances at what other countries do have provoked such alarm. True, the references have increased somewhat, but they remain rare, and no one suggests that the court has directly based any of its interpretations of the Constitution on foreign authority.

Today, Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify in support of chief justice nominee John Roberts, a member of the class of '79, regarding Roberts' qualifications for the position. In his service as the chair of the practitioners’ reading committee, Fried examined Roberts' previous decisions to evaluate Roberts for the Standing Committee on the Judiciary of the American Bar Association.

“People are rightly concerned that [the Supreme Court decision, in Kelo v. City of New London] will give cities license to take private homes just…

The following op-ed by Assistant Professor Jed Shugerman, Revisiting the Senate's 'nuclear' option, originally appeared in The Boston Globe on September 12, 2005: A second opening on the Supreme Court raises the stakes for the Senate hearings and doubles the chances of the Senate going "nuclear": The Senate Democrats filibuster, the Republicans vote to change the rules for closing debate, and the Democrats grind the Senate to a halt.