Teaching & Learning

In 2015, America had the lowest number of executions in 25 years, according to a new report released by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice. But of the 28 people executed, 68% suffered from severe mental disabilities or experienced extreme childhood trauma and abuse.

Supreme Court justices, performance art, student protests and a vice president. A look back at 2015, highlights of the people who visited, events that took place and everyday life at Harvard Law School.

Participants in a recent gathering at Harvard Law School are hoping to spark the growth of a nationwide student network for making significant contributions to the emerging field of food law and policy.

It was with tragic timeliness that Professor Patrick Weil discussed “After the Paris Attacks: What Is the Future for French Society?” on Wednesday, November 18 at Harvard Law School.

In a visit to Harvard Law School, retired four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared lessons from his service as a close adviser to three presidents, tips on negotiating with difficult foreign leaders, and his thoughts on strengthening support for families and children in the United States.

The recent installation of 312 solar panels atop the WCC building on the Harvard Law School campus is the latest step toward helping HLS meet Harvard’s sustainability goals, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016.

Harvard Law School has announced that, with the support of Ravel Law, a legal research and analytics platform, it is digitizing its entire collection of U.S. case law, one of the largest collections of legal materials in the world, and that it will make the collection available online, for free, to anyone with an Internet connection.

As the humanitarian crisis in Syria deepens, a panel at Harvard Law School explores the role of photography in documenting and raising international awareness about torture, mass killings, and other atrocities committed by the Assad regime.

During a conversation Thursday with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow at Wasserstein Hall, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy LL.B. '61 addressed a wide variety of topics, including the American criminal justice system, teaching law abroad, and his opinion on being described as the high court's swing vote on major issues.

The Harvard Law School Association presented its highest award this past spring to William P. Alford ’77 and Charles J. Ogletree ’78 —two of Harvard Law School's most distinguished professors, mentors to generations of jurists, advisers to senators, presidents and world leaders, and celebrated doers of good works—and longtime friends.

Litigation is often seen as an either/or proposition. You either settle out of court or go to trial and leave the outcome entirely in the hands of a judge or a jury. But Professor Kathryn Spier has researched another option: whereby parties go to trial with an agreement in place on the ceiling and floor for the plaintiff’s recovery.

The recent digitization of the Simon Greenleaf papers offers glimpses of the 19th century HLS professor who viewed the law as a fusion of scientific thought and moral experience.

Change is coming to the legal profession—whether attorneys like it or not—and HLS is at the forefront of efforts to anticipate it, and prepare students.

When students walk across Harvard Yard with earbuds in, they could be listening to music or talking on the phone. But nowadays, there’s a good chance they’re listening to a podcast. What listeners may not know is that podcasts started right here at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society in 2003.

At a September 15 event sponsored by the Harvard Law School Dean's Office, Greg Stohr '95, Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News, gave a talk to students, staff and faculty about how the public's understanding of legal news and developments has changed over his 17 years of reporting on the nation's highest court.

After I learned that David Grossman had entered hospice care, I sat at my computer, trying to write a goodbye email, but the words were not coming. I did not know how to express how much Dave’s mentorship impacted my life and my career, and I still do not. Eventually, I gushed out how much Dave meant to me and hit “send.” Then I pictured him reading it, and smiled, realizing how much he would be teasing me for its sappiness.

Dan Meltzer was my favorite teacher in law school, and he remains the person I most want to be when I grow up. But I must confess that his class was often one of my more stressful experiences at Harvard. Not because Dan was mean or overbearing—quite the opposite. What stressed us out was that we loved Dan from the first day, and nobody wanted to let him down.

Internet Monitor dashboard, a freely available tool that helps identify trends in Internet activity through data visualization, has been launched by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

Fernando Delgado ’08 and his students in the International Human Rights Clinic put prisoners’ voices in Brazil at the heart of a human rights case.

Kevin B. Moody will join Harvard Law School as the new Assistant Dean and Chief Human Resources Officer on October 19.

On September 8 at Harvard Law School's Wasserstein Hall, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice and former HLS Dean Elena Kagan ’86 shared lessons learned from her career and offered a glimpse into the Court’s private world in a talk with HLS Dean Martha Minow.