Today Posts

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.

On April 20, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society released "WiredWest: a Cooperative of Municipalities Forms to Build a Fiber Optic Network," a report written by Berkman Center Co-director and Harvard Law Professor Susan Crawford; Waide Warner, Harvard Law lecturer and senior advisor at Berkman's Cyberlaw Clinic; and Berkman fellow David Talbot.

On April 1, Harvard Law School hosted a conference on 'Presidential Power in an Era of Polarized Conflict,' a daylong gathering in which experts from both sides of the aisle debated the president’s power in foreign and domestic affairs, and in issues of enforcement or non-enforcement.

Victor Brudney, a giant in the field of corporate law and a major figure at Harvard Law School from the early 1970s through the 1990s, died April 14, in Cambridge, at age 98.

Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03, Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at Harvard Law School has been named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Harvard students, faculty and fellows are training new high-tech instruments on Boston’s skies, searching for one well-known troublemaker and one escapee among the atmosphere’s invisible gases.

In a report issued last week, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch call for countries to retain meaningful human control over weapons systems and ban fully autonomous weapons, also known as 'killer robots.'

Clinical Instructor Deborah Popowski '08 has led the effort to hold psychologists accountable for their involvement in torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.