Today Posts

The CEO of TIAA-CREF and former vice chair of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve talks about his dreams—and the reality of helping others realize theirs.

CopyrightX, the new, experimental, Web-based Harvard Law School course which prioritizes the human dimension of online teaching, is the brainchild of Professor Terry Fisher, who is committed to what he calls the democratization of higher education.

As Americans travel to other countries for medical care, Professor Glenn Cohen looks at the implications at home and abroad.

In the fall of 2009, Professor Cass R. Sunstein, left HLS to serve as the administrator at the helm of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, joining a humming warren of executive branch experts in trade, health, economics, science and other specialties.

On May 30th, Shannon Liss-Riordan ’96 opened The Just Crust, a worker-owned pizza restaurant that came as a result of a class-action lawsuit against Boston chain, The Upper Crust Pizzeria. Liss-Riordan is hoping to turn the infamous case accusing the pizza chain of stealing workers’ wages into an example of how giving employees a voice can be both fulfilling and profitable.

Many for-profit colleges, which get the overwhelming majority of their revenues from federal financial aid programs, rely on high-pressure tactics and false employment and salary guarantees to lure students into taking out loans. Now, through the efforts of Harvard Law School alum Toby Merrill ’11, some of the victims of these practices can get free legal aid to enforce their rights.

If you really want to improve your legal writing, says Harvard Law School alum Mark Yohalem '05, try writing a video game. A prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles with a Supreme Court clerkship under his belt, Yohalem has written more than 20 short stories and seven computer games in his free time.

As a deaf-blind student with very limited sight and hearing, Haben Girma '13 learned that you must be a self-advocate and come up with creative solutions to the problems you face. If that fails, she says, then the law can be a strong ally.

In her essay “Invisible Threats,” Harvard Law Professor Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03 builds on themes from a joint book project with Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform from 2009 to 2011, answers questions about the Affordable Care Act.

When you next have a free moment online, visit the Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite, launched by the Harvard Law School Library early…

Many Harvard Law School alumni have been extraordinarily successful, many have lived unusual lives, and not a few have done both—including Morgan Chu ’76, one of the most successful IP lawyers in the world, who, along with his wife, Helen, is endowing in perpetuity the dean’s chair at HLS. Dean Martha Minow will be honored as the inaugural Morgan and Helen Chu Dean’s Professor.

Alex Whiting, who currently serves as the prosecution coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, will rejoin the Harvard Law School faculty this July as a professor of practice. Whiting previously taught at HLS as an assistant clinical professor.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain '95 delivered the keynote speech at the recent Harvard IT Summit, devoting his lecture to the potential “end of .edu.” Zittrain is also a professor at Harvard Kennedy School, and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, as well as the co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.

“The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It,” a new article by Harvard Law School Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 and Dr. H. Benjamin Harvey ’09, was published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear a pair of cases involving same-sex marriage. Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman has written a legal history of gay marriage, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash and the Struggle for Same Sex Marriage.” In the March-April 2013 issue of Harvard Magazine, which appears below, Klarman published an article on “How Same-Sex Marriage Came to Be.” His scholarship was also profiled in the Fall 2012 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin in an article titled “The Courts and Public Opinion.”

Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis ’60, who was the Democratic nominee for president in 1988 and is now a professor of political science at Northeastern University, visited a session of Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Workshop in late April to lead discussion of a case study and answer student questions.