Today Posts

Digitized materials give new perspective on a storied figure Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story not only became Dane Professor at Harvard Law School while serving…

Donna Levin ’83 writes that she “abandoned the tranquillity of life as a litigator to join the fast-paced world of crossword construction.” This is her first puzzle for the Harvard Law Bulletin, but since 2005, approximately 250 of her puzzles have been published by major newspapers around the country.

It is the spring of 1997 and I am sitting in Pound 107 while Roger Fisher ’48, Williston Professor of Law, Emeritus, is telling a story about his serving as a weather reconnaissance pilot in World War II. As a teaching assistant for the Negotiation Workshop, I have heard the story at least a dozen times by now and feel my mind wandering. And yet, against my will, as the story reaches its crescendo and the combination punch line/negotiation lesson flows from Roger’s lips, I find myself involuntarily leaning forward and, a second later, helplessly bursting into laughter. The note I jot down to myself is: “All of life is about who tells better stories.”

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.mIn his new book, “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage” (Oxford), the HLS professor explores whether the same effect has taken place when it comes to same-sex marriage litigation.

Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 is author of the e-book “Obamacare On Trial” (Edward Elgar), focused on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court in June. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.

The highly connected nature of today’s world has all sorts of benefits—but all sorts of potential costs as well, from loss of control of private data to a world financial system so intertwined that when one part of it falls, it’s hard to keep other parts from toppling along with it. In “Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems,” John Palfrey ’01 and Urs Gasser LL.M. ’03 draw on their work at the HLS Berkman Center for Internet & Society to start developing a “normative theory identifying what we want out of all this connectivity.”

Why do many law school graduates become leaders? Individuals with legal training lead government, business, civic activities, and nonprofit organizations in the United States and around the world. Of course, leaders of law firms, law schools, and offices of government lawyers have legal training, but often so do leaders of companies, universities and countries. I think that a combination of self-selection, features of the law school experience, and particular elements of law itself contributes to the sizable presence across society of lawyers as leaders—and as effective ones, at that. Does this seem right to you? I offer these thoughts in hopes of prompting your suggestions.

Like many HLS students, Arvin Abraham ’09 took a job as an associate at a law firm after graduating. Yet, he did not leave his law school academic pursuits behind him. Thanks to a collaboration with a former professor, Lynn LoPucki LL.M. ’70, and a colleague, Bernd Delahaye LL.M. ’11, he is seeing the topic of his 3L paper expanded into a lengthy law review article to be published this fall.

What he’ll miss most, what he’ll do next, and the song he can’t get out of his head

For the first time in the history of U.S. presidential elections, both candidates of the major parties are graduates of Harvard Law School. Alumni remember the two presidential candidates as students.

Harvard Law School Professor D. James Greiner is co-author of a recent study on the experience of Boston voters in the election of 2008. As another election approaches, we ask Greiner a few questions about his study and the current efforts to pass tougher voter ID laws.

At a Sept. 19 event commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman, an expert on constitutional law and constitutional history, gave a lecture entitled "Why the Tea Party Has It Wrong: The Story of a Multifaceted Founding."

On Sept. 5, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan ’86 joined Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow for a conversation on life as a Supreme Court Justice. The former and current deans spoke before an overflow audience in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing building.

Viet D. Dinh '93, founding partner of Bancroft and a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, spoke at Harvard Law School on Sept. 18 at an event sponsored by Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession. Dinh, who served as U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy from 2001 to 2003 and played a key role in developing legal policy initiatives to combat terrorism, focused his remarks on “Peripatetic Reflections: Government, Academia and Boutique Law Practice."

On Sept. 20, Harvard Law School Professor Stephen Shay testified before the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The topic of the hearing was “Offshore Profit Shifting and the U.S. Tax Code."

"The view from Tunis: Fire, tear gas, and normalcy," a piece by Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, appeared in Bloomberg View on Sept. 14. Feldman, who is the Bemis Professor of International Law at HLS, is a regular contributor to Bloomberg View and the author of many books, including “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Justices” (Twelve Books 2010), and “The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State” (Princeton University Press, 2008).  

Undergraduates gathered at Farkas Hall last week to audition for a workshop that taps into the power and poetry of language. Harvard’s new dramatic arts offering “Hip Hop and Spoken Word: Theater Performance Laboratory” is being taught by visiting lecturer Bryonn Bain '01, an activist, rapper, poet, and musician.