Today Posts

“I took the view that what we ought to be talking about and thinking about was universal suffrage,” stated Michael Young in a lecture at Harvard Law School titled, “The Secret Talks That Led to the Fall of Apartheid.”  As a British businessman in the 1980s, Young initiated and led unprecedented talks between the African National Congress and the South African government that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

As part of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), Krystyna Wamboldt ’12 and Rachel Krol ’12 traveled to Jerusalem in January with HLS Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ’97 to teach negotiation and mediation skills to a group of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers.

The presidency is more powerful, larger, and has more tools at its disposal than ever before, said Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith. But, he quickly added, that’s only half the story. The other half of the story—the forces that constrain presidential power—was the main topic during a March19 panel discussion of his new book “Power and Constraint: The Accountability Presidency after 9/11,” hosted by the Harvard Book Store at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square.

The Supreme Court opened its review of the national health-care overhaul on Mar. 26, the first of three days of oral arguments on the 2010 law. In light of the historic arguments, law schools professors at HLS and elsewhere in the Boston area have incorporated the debate into their classrooms, and, In the media, HLS Professors I. Glenn Cohen. Einer Elhauge, Noah Feldman, Charles Fried and Laurence Tribe weighed in on the case.

On March 22, the Human Rights Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School sponsored “Protecting Human Rights Through the Mechanism of UN Special Rapporteurs,” a talk by Surya Subedi. Subedi, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia and Professor of International Law at the University of Leeds, discussed the role of the Special Rapporteurs in combating human rights abuses and he shared anecdotes about his work in Cambodia.

John Payton ’77, a leading civil rights lawyer who defended the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy before the Supreme Court and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, died March 22, 2012. He was 65.

Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott’s Program on International Financial Systems (PIFS) hosted the 10th annual Symposium on Building the Financial System of the Twenty-first Century: An Agenda for Europe and the United States on March 22-24 at the Weill Center in Armonk, N.Y.  Co-hosted by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), the event gathered 100 senior executives and government officials from the financial industry, policymaking arenas, law, and academia.

In early March at Harvard Law School,  Lesley Rosenthal ’89, author of the new book "Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits," discussed the career path that has led her to be vice president, general counsel and secretary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

On March 6, the husband and wife team of former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine ’83 and First Lady Anne Holton ‘83 gave a talk at Harvard Law School on how to construct a long-term public service career that is able to change and evolve and is meaningful, fun and that allows room for family, friendship, and community involvement.

As part of the Defending Childhood Task Force, Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree participated in a hearing on March 21 at the University of Miami School of Law, addressing the problem of children’s exposure to community violence.

When the second wave of feminism swept the country in the early 1970s, a woman had never served on the United States Supreme Court. There had never been a woman Secretary of State. If there were any women attorneys general, CEOs, or law school deans, they were rarer than water vapor on the moon. Today, there’s nothing to hold women back. Right? Not so fast. That’s the message delivered by keynote speaker Nancy Gertner to the 300-plus attendees of the National Association of Women Judges’ (NAWJ) conference held at Harvard Law School in mid-March.

U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. selected this year’s speaker for Class Day ceremonies at Harvard Law School. Class Day will take place on Wednesday May 23, 2012.

On February 27, the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession sponsored a lecture by ABA President William Robinson III about a critical issue facing the legal system – state court underfunding. Robinson outlined facts and figures that speak to the enormity of the crisis, and underscored what those numbers mean to those seeking justice and to the American concept of democracy.

Columbia University announced on Mar. 14 that a recent book by Tomiko Brown-Nagin will be awarded the 2012 Bancroft Prize. Her award-winning book “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement” (Oxford University Press, 2011) offers a startling new perspective on the Civil Rights movement.

In a recent book review for The New Republic, Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 examines Richard A. Epstein’s “Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law” (Harvard University Press, 2011).

A scholar of administrative law and constitutional law and theory, Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 has written the new book “The System of the Constitution” (Oxford University Press), in which he explores how individuals and larger institutions together shape the constitutional order. Vermeule recently spoke about his book and an event in London that featured discussion of his ideas.

Director of the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School (PLMS), Professor Jon Hanson has long combined social psychology, economics, history, and law in his scholarship. In a recent Q&A, he spoke about the new book, the connection between law and mind sciences, and his own work in a field that has grown rapidly over the past 20 years.

Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith appeared on the Mar. 12 edition of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook alongside ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. The two addressed the controversy over Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent remarks at Northwestern University Law School in which he defended the legality of the Obama administration’s use of targeted killings of Americans suspected of terrorism-related activity.

David J. Barron ’94, Harvard Law School’s Hon. S. William Green Professor of Public Law, has been appointed by Governor Deval Patrick ’82 to the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, the governor’s office announced Monday.