Teaching & Learning

A new collaboration seeks to pair the academic expertise of HLS professors on issues of national and international security with the policy expertise and access of the Brookings Institution in D.C.

The Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) has released a summary of “The State of Equity in Metro Boston,” a report studying the ways that inequity affects the residents of greater Boston. The full report was released on Tuesday, Dec. 13 at an event co-hosted by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

Daniel Coquillette ’71, the Charles Warren Visiting Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School and the J. Donald Monan, S.J. University Professor at Boston…

Because legal education demands constant and rigorous discussion and exchange, because legal imagination springs from bridging theory and practice, and because Harvard Law School recruits and develops superb students from all over the world to pursue lives of leadership, the School commissioned—and will soon open—a new space designed precisely for these purposes.

Appearing at Harvard Law School a year and a half after being released from federal prison, a contrite Jack Abramoff expressed a desire to thwart the political corruption he once infamously practiced. The event on Dec. 6 was sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, whose director, HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig, interviewed Abramoff, a former lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. “His experience,” said Lessig, “has an enormous amount to teach us.”

Although the sweeping financial reform package that President Obama ’91 signed into law in July contained hundreds of provisions in its 848-page final version, Professor Mark Roe ’75 says it’s still not long enough.

As Harvard Law School’s first female dean and the first woman ever to serve as U.S. solicitor general, Elena Kagan ’86 has made a habit of making history. On Oct. 1, Kagan sat on the far right-hand side of the Supreme Court’s courtroom in a chair first used by Chief Justice John Marshall, poised to make history once again at her formal investiture ceremony.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a leading expert on legal history, education law, and civil rights, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured Professor of Law this summer. She will also serve as an affiliate of the History Department in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Daniel Nagin, a tireless advocate for low-income communities, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a Clinical Professor of Law this summer. He will direct community-based lawyering at HLS’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has appointed Boston entrepreneur John Williams ’79 as the Law School’s inaugural Expert in Residence (EIR).

The recent recipient of the Committee to Protect Journalists 2011 International Press Freedom Award, Dr. Mansoor al-Jamri  visited Harvard Law School on Nov. 28 to discuss the fight for human rights and press freedom in Bahrain in light of the Arab Spring uprisings.

As the groundbreaking anti-foreclosure work by HLS students continues to land significant victories for homeowners in Massachusetts, a recent conference to spread the Harvard model was attended by more than 150 lawyers, law students and community organizers from around the country who want to halt foreclosures in their own communities. The second annual HLS “Community Responses to the Foreclosure Crisis” conference, organized by the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB), ran for three days and included panel discussions and small, interactive workshops where participants received practical advice for fighting foreclosures.

On Nov. 14, the Harvard Food Law Society, Environmental Law Society, and the Environmental Law Review hosted the Boston premiere of the PBS special “Heirloom Meals’ Thanksgiving.” The documentary, which aired on PBS stations around the country this week, celebrates how different cultures in America give the holidays their own special flavor.

HLS Visiting Professor Chibli Mallat recently published an op-ed in the Egyptian newspaper Ahram Online entitled “Why and How SCAF must fold in Egypt.”

Former White House Counsel Robert Bauer addressed students at Harvard Law School in October, sharing his insights on the lawyer’s role in law and politics. Bauer, who served as counsel to President Obama from November 2009 to June 2011, is currently a partner at Perkins Coie and is now representing the president’s re-election team and the Democratic National Committee.

On Nov. 3, Dr. Franz Adlkofer, former executive director of the VERUM Foundation for Behavior and Environment, spoke to a Harvard Law School audience as part of the lectures and events series hosted by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. 

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court presided over the oral argument in the final round of the 2011 Ames Moot Court Competition on Thursday, November 17th, 2011.The competition was held in the historic Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School.

At an event about the national implications of state-led immigration reform, sponsored by Harvard Immigration Project, Advocates for Human Rights, and ACLU-HLS, Lucas Guttentag, senior counsel and former founding national director of the ACLU's Immigrants’ Rights Project, discussed Alabama's new immigration law, its significance for state efforts to regulate immigration, and where immigration advocates go from here.

John G. Palfrey ’01, Harvard Law School’s Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and vice-dean of Library and Information Resources, has been appointed the 15th Head of School at the Phillips Academy Andover, the academy announced Nov. 14. He will leave HLS and officially begin at Phillips Academy in July 2012.