Today Posts

The United States is experiencing “an environmental law-making crisis,” said Harvard Law School Professor Richard Lazarus at “Harvard Thinks Green,” an environmental sustainability event held at Harvard in December. The event was co-hosted by Harvard Thinks Big, the Office for Sustainability and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.

In December, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of petitioners in a major Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. The brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. argues that corporations can be held liable for violations of the law of nations under the ATS.

Harvard Law School Professor Duncan Kennedy, whose scholarship has focused on juridical thought, economic analysis of the law, the links between law and literary theory, and legal globalization, has become the first law professor to receive an honorary doctorate from Sciences Po in Paris.

By the time Tope Lawani ’95 started law school, he knew he would not likely spend his career practicing law. Already the impact of his Nigerian childhood and a captivation with investment markets had planted the seed of an idea that would eventually pull him back to his homeland in hopes of reaping great returns for investors—and for Africa itself.

The third Celebration of Black Alumni drew more than 700 graduates to the school in September and filled the campus with excitement and engagement, crossing generations. The Bulletin interviewed participants who graduated during each of the past five decades. They reflect on their own experiences and the path of social change in the era of the nation’s first black president.

On Aug. 25, Benjamin B. Ferencz ’43, who served as a chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials, made the concluding remarks for the prosecution in the International Criminal Court’s first case.

The HLS Library’s recent acquisition and digitization of “Summa de Legibus Normanniae” (Summary of the [Customary] Laws of Normandy) has the attention of legal history scholars, particularly HLS Professor Charles Donahue, author of “Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts.”

In September, Sarah Carlson ’07 and Kobelah Bennah ’08 sent this update: “This past April, we left our Big Law jobs in Manhattan, got married and moved into a tent in Haiti.

The HLS Executive Education Program offers intensive courses, including Leadership in Law Firms, aimed at law firm managing partners and senior firm leaders, and Leadership in Corporate Counsel, aimed at general counsels and chief legal officers.

While years ago, clinics at Harvard Law School were focused primarily on poverty law, student demand for business-oriented clinical experiences has since skyrocketed. And for HLS students interested in the business world, there are now numerous clinical opportunities.

HLS Professor William Alford ’77, a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of Special Olympics International and chair of its research and policy committee, met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November to discuss disability issues. Alford was a participant in the meeting at the invitation of Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, and Na Kyung-won, a member of the South Korean Congress who has been at the forefront of disability rights legislation.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

HLS Professor Einer Elhauge ’86, the founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, wrote “The Irrelevance of the Broccoli Argument against the Insurance Mandate,” which was published online Dec. 21 by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman was recently a guest on Voice of America’s “Press Conference” radio program, speaking with host Carol Casteil about the meaning of Sharia Law and the role that it could play in the burgeoning democracies of Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Libya.

HLS Clinical Professor Ron Sullivan ’94, who serves as director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute, was recently appointed to the Massachusetts Committee for Public Counsel Services. Sullivan joins Professor Carol Steiker ’86, who is also a member of the committee.

Margaret H. Marshall, who served over a decade as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, will join the faculty at Harvard Law School this spring as a senior research fellow and lecturer.

In today’s NY Times ‘Room for Debate’ online forum, Harvard Law School Professor David Wilkins ’80 writes on the topic of whether or not the Socratic method should still have a role in American legal education today.

A new collaboration seeks to pair the academic expertise of HLS professors on issues of national and international security with the policy expertise and access of the Brookings Institution in D.C.