Teaching & Learning

On May 26, 2016, on Holmes Field, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow congratulated the graduates, telling them, “You have made the law yours and the world will be better for it.”

The Class of 2016 selected Professor Jeannie Suk ’02 for the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence for her role as a dedicated educator, mentor, and 1L section leader. Gabriela Follett received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award for her work “around the clock to make sure that students are having an optimally enriching educational experience at HLS."

On March 14, the Harvard Corporation voted to retire the Harvard Law School shield, following the recommendation of an HLS committee. The shield is modeled on the family crest of Isaac Royall, whose bequest endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard. Royall was the son of an Antiguan slaveholder.

The Internet of Things may be about to change our lives as radically as the Internet itself did 20 years ago. The implications for privacy, national security, human rights, cyberespionage and the economy are staggering.

Harvard Law students provide legal referrals to outside agencies and other services at Y2Y—the new shelter in Harvard Square for homeless youth aged 18-24 staffed by young people about the same age.

In just one decade, Everett, Massachusetts, once a predominantly white city, has become the most racially and ethnically diverse in the commonwealth. Building communication between police officers and local youth is a priority for Chief of the Everett Police Department Steven A. Mazzie, who is white, as are 86 percent of his officers. Last fall he invited a team of HLS students from the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program to Everett for an impartial assessment.

For more than half a century, Phil Heymann has served the nation— and Harvard Law School—with distinction.

Last fall, the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, produced a report for Amnesty International on the legal issues surrounding encryption. While the encryption debate is most often painted as a two-sided battle between law enforcement and technology companies, there are many other stakeholders around the world that are deeply concerned about the widespread implications of regulating encryption in iPhones and other telecommunications devices.

When Wendy Sherman, former under secretary of state for political affairs, was in the midst of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, she often felt that her team was playing “several games of multidimensional chess at the same time.” On April 20, Sherman delivered a guest lecture to the Harvard Law School Negotiation Workshop.

There is now a cure for Hepatitis C. But in some states, Medicaid won’t pay for it until patients become seriously and irrevocably ill. Harvard Law’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation is trying to change that—through research, advocacy and litigation.

On March 29, in his contribution to the HLS Class Marshals' Last Lecture series, Robert Sitkoff, an expert in trusts and estates, explained the impact and importance of private law in enabling individuals to organize their lives and relationships with one another.

Harvard students, faculty and fellows are training new high-tech instruments on Boston’s skies, searching for one well-known troublemaker and one escapee among the atmosphere’s invisible gases.

In a report issued last week, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch call for countries to retain meaningful human control over weapons systems and ban fully autonomous weapons, also known as 'killer robots.'

As part of the Last Lecture Series presented every year by the HLS Class Marshals, Professor Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 spoke about her experiences combining legal analysis and historical research.

Across HLS, faculty are focusing on international access to lifesaving drugs for underserved populations. One forthcoming book, “The Health Crisis in the Developing World and…

'The Transparency Reporting Toolkit: Survey and Best Practice Memos,' a new report from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Open Technology Initiative, is a compilation of eight memos that look at the major challenges that U.S. Internet and telecommunications companies face when reporting on U.S. law enforcement and government requests for user information, and identify industry best practices for this transparency reporting.

In honor of the centennial anniversary of Louis D. Brandeis' confirmation to the United States Supreme Court, Harvard Law School and the Harvard Law Library are celebrating his relationship with the school, as a student, a devoted alumnus, and as a Supreme Court Justice employing and mentoring HLS graduates.

This is the last in the Harvard Gazette's series on inequality, one of America’s most vexing problems, examining Harvard’s ground-level efforts to make a difference in the surrounding communities, and beyond.

Statistics released by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) indicate that, as of the start of 2016, Harvard Law School faculty members featured prominently on SSRN’s list of the 100 most-cited law professors, capturing twelve slots among the top 100 law school professors (in all legal areas) in terms of citations to their work.

HBX Credential of Readiness (CORe)—the online business fundamentals program launched by Harvard Business School in June 2014 to provide a strong foundation in the language and tools of business—will be offered to entering students at Harvard Law School for the second year in a row.