Today Posts

Sumner M. Redstone, one of the nation’s pre-eminent media entrepreneurs and philanthropists, has announced a gift of $10 million to Harvard Law School to endow the Sumner M. Redstone Fellowships in Public Service. The gift from the Sumner M. Redstone Charitable Foundation -- the largest ever made to Harvard Law School in support of public service -- will provide funding for HLS students who wish to work in the public interest after graduation.

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.” So, we think, said Yogi Berra. He also supposedly said, “How…

Tama Matsuoka Wong ’83 was a securities lawyer in Hong Kong when her toddler began to suffer from such severe allergies that she was hospitalized. When it became clear that the problem was related to processed foods, Wong and her family returned to the U.S., where they could have better control over what they ate.

Twenty law students take their seats in a third-floor seminar room of Wasserstein Hall, and their professors get right down to business. How do we evaluate claims made in the literature about the impact of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on U.S. businesses and U.S. leadership around the world? Instantly, a student ventures that broad anti-corruption efforts might help the U.S. economy, even if the benefits to particular firms are unclear. For the next two hours, the air crackles with refutations, clarifications, elaborations, insights and reality checks. The break that’s scheduled at the one-hour mark comes 15 minutes late because the students are too engaged to stop.

For decades, Alan M. Dershowitz has led a frenetic life as author of dozens of books, legal counsel to a multitude of celebrities and ubiquitous TV commentator on myriad issues of the day. Known to many around the world for his brash style and high-profile cases, after 50 years, Dershowitz is now leaving the role he loves best: Harvard Law School teacher.

This summer, when Chelsea Manning (then known as Private Bradley Manning) was on trial for passing hundreds of thousands of documents obtained from military computers to WikiLeaks, Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler ’94 testified for the defense. Benkler’s work—including his 2011 case study of the legal wrangling related to WikiLeaks—has put him in the middle of the debate over the balance between civil liberties and security in a post-9/11 networked world.

Some recent faculty and clinical highlights—from research on anti-corruption efforts to conferences on financial regulation.

This fall, more than 600 alumnae from around the country and the world came back to Harvard Law School for “Celebration 60: Leaders for Change—Women Transforming our Communities and the World.” We interview four participants on their experiences effecting change.

Shortly after graduating from HLS, David Satterthwaite Wertime ’07 and Rachel Lu ’07 launched Tea Leaf Nation, an e-magazine focusing on Chinese social media. The site had become a go-to destination for Western journalists, academics and decision-makers seeking insights into what average Chinese people are thinking.

just 24 years old, Maeve O’Rourke LL.M. ’10 went to the United Nations with a bold and unprecedented case against the Irish government. Appearing in Geneva before the Committee Against Torture in 2011, O’Rourke argued that Ireland had allowed the enslavement and forced labor of thousands of women throughout most of the 20th century. What she wanted, she told the committee, was for the government to acknowledge its complicity, to apologize and to pay reparations to the victims.

“The New Black: What Has Changed—and What Has Not—with Race in America,” edited by Professor Kenneth W. Mack ’91 and Guy-Uriel Charles (New Press). The volume presents essays that consider questions that look beyond the main focus of the civil rights era: to lessen inequality between black people and white people. The contributors, including HLS Professor Lani Guinier, write on topics ranging from group identity to anti-discrimination law to implicit racial biases, revealing often overlooked issues of race and justice in a supposed post-racial society.

In 2007, Corey Stoughton ’02 began a long, serpentine journey through New York courts when she filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 20 criminal defendants claiming the state’s public defender system had failed them. If all goes as scheduled, Stoughton, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, will be in an Albany courtroom in March, when the case finally goes to trial.

Offering humorous quips and reflecting on his always challenging role as chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein ’78 discussed his company, regulation and the state of the economy, as part of a question-and-answer session with Dean Martha Minow during Reunions Weekend in October.

Arnold Mytelka ’61 can no longer remember just how he met Amanuel Andemicael LL.M. ’60. But, as Mytelka recalls now, something always stood out about the man who would become his lifelong friend.

First Lady Michelle Obama ’88 on cultivating a healthier future for children.

At Harvard Law School and its library, digital experts are busy inventing the future of textbooks, the classroom and information access.

Randall Kennedy has tackled plenty of controversial issues in his five previous books, ranging from interracial marriage to the intersection of race, crime and the law. The Harvard Law professor comes to the defense of affirmative action in his latest book, “For Discrimination.” In an interview with the Bulletin, Kennedy described his own evolution on the issue and the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which was announced after his book went to print.

In November, Norman Dorsen ’53 delivered the Harvard Law School Association of New Jersey’s 57th Vanderbilt Lecture. The topic was “Seeking Civil Liberties,” and that’s something the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union has done throughout his career.

Louis Kaplow ’81 seeks to upend the academic debate and to suggest important reforms to legal practice in his latest book, which addresses the law and economics of price fixing. The Harvard Law School professor describes the law prohibiting this practice as “incoherent, its practical reach uncertain, and its fit with fundamental economic principles obscure.” And that’s just in the first paragraph.

The HLS Library collection includes books and documents that highlight some of the historical rules and regulations surrounding everything comestible.

However much presidents want to influence the future through their judicial appointments, the problem, Professor Mark Tushnet writes in his new book, “In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court” (Norton, 2013), “is that things change.”