Today Posts

The American Law and Economics Association announced at its annual meeting on May 17 that Professor Steven Shavell will be the 2014 recipient of the Ronald H. Coase Medal. Shavell is the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professor of Law and Economics and director of the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business at Harvard Law School.

On May 14, several members of the Harvard Law School community came together aboard the U.S.S. Constitution as three Harvard Law School students swore oaths to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States" as part of their commission as officers in the United States Navy Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps.

Author, lawyer and Emmy Award-winning legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin ’86 will serve as Class Day speaker on May 29 at Harvard Law School.

Graduating HLS students help build a new court mediation program to meet demand for protection from harassment.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr. ’43 will receive the 2013 Harvard Medal from the Harvard Alumni Association for his extraordinary service to the University. Coleman, who was recognized along with James V. Baker A.B. ’68, M.B.A. ’71 and Georgene Botyos Herschbach Ph.D. ’69, will receive the award on Commencement Day, May 30.

In the May 21 edition of The New York Times’ ‘Room for Debate,’ Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried considers the question of whether the Obama administration’s actions against journalists in leak inquiries has protected national security or violated the First Amendment.

This semester, Harvard Law School launched the Law and History program of study, which is headed by two faculty leaders: Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin, who is also a Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Professor Kenneth Mack. In a Q&A, Brown-Nagin discusses the origins and goals of the new program of study as well as her own scholarship.

Fifty years after the Supreme Court determined in Gideon v. Wainwright that criminal defendants must be provided with counsel, scholars and practitioners from around the country grappled with continued limits on access to justice during an Harvard Law School conference in April titled “Toward a Civil Gideon: The Future of Legal Services.”

In April, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, a specialist in constitutional law and theory, was interviewed by his colleague and former collaborator Vicki Jackson on the new book “Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law” (Routledge 2012). Tushnet co-edited the book with Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Saunders.

The Law School’s Class Day program was held on Wednesday, May 29, on Holmes Field, in front of Langdell Library. This year’s Class Day speaker, author and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reflected on his time at the law school. Professor Benjamin I. Sachs, who was selected by the class of 2012 to receive the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award, delivered remarks at the ceremony, as did Isabel Lima, Office Manager at WilmerHale Legal Services, who was the recipient of the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award. Several students were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.

In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. When a spot opened up on CPCS's Youth Advocacy Project, Tan switched to working on juvenile cases and has spent her career doing so ever since. Tan was sworn in on May 3rd.

Harvard Law School Professor Jeannie Suk '02 received the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award from the Harvard Federalist Society in April. The award is bestowed upon a faculty member who has furthered the cause of intellectual diversity and free and open debate at Harvard Law School, both inside and outside of the classroom, regardless of that professor's ideological leanings or favored theories of jurisprudence.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointment of Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, as a Professor of Practice.

Environmental lawlessness was the topic of discussion on April 10, as Richard Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law, gave a lecture marking his appointment to the Howard J. and Katherine W. Aibel Professorship of Law.

Last month, as an historic trial continued in Guatemala against a former dictator charged with the genocide of indigenous Mayans, Lauren Herman ’13—a student in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) —stood in court in Boston as a judge announced he was granting asylum to her Mayan client, who, with his family, had suffered persecution for decades before he came to the U.S. in 2009.

John F. Manning ’85, the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law at Harvard, and an expert in administrative law, statutory interpretation, separation of powers law and the federal courts, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Each year, students at Harvard Law School receive a number of impressive fellowships and scholarships to work in the public sector and on research projects in foreign countries.