Teaching & Learning

HLS Professors John Goldberg and Henry Smith are working to reinvigorate the study of contracts, torts, and property with the new Private Law Workshop, which they co-teach as part of the Project on the Foundations of Private Law at Harvard Law School. The workshop, said Goldberg, is “an opportunity to introduce students to some of the emerging literature that’s aiming to rethink the significance of private law in modern legal systems.”

War between Israel and Iran is not inevitable, argued Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, in an event sponsored by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School last week. 

The United States’ response to the 9/11 attacks has altered the legal landscape. That premise was outlined by William K. Lietzau, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy, in his keynote address at a conference titled  “Understanding Detention and Predicting Prosecutions: Legal Challenges and Legislative Options Ten Years After 9/11.” The conference, sponsored by the National Security and Law Association, took place on February 4 at Harvard Law School and featured panel discussions focusing on prosecutions and detentions in the aftermath of 9/11.

Harvard Law School continues to strengthen its commitment to environmental sustainability and to make progress towards Harvard’s university-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal to reduce emissions 30% by 2016. In January, Harvard Law School recorded its 18th straight month of energy reductions.

During a Feb. 4 workshop called “Strategic Decision-Making in International Affairs,” sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at the Center for Government and International Studies, the deans of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School laid out some of the challenges facing the University in this era of increasing globalization. They were joined by Jorge Dominguez, the vice provost for international affairs, who offered the University’s viewpoint, David Hunter, dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Beth Simmons, director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

In a recent lecture given at Harvard Law School and sponsored by the Safra Center for Ethics, Jim Cooper '80, a Blue-Dog Democrat from Tennessee's 5th congressional district, said offered the assessment that Congress is "deeply broken." 

African-American children, who account for just 15 percent of all children in the U.S., represent more than a third of children placed in foster care. The question is: Why? That controversial issue and others surrounding society’s efforts to protect children were the focus of the conference “Race & Child Welfare: Disproportionality, Disparity, Discrimination: Re-Assessing the Facts, Re-Thinking the Policy Options,” held January 28-29 at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointments of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as Professors of Practice.

Three faculty who served in the Obama administration, and recently returned to HLS, talk to writer Elaine McArdle about gridlock, being part of history, living life at warp speed and the day the Easter Bunny blacked out the White House.

The Conflict Prevention and Resolution Institute (CPR) selected the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) to be the recipient of its 2010 Problem Solving in the Law School Curriculum Award at its annual awards banquet on January 11, 2011.

Since signing with the Boston Celtics in August 2010, Shaquille O’Neal has posed as a statue in Harvard Square, sang the “Cheers” theme song at the Cheers bar in Boston, and conducted the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall. He can now add “helped teach a class at Harvard Law School” to that list.

Former clerks of the International Court of Justice shared their experiences with Harvard Law School students in December at “Behind the Scenes at the World Court: International Court of Justice Clerk Panel,” a panel discussion sponsored by the Harvard International Affairs Council the Harvard International Law Journal, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Debevoise & Plimpton.

Professor Gráinne de Búrca calls EU law “history in the making, a process of integration that’s taking place and changing before our eyes.” When she first taught the subject in Europe—at Oxford and then the European University Institute in Florence, Italy—it was a question of interpreting the region’s emergent law.

Harvard Law School became the first-ever repeat-winner of the National Puerto Rico Trial Advocacy Competition. Returning as defending champions, the Harvard Law School Trial Team advanced to the semi-finals with the highest score and remained undefeated throughout the competition, edging out Georgetown Law in the final round to win first place.

Sixteen teams from nine different law schools from throughout the Northeast took part in the ABA Regional Negotiation Competition held at Harvard Law School and organized by Harvard Negotiators on November 13–14, 2010. Approximately 35 judges, all practicing lawyers in the Boston area, evaluated the teams and chose the winners.

Top practitioners, heads of state, academics, and theoreticians in international development came together with more than 200 students and community members for “Rebuilding After the Storm: The Role of Law in Development Post Natural Disasters,” the HLS Law & International Development Society’s inaugural symposium, held on Nov. 19, 2010.

On Nov. 19, Harvard Law School  Professor Duncan Kennedy and Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University professor and special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General, discussed a new collection edited by HLS Professor Lucie White ’81 and Jeremy Perelman, S.J.D. ’11, before a large audience at HLS. That collection—“Stones of Hope: How African Activists Reclaim Human Rights to Challenge Global Poverty”—combines case studies from activists with theoretical essays on development to “tackle problems of disenfranchisement and poverty in the world,” said HLS Professor William Alford ’77, vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, who introduced the discussion of the book.

Harvard Law School welcomed Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minster of Trinidad and Tobago this month for a lecture on leadership and cooperation. Persad-Bissessar became the first female prime minister of the Caribbean nation in May, and was named one of the top 10 female world leaders by TIME Magazine in August.