Teaching & Learning

The Class of 2015 honored Professor Jon Hanson with the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence for his work inside the classroom as “a creative and effective teacher, combining presentations, narratives and hands-on projects.” Catherine Pattanayak ’04 was selected by the Class to receive the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award for her “extraordinary support of public interest students and their careers.”

Daniel J. Meltzer '75, a renowned legal scholar and expert on federal courts and criminal procedure, and a valued legal advisor to President Barack Obama ’91, died on May 24, after a courageous battle with cancer. Meltzer was the Story Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he served on the faculty since 1982.

The Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) at Harvard Law School is making news for work it has done to promote civil discourse in town government and to help police mediate civilian complaints.

On Thursday, April 23, Bruce Bromley Professor of Law John Manning ’85 capped off a four-part series of “Last Lectures” for the Harvard Law School Class of 2015 with a list of eight simple rules students should live by if they wish to be both “happy lawyers and human beings.”

After their warnings about excesses and corrupt practices on Wall Street went unheeded but proved accurate, former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, former SEC Chair Mary Schapiro, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, formerly a bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School, set about trying to institute meaningful financial reforms from inside federal agencies and through politics.

For the growing number of empiricists at HLS, there’s nothing quite so satisfying—or unimpeachable—as resolving a thorny, often contentious, legal or policy question through rigorous analysis of cold, hard data.

Ronald Sullivan works to make the criminal justice system more accountable

Students represent the indigent in courts where judges ask, ‘Is Harvard in the building?’

On Dec. 15, 2014, 34 Harvard Law alumni, from the Classes of 1971 to 2010, gathered at the U.S. Supreme Court to join the bar for the highest court in the nation.

In March, Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice sponsored a dance performance at HLS titled “Dying While Black and Brown.” Presented one day before the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march, it dramatized the disproportionate incarceration and execution of people of color.

For Lani Guinier, the mission of higher education is—or should be—democracy.

In July, HLS Professor Daniel Halperin, will retire after after more than a half-century as a tax lawyer, professor and government official as will Duncan Kennedy who in 30 of his years on the faculty has taught one-fourth of every HLS entering class contracts, property or torts.

The Global Anticorruption Lab, taught by HLS Professor Matthew Stephenson ’03, offers law students an unusual opportunity to hone concise writing skills through the crafting of blog posts that are read and commented on by high-level stakeholders around the world.

800 years later, the ‘great charter’ still fascinates

Located on the first and second floors of Wasserstein Hall—the heart of social and academic activity on the HLS campus—Harvard Law School's historic collection of faculty portraits provide a backdrop for the daily routines and informal interactions of students and faculty members.

The International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch recently released 'Mind the Gap: The Lack of Accountability for Killer Robots,' a 38-page report that details significant hurdles to assigning personal accountability for the actions of fully autonomous weapons under both criminal and civil law.

For law students interested in entrepreneurism and startups—as entrepreneurs themselves, as lawyers representing startups, or both—there is a wealth of growing and intersecting opportunities at Harvard Law School and across the university.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Youth and Media released a new ebook 'Digitally Connected: Global Perspectives on Youth and Digital Media,' a first-of-its kind collection of essays that offers reflections from diverse perspectives on youth experiences with digital media and with focus on the Global South.