Today Posts

The winners of Harvard Law School’s 58th annual Williston Competition, Harvard’s annual contract negotiation and drafting competition for first-year law students, were announced on April 18. 

HLS Lecturer on Law Juan Zarate ’97 was interviewed in the Washington Post today on national security threats after Osama bin Laden's death. From 2005 to 2009, Zarate served as the deputy assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism and was responsible for developing and implementing the U.S. Government’s counterterrorism strategy and policies related to transnational security threats.

In an opinion piece published in The New Republic on April 28, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy takes the stance that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 and Stephen Breyer ’64 should retire soon, suggesting that a calculated and timely exit would ensure the Democratic selection of justices who share their judicial philosophies.

It is imperative that governments uphold their obligation to ban cluster munitions absolutely, which is laid out in a treaty that more than 100 countries have joined, said a panel of disarmament experts in an HLS talk last week. Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Forum and the Harvard Human Rights Program, the panel described how the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was formed, and the challenges its advocates are facing despite its progress thus far.

Over five seasons on HBO, the show "The Wire" tackled topics such as the drug war, wiretapping, corruption, and intergenerational incarceration—all topics worthy of examination inside and outside the classroom, according to Professor Charles Ogletree '78. That is why he established a new class based on the show—“Race and Justice: The Wire”—whose curriculum includes readings and discussions on drug policy, police practices, and legal tactics.

In a talk at Harvard Law School on April 13, Carlos Castresana Fernandez, renowned Spanish prosecutor and head of the International Commission against Organized Crime in Guatemala (CICIG), offered an assessment of challenges facing the international body charged with investigating and prosecuting serious crime.

"Washington walks Ugandan tightrope," an op-ed co-authored by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree and University of Richmond School of Law Professor Jonathan Stubbs LL.M. ’79, was featured in the Opinion section of the April 27 edition of Politico.

Lobsang Sangay LL.M. '96 S.J.D. '04, the first Tibetan to attend Harvard Law School, has been certified as the new Kalon Tripa—a position often referred to as "prime minister" of a "Tibetan government-in-exile" headed by the Dalai Lama—following elections in March.

Harvard Law School Professor Carol Steiker ’86 has been appointed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to a three-year term on the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS). The 15-member committee oversees the statewide provision of public defense services and other legal representation for indigent persons in criminal and civil court cases and proceedings in Massachusetts.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has proposed changes to its rules governing markups, commissions and fees, partly in response to a study by Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell. The study, published April 7, is titled “The Law and Finance of Broker-Dealer Mark-Ups.”

Lunch with the NHL commissioner and general counsel. Dining in the U.N. delegates’ dining room. An Apple TV.  New Bergdorf socks. These were just a few of the items auctioned during “Step Right Up! Bids Under the Big Top,” the 18th annual Public Interest Auction on April 7.

Thomas Bodström, former Swedish Minister for Justice, discussed several key pieces of legislation implicated in the legal actions taken against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, at an event hosted by the Harvard European Law Association and the Center for European Studies on Friday, April 8, 2011.

Holger Spamann L.L.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’09, an expert in corporate governance and finance, will join the Harvard Law School faculty in July as an Assistant Professor of Law.

The Harvard Office of Sustainability hosted their second annual Green Carpet Award Ceremony in Sanders Theater on Monday, April 11. Complete with an actual green carpet, community members from across the University gathered to celebrate the achievements of individuals and teams contributing to campus sustainability.

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed science writer Gary Taubes delivered a lecture on March 30, “Why We Get Fat: Adiposity 101 and the Alternative Hypothesis of Obesity,” as part of a series of events sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Food Law Society.

Richard J. Lazarus ’79, one of the nation’s foremost experts on environmental law and also a leading practitioner in the U.S. Supreme Court, will join the Harvard Law School faculty this summer as a tenured Professor of Law.

In an article published in the April 20 Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law School Professor Hal S. Scott takes a look at the overregulation of private offerings by the Securities and Exchange Commission, following a recent statement by SEC Chair Mary Schapiro that the agency is investigating ways to reduce regulatory burdens on small-business capital formation. According to Scott, this should prompt a review of the regulation of offerings in both private and public markets.

Harvard Law School Professor Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. One of 212 new members, Gordon-Reed joins leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts among the ranks of the Academy.

In an April 18 op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 addresses how budget cutting in Congress threatens to undermine the Special Olympics—an organization whose history, according to Alford, “is one of how civil society and government working together can create results that neither could wholly attain on its own.”

Last month, Joseph G. Phillips ’12 and Joanne Box LL.M. ’11, students in the HLS International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), attended a U.N. disarmament conference, where they met with diplomats to urge adoption of stronger international laws regarding the use of incendiary weapons. The students worked under the supervision of HLS Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor Bonnie Docherty ’01, who is one of the country’s leading legal experts on cluster munitions and has expanded her work to other disarmament issues, including incendiary weapons.