Today Posts

On a sunny day in June, seven members of the Sacks club, the team that won the Ames moot court competition in 1959, met on the steps of Langdell library to reminisce over what they called their “unlikely” victory, and to talk about where their lives had taken them in the fifty years since.

This fall, visitors to Langdell Hall have an opportunity to take a deeper look at the professor who saved a School. “A Storied Legacy: Correspondence and Early Writings of Joseph Story” is an exhibit of letters and manuscripts on display through Dec. 7 in the Harvard Law School Library’s Caspersen Room.

David Souter hung up his judge’s robes more than three years ago, after nearly two decades on the nation’s highest court. But on Thursday night, the retired Supreme Court justice seemed as sharp as ever as he directed his easygoing, often droll, always astute wit at the Harvard Law School students arguing before his bench during the final round of the 102nd Ames Moot Court Competition.

The Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems fosters the exchange of ideas on capital markets, financial regulation, and international financial systems through its portfolio of Symposia on Building the Financial System of the 21st Century. The symposia, started in 1998, bring together senior financial leaders, high-ranking government officials, and distinguished academics from the U.S. and their counterparts from China, Europe, Japan, and Brazil each year for intensive dialogue on issues affecting international capital markets. The 15th annual Japan-U.S. symposium was held this year in Karuizawa, Japan from Oct. 24 to 26. In a Q&A, HLS Professor Hal Scott, PIFS director, talks about the symposium’s history and impact.

In October, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued two rulings bolstering the rights of persons with psycho-social disabilities. Both cases were brought by Hungarian-Slovakian disability rights activist János Fiala-Butora LL.M. ’10, an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and an associate of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, known as HPOD.

Michael Klarman’s scholarship has focused on the effect that court rulings have on social reform movements. He argues that when courts get ahead of public opinion, political backlash often follows. That’s what he found in an earlier book he wrote on race and the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is a phenomenon he has also observed in cases involving the death penalty and abortion. In his new book, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage,” the HLS professor explores whether the same effect has taken place when it comes to same-sex marriage litigation.

At a Nov. 8 talk at Harvard Law School, Representative John Sarbanes ’88 (D-MD) advocated for “grassroots democracy” funded by the people rather than by Political Action Committees and other large donors. Sarbanes is a co-sponsor of the Grassroots Democracy Act, intended to empower small donors and to free lawmakers from their dependency on big money. The event was sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

Harvard Law School Professor and Democratic nominee Elizabeth Warren—bankruptcy expert, Wall Street reformer and consumer watch dog—has won a hard-fought race for the U.S. Senate against her Republican opponent, incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown.

Harvard Law School’s new lounge and pub in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building, was the gathering place for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents who stood side by side to follow the results on TV during a party organized by the School’s Dean of Students Office.

Jesse Reising ’15 was eager to start his career as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps upon his graduation from Yale—until his dream was derailed when he made a tackle during the 2010 Harvard-Yale football game, resulting in partial paralysis of his right arm. Medically disqualified from the Marines (he’d attended Officer Candidates School during college), Reising decided to serve those who serve in the military. Last summer, at Yale, he and two friends launched Operation Opportunity, with an initiative called the Warrior-Scholar Project, a two-week “academic boot camp” to help veterans transition from the military to college

According to U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., the defining feature of his job—the most challenging, rewarding aspect—is grappling with what the position of the United States should be on an issue. At a talk on Wednesday, Oct. 31 at Harvard Law School, Verrilli explained that this task is harder than it might seem, involving a balancing of interests and making considered decisions on whether the U.S. should modify a previously held position.

This year’s 1L class at Harvard Law School includes 16 military veterans. There are also nine 2Ls, six 3Ls, and three LL.Ms at HLS with records of military service. Thirteen are attending through the Yellow Ribbon program, through which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs matches what a law school offers to pay for a veteran’s tuition and expenses. HLS is one of very few schools making the maximum commitment—50 percent—which means, with the V.A.’s match, these veterans attend for free. Others are funding their HLS educations through the G.I. Bill and student loans. The three Navy JAG lawyers in the LL.M. program each receive a scholarship from HLS equivalent to the amount covered by the School under the Yellow Ribbon Program; their remaining costs are covered by the U.S. Navy.

Barack Obama ’91 has won election to the presidency of the United States for a second term.

This year’s 1L class at Harvard Law School includes 16 military veterans. There are also nine 2Ls, six 3Ls, and three LL.Ms at HLS with records of military service. Thirteen are attending through the Yellow Ribbon program, through which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs matches what a law school offers to pay for a veteran’s tuition and expenses. HLS is one of very few schools making the maximum commitment—50 percent—which means, with the V.A.’s match, these veterans attend for free. Others are funding their HLS educations through the G.I. Bill and student loans. The three Navy JAG lawyers in the LL.M. program each receive a scholarship from HLS equivalent to the amount covered by the School under the Yellow Ribbon Program; their remaining costs are covered by the U.S. Navy.

In October, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice sponsored a two-day conference looking back at Cooper v. Aaron and the impact it’s had on law and education over the course of 55 years. The event brought together legal scholars, students, and civil-rights lawyers and featured a moot-court proceeding involving U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and nine appellate judges, to revisit the legal questions raised by Cooper.

Rarely has a presidential race been so hard to call, said David Gergen ’67, during a talk on Oct. 26 at Harvard Law School Fall Reunions. A former adviser to four presidents, a regular contributor to CNN and a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, Gergen put the race between fellow HLS graduates Mitt Romney ’75 and President Barack Obama ’91 in historical perspective, analyzed its development, talked about its import—and made some predictions.

The controversial question of what role race should play in college admissions, if any, stands again before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. Lani Guinier, the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, teamed up with Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a professor of law at HLS and a professor of history at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), to explore the legal background and possible outcomes of the Fisher case, which was argued recently.

The growing trade in exploits of software security has become a “market in digital weapons,” leaving people in the U.S. and abroad vulnerable to cyberattack, said Christopher Soghoian, Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst at the ACLU, in an October 24th talk at Harvard Law School. “The entire industry, while it’s been in existence hasn’t received much sunlight,” said Soghoian, arguing that many regulators and policymakers do not even understand that the market exists. (Soghoian said that his talk, which was co-sponsored by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Journal of Law and Technology, only reflected his views and not those of the ACLU.)