Today Posts

It takes a lot of preparation to rev up a new case. That’s true in all law offices, including Harvard’s legal clinics. As a clinical law student who was cross-enrolled in an undergraduate computer science course, Jeffrey Roderick ’17 wondered whether he could streamline the process through technology.

Harvard Law School Professor and former Dean Martha Minow delivered a keynote address at Newport's Touro Synagogue. The Aug. 20 event commemorated the 70th public rereading of George Washington's letter to the Jewish community promising that the country would give “bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society has released "Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," a comprehensive analysis of online and social media coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign that documents how highly partisan right-wing sources helped shape mainstream pre-election press coverage.

In a three-part lecture, Martha Minow, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, discusses the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 civil rights case in which the Supreme Court declared state laws concerning the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional.

When Reena Raggi graduated from Harvard Law School in 1976, the student body was only 20 percent female. But Raggi, who went on to serve 30 years on the federal bench—on the District Court for the Eastern District of New York from 1987 to 2002 and since then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit—never thought of herself as a Harvard pioneer.

Neil Chayet ’63, a lawyer who brought complex legal topics to a popular audience with his national radio show “Looking at the Law,” died August 11 at age 78. In June, he retired from his radio show, which he hosted for 42 years, recording more than 10,000 episodes.

In June, the Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of Army combat veteran Jeffrey Machado and an estimated 4,000 veterans from Massachusetts who have served abroad since 9/11, but deemed ineligible to receive the state’s $1000 Welcome Home Bonus for honorably discharged servicemembers.

Legal scholars from across the globe gathered at HLS in July for a two-day conference on law and development, the latest iteration of a series of conferences held periodically by a loose consortium of schools including Harvard Law School, the University of Geneva, Renmin University of China, and the University of Sydney, Australia.

In June, Harvard Law School’s World Trade Organization (WTO) moot court team won the 15th Annual European Law Students Association (ELSA) Moot Court Competition on WTO Law, marking the first win for an HLS team, and making them the first team from North America in the history of the competition to take top honors.

Latino Leadership: Embracing the Challenge

For more than a half-century at HLS, Professor Emeritus Henry Steiner ’55 has focused on international human rights, including as the founder of the school’s Human Rights Program; he has also focused his camera on countries around the world, and is now sharing his deep passion for photography in a new book, “Eyeing the World.”

Polish-born lawyer and businessman Darius Mioduski ’90 applied to Harvard Law School not having known English five years earlier. That hopeful step led him on an adventurous career path, from starting out in international M&A and project finance, to his present role as part owner of Poland’s top football club.

The post-9/11 war on terror was only 3 years old when David Barron ’94 began researching whether presidents enjoy as much unfettered power to conduct wars as was assumed by many at the time. A dozen years after he began, Barron, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit and a visiting professor at HLS, has published the results of his research in a book titled “Waging War: The Clash Between Presidents and Congress 1776 to ISIS” (Simon & Schuster).

In a victory for Harvard Law School’s Crimmigration Clinic, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that state authorities cannot detain someone for a U.S. immigration violation based solely on a Detainer.

From the Supreme Court, to the SEC, to an unidentified city under siege: legal analysis, memoir, a documentary and more works from HLS alumni.

Alex Spiro '08 has emerged in short order as the go-to lawyer for professional basketball players who get in trouble with the law in New York--just one slice of Spiro’s clientele, summarized by sports and culture website The Ringer as “the rich, the famous, and the restless.”

President Donald J. Trump has appointed Anthony Scaramucci ’89 to serve as White House communications director, upping by one the number of Harvard Law School alumni tapped to serve in the administration since Trump’s inauguration.

Cass Sunstein urges people to consume more diverse information for the good of our democracy

This spring, the Harvard Law Bulletin spoke with Professor of Practice Naz Modirzadeh, founding director of the HLS’ Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC) and co-author of the report “Indefinite War: Unsettled International Law on the End of Armed Conflict,” about the failure of international law to provide guidance on war’s end.

Over the course of her career, as Bonnie Docherty ’01 has emerged as an international expert on civilian protection in armed conflict, she has also mentored scores of clinical students, from field researchers in conflict zones to advocates inside the halls of the U.N. in Geneva.

As an economist, Professor Mihir Desai has gained recognition for his expertise in tax policy and international and corporate finance, but Desai--also a professor of finance at Harvard Business School --has set aside his usual academic work in a new book, “The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return.”