Teaching & Learning

Harvard Law Review President Michael Zuckerman ’17 recently penned a reflection for Medium on the experience of publishing The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform, an article by President Barack Obama -- the first Law Review article by a sitting president -- and his personal take on law and criminal justice reform.

Martha Minow — the legal scholar and human rights expert who has served as dean of Harvard Law School since 2009 and has led the diversification of its faculty, staff, and student body, significant growth in its clinics and research programs, and record fundraising — announced today that she will step down as dean at the end of the 2016-17 academic year. She will remain on the faculty and return to active participation in public dialogue and legal policy.

A look back at 2016, highlights of the people who visited, events that took place and everyday life at Harvard Law School.

Professor Emeritus Henry J. Steiner recently spoke to a standing room only crowd at Harvard Law School about his new book 'Eyeing the World,' which features photos taken by Steiner, a human rights scholar and the founder of the law school’s Human Rights Program, over the last 50 years during his travels around the world.

Helena Alviar first came to Harvard Law School from Bogotá, Colombia on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1996, and developed a particular interest in understanding the historical, economic, and sociological circumstances in which law develops. When she returned five years later with her S.J.D. degree, it was with a renewed sense of responsibility.

In November, the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program celebrated its 10th anniversary, marking its evolution into a robust program of global clinical work in dispute systems design, innovative pedagogy around teamwork, and expanded course offerings in multiparty negotiation, group decision-making, teams and facilitation.

This fall at a symposium presented by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, representatives from academia, government and civil liberties organizations came together to examine the present state of play with respect to government transparency and freedom of information.

During the fall 2016 semester, a group of leading scholars came together at Harvard Law School for the lecture series, "Diversity and US Legal History," which was sponsored by Dean Martha Minow and organized by Professor Mark Tushnet, who also designed a reading group to complement the lectures.

A system that makes healthy food expensive and junk food cheap should be fixed, said a panel of experts who gathered at Harvard Law School on Nov. 30 to discuss “Transforming Our Food System,” a discussion sponsored by the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic in partnership with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

On November 9, 2016, the Honorable Robert Russell, founder of the nation’s first Veterans Treatment Court delivered the 2016 DAV Distinguished Speaker Lecture at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic has released a new report, "Securing Status: Syrian refugees and the documentation of legal status, identity, and family relationships in Jordan," that details the challenges Syrian refugees living outside refugee camps encounter obtaining official documents from the Government of Jordan.

This fall, Harvard Law School lecturer Nancy Gertner, Harvard sociologist Bruce Western and Vincent Schiraldi, senior research fellow and director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, are teaching a new Harvard course that will help students become part of the effort to reform the nation’s criminal justice system.

At a recent event, several HLS professors discussed the scope and limits of a president’s executive and judicial powers, the role the courts may play, and the ways in which Trump could reshape the authority and operation of an array of government agencies.

The HLS Fair Punishment Project’s Legal Advisory Council has issued an issue brief arguing that a sentencer may impose a life without parole sentence upon a juvenile only after concluding that the child is “the rare juvenile offender who exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible.”

In a recent conversation at HLS with Dean Martha Minow, Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and U.N. special envoy on El Niño and climate change, told the story of how she came to be an “Angry Granny” on the topic of climate change, starting with her discussions with people in the most deeply affected communities.

A photo exhibit featuring portraits of legal scholars who represent traditionally marginalized voices will be displayed in Harvard Law School’s Wasserstein Hall from Nov. 17-22.

Regulations to fight climate change likely will be casualties of the incoming Trump administration, but environmental experts taking stock of the changing American political landscape said that work in the field will continue elsewhere and that a broad-based rollback of U.S. environmental protection will prove easier said than done.

Harvard Law Today presents a recap of the 2016 election season in images, words, and photos.

Constitutional Law expert Sanford Levinson focused on the political implications of the Electoral College at HLS on Oct. 21. He emphasized that the U.S. Electoral College system is unique among the election processes of major countries, which tend towards popular vote models, and he connected it to what he terms “the Constitution of settlement."

With his recent gift of $1 million and a subsequent matching gift of $500,000 to support individual donations of up to $50,000 through December, Charles Thomas is hoping to make farm animals central to animal cruelty prevention.