Themes
Teaching & Learning
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The Harvard Law School Library's historical and special collections recently digitized its collection of 64 bound volumes of notebooks drafted by 17 students of the Litchfield Law School from 1803–1825. Litchfield is generally regarded as the first formal private law school in the United States.
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Scott Westfahl ’88 will lead Exec Ed at HLS
August 14, 2013
Dean Martha Minow announced this week that Scott Westfahl ’88 will be the new director of Executive Education at Harvard Law School.
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On Thursday, Aug. 8, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) delivered an address at Harvard Law School on proposed legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just hours after news outlets reported additional revelations concerning the scope of information gathered by the National Security Agency.
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Targeting Climate Change: EPA chief says issue is economic as well as environmental (video)
July 31, 2013
Newly confirmed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy on Tuesday pledged action on climate change during the Obama administration’s remaining years, saying the concern is as much economic as it is environmental.
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With a $415,000 grant from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office—and the help of a groundbreaking new law that offers homeowners strong pre-foreclosure protections—the HLS WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC) has launched a new program to help fight foreclosures in Mattapan, one of Boston’s most challenged neighborhoods.
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Berkman Center, Pew Research Center release findings on teens, social media and privacy
July 15, 2013
According to recent findings from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information.
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In the 100 years since its founding, Harvard's Legal Aid Bureau—the oldest student-run legal services program in the country—has helped thousands of clients. On Nov. 8 to 10, the Bureau will mark its centennial with a gala celebration at the law school which will feature keynote speakers and panel discussions on “Closing the gap: Evolving legal education and improving the clinical experience,” “Serving low-income communities across the three branches of government” and “Access to justice: Looking beyond legal services.”
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A Question of Accountability
July 4, 2013
Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic argues that the Alien Tort Statute applies to corporations From left: Assistant Clinical Professor Susan Farbstein ’04,…
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The HLS/HKS Connection
July 1, 2013
The HLS/HKS joint-degree program are where law and public policy meet.
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The Transformations of Morton Horwitz
July 1, 2013
For a young law student arriving at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988, Morton Horwitz [’67] seemed to encapsulate everything that I (no doubt, naively) expected to see in a Harvard professor. Among the students, he was widely known as “Mort the Tort,” for the passion that he brought to the class with which he was most widely identified.
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Serving Those Who Have Served
July 1, 2013
The Board of Veterans’ Appeals of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury that occurred while he was on active duty. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is redeployed to Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns stateside—after the appeal deadline has passed. For students in HLS’s new Veterans Legal Clinic, the chance to work on this case and others like it is eye-opening.
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Briefs: Lessons, legal services, and luminosity
July 1, 2013
Ernest Shackleton’s first journey to the Antarctic in the early 1900s ended in a very public failure. On his second journey, in a race to the South Pole, he turned back within 100 miles of his goal. In his third expedition, not only did he fail to traverse Antarctica, but his ship was destroyed by ice, stranding the crew on ice floes for more than a year. So why do law and business students and executives in legal and business organizations study Shackleton as an example of successful leadership?
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How It All Adds Up
July 1, 2013
Stephanie Atwood ’13 started her 3L year several days early in a basement classroom of Wasserstein Hall in a new intensive “boot camp” on accounting and finance. In just three days, Atwood and 44 classmates learned a credit’s worth of previously foreign-sounding concepts such as internal rate of return and the cost of capital.
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Lawyers as Advisers
July 1, 2013
Since the first meeting of the seminar taught by David Barron ’94 of Harvard Law School and Archon Fung of Harvard Kennedy School, students had been using case studies co-authored by the two professors that put them in the situation room with advisers on real-world problems at the intersection of law and policy. But during a session of Public Problems Advice, Strategy and Analysis in November a player in the case they were discussing sat at the table with them: Josh Stein. J.D. /M.P.P. ’95, North Carolina state senator and Democratic minority whip, who had first-hand experience with an innovative but contentious piece of legislation: The North Carolina Justice Act.
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CopyrightX, the new, experimental, Web-based Harvard Law School course which prioritizes the human dimension of online teaching, is the brainchild of Professor Terry Fisher, who is committed to what he calls the democratization of higher education.
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Debt Trap
July 1, 2013
Many for-profit colleges, which get the overwhelming majority of their revenues from federal financial aid programs, rely on high-pressure tactics and false employment and salary guarantees to lure students into taking out loans. Now, through the efforts of Harvard Law School alum Toby Merrill ’11, some of the victims of these practices can get free legal aid to enforce their rights.
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Whiting to join faculty as a professor of practice
June 27, 2013
Alex Whiting, who currently serves as the prosecution coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, will rejoin the Harvard Law School faculty this July as a professor of practice. Whiting previously taught at HLS as an assistant clinical professor.
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Zittrain delivers keynote at Harvard IT Summit
June 21, 2013
Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95 delivered the keynote speech at the recent Harvard IT Summit, devoting his lecture to the potential “end of .edu.” Zittrain is also a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
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Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis ’60, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 1988 and is now a professor of political science at Northeastern University, visited a session of Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Workshop in late April to lead discussion of a case study and answer student questions.
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With national attention focused on the obesity epidemic and the diabetes crisis—along with rapidly growing concerns about social justice and environmental problems related to the current food-production system—there may be no hotter topic in law schools right now than food law and policy. The wildly popular new Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the first law school clinic of its kind in the world, is right at the center, with students working on a wide range of projects to make healthy food more accessible, help farmers’ markets overcome regulatory barriers so they can sell more of their products, guide states and local communities in creating food policy councils, and more.
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Sachs tells Class of 2013: ‘The really interesting stuff is going to begin when the precedent runs out’ (video)
May 31, 2013
Professor Benjamin I. Sachs is this year’s winner of the prestigious Albert M. Sacks-Paul A. Freund Award for Teaching Excellence, an honor bestowed each spring by the Harvard Law School graduating class. The award recognizes teaching ability, attentiveness to student concerns and general contributions to student life at the law school.