Today Posts

From sex work to satire to being second-in-command.

Therese Rohrbeck Meers on how she became an entrepreneur

A judicial temperament involves many qualities. For Merrick Garland, patience is one of them.

Harvard Law School is becoming a “laboratory”—or, more accurately, a collection of laboratories—where theory meets practice. For example, we now have the Food Law Lab,…

Last fall, the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, produced a report for Amnesty International on the legal issues surrounding encryption. While the encryption debate is most often painted as a two-sided battle between law enforcement and technology companies, there are many other stakeholders around the world that are deeply concerned about the widespread implications of regulating encryption in iPhones and other telecommunications devices.

When Wendy Sherman, former under secretary of state for political affairs, was in the midst of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, she often felt that her team was playing “several games of multidimensional chess at the same time.” On April 20, Sherman delivered a guest lecture to the Harvard Law School Negotiation Workshop.

There is now a cure for Hepatitis C. But in some states, Medicaid won’t pay for it until patients become seriously and irrevocably ill. Harvard Law’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation is trying to change that—through research, advocacy and litigation.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 first read a biography of Thomas Jefferson as a child—and hasn’t stopped learning and writing about him. The HLS professor, who is also on the faculty at the university and the Radcliffe Institute, spoke to the Bulletin about her latest book, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination,” co-written with Peter S. Onuf. She discusses her own fascination with and (measured) admiration for the third U.S. president—and the significance of teaching history at the law school.

It is the rare law review article that directly leads the Supreme Court to change how it does business. But that’s exactly what happened after the Harvard Law Review published an article in 2014 by Richard Lazarus, revealing how Supreme Court opinions get changed after issuance, with little public notice.

“FDA in the 21st Century: The Challenges of Regulating Drugs and New Technologies,” edited by Holly Fernandez Lynch and I. Glenn Cohen ’03 (Columbia). Stemming from a 2013 conference at HLS, the book features essays covering major developments that have changed how the FDA regulates; how the agency encourages transparency; First Amendment issues; access to drugs; and evolving issues in drug-safety communication. These issues, the editors write, lie “at the heart of our health and health care.”

According to HLS Professor Hal Scott, nearly eight years after the 2008 crisis, the U.S. financial system is inadequately protected and more at risk than ever. He sounds the alarm in a new book, “Connectedness and Contagion: Protecting the Financial System from Panics,” forthcoming early this summer from MIT Press.

Harvard Law School Student Body President Kyle Strickland ’16 and Vice President Mavara Agha ’16 worked to enable more students to be involved in improving the student experience at HLS.

Harvard Law School students Amanda Mundell '17 and Joe Resnek '17 won first place at the 41st Annual National Trial Competition in Dallas, Texas. Resnek also received the competition's Best Advocate Award for his outstanding performance in the final round.

On April 12, students in Professor of Practice Urs Gasser’s Spring 2016 Comparative Online Privacy Seminar at Harvard Law School hosted a student-led mini-symposium on data privacy in the U.S. and the EU with experts from private companies, law firms, and academia.

The Program on International Financial Systems (PIFS) at Harvard Law School and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) recently launched a joint Global Certificate Program for Regulators of Securities Markets.

Harvard Law School students Phil Caruso '18 and Pamela Nwaoko '16 are among 12 law students selected by FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) to participate in a two-week program in Europe this summer, which uses the conduct of lawyers and judges in Nazi Germany as a launching point for an intensive course of study on ethics in the legal profession today.

Since graduating from Harvard College in 1985 and then getting his law degree, Alan Jenkins '89 had been on a career fast track, but he felt frustrated about the forces of injustice and inequality he saw around him.

On March 29, in his contribution to the HLS Class Marshals' Last Lecture series, Robert Sitkoff, an expert in trusts and estates, explained the impact and importance of private law in enabling individuals to organize their lives and relationships with one another.

Mark Wu ’96, an assistant professor at HLS who specializes in international economics and trade law, and lead organizer of the decennial academic conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the most pressing issues affecting trade and the WTO, and how he sees the future of trade policy.

This Spring four members of the Harvard Law School community received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 in memory of the late Professor Gary Bellow ’60, a pioneering public interest lawyer who founded and directed Harvard Law School’s clinical programs.