Student Spotlights

On an early morning in January, eight upper-year Harvard Law School students landed on the lone runway at the sleepy international airport in Lesotho where they were warmly welcomed by officials from the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (“MCC”), an innovative U.S. government foreign assistance agency.

Last month, Andrew Childers ’11 received a 2011 Law Student Ethics Award from the Association of Corporate Counsel—Northeast Chapter. Childers and 10 other students from area law schools were lauded for upholding the highest ethical standards of the legal profession as student lawyers.

Last month, Joseph G. Phillips ’12 and Joanne Box LL.M. ’11, students in the HLS International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), attended a U.N. disarmament conference, where they met with diplomats to urge adoption of stronger international laws regarding the use of incendiary weapons. The students worked under the supervision of HLS Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01, who is one of the country’s leading legal experts on cluster munitions and has expanded her work to other disarmament issues, including incendiary weapons.

Harvard Law School student Emily Inouye ’11 and alumna Cynthia Chandler ’95 have each received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award for their commitment to public interest and social justice work.

A Harvard Law School student appeared before the First Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday as the lead lawyer in an illegal downloading and sharing lawsuit brought against a Boston University student by the music recording industry. This is the first case of its kind to reach the federal appellate level.

After countless hours of interviewing their client, digging through documents and working with experts to prepare for two court hearings, students in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic got what they were after: a grant of asylum.

For the third year in a row, Harvard Law School has won the Northeast Black Law Students Association’s Trial Advocacy competition. HLS sent two teams to the competition this year, and, for the second consecutive year, HLS took both first and second place.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Mitchell Reich ’12 as its 125th president.

In his first tour of duty in Iraq, in 2007, Marine Capt. Courtney Walsh LLM ’11 was one of two defense attorneys who represented Marines in Al Anbar Province charged with a range of infractions, from disciplinary violations to serious crimes tried in a court-martial.

This fall, more than 20 recipients of the 2010 Chayes International Public Service Fellowship gathered at the home of Antonia Chayes, widow of HLS Professor Abram Chayes '49, to share stories of their fellowship experience. Founded in memory of Chayes, the Fellowships allow HLS students to spend eight weeks working with governments of developing nations and those making difficult transitions to peace, stability, and democracy, and with inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations that support them. 

As a little girl in Berkeley, Calif., U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Sylvaine Wong LL.M. ’11 became enamored of the Navy when her dad took her each year to “Fleet Week” to clamber aboard aircraft carriers and visit other military craft.

For the first three months his battalion was stationed in Al Anbar Province in Iraq in early 2007, the situation was “highly kinetic,” recalls U.S. Marine Captain Siddhartha Velandy LL.M. ’11, with the Marines either under relentless attack or aggressively patrolling in order to create a secure environment.

Steven Schartup ’13 in a U.S. Army veteran who did two tours of duty in Iraq, one involving combat, and another couple of months in Kosovo in a peacekeeping operation.

It was between his junior and senior years at Princeton, in the summer of 2004 when the war in Iraq was not very old, that Graham Phillips ’13 decided to enlist in the U.S. Army.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Susan McGarvey LL.M.’ 11 was in the courthouse when Saddam Hussein was on trial for the Anfal Campaign, the genocide of Kurds that he ordered in the late 1980s.

As a U.S. Army intelligence officer stationed in Baghdad in 2006 and 2007, Ian Gore ’13 was a targeting officer, responsible for building “target packets” against enemy combatants: working with locals to find out who the enemies were, compiling evidence against them, explaining to the unit commander why a particular person should be arrested and detained, and describing the goals that would be achieved.

From helping to prosecute Saddam Hussein to targeting enemy combatants to prosecuting or defending other members of the service, seven active duty or military veterans served in the war efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both, and have matriculated at HLS this year.

The final round of the annual Ames Moot Court Competition took place on November 16 in the Ames Courtroom.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. ’79 presided over the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2010 Ames Moot Court Competition on Nov. 16 in Ames Courtroom. He was joined by Judge Julia Smith Gibbons of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, and Judge Diana Murphy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit.