Today Posts

Joseph H. Flom ’48, the last living named partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and a leader in the field of mergers and acquisitions, died February 23, 2011 in New York City. He was 87. Flom helped transform a small New York firm into one of the most powerful legal institutions in the world, and he was also a dedicated philanthropist and supporter of Harvard Law School.

Shareholders could reduce the toxicity of corporate boards’ use of a “poison pill”—a device designed to block shareholders from considering a takeover bid—if they could replace board majorities more quickly, writes Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 in an op-ed that appeared in the Feb. 24, 2011, edition of the Wall Street Journal.

After countless hours of interviewing their client, digging through documents and working with experts to prepare for two court hearings, students in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic got what they were after: a grant of asylum.

The article “Revising Egypt’s Constitution: A Contribution to the Constitutional Amendment Debate” was published by the Harvard International Law Journal on Feb. 22, written by Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Chibli Mallat with co-authors Maria van Wagenberg ’11, Mostafa Abdelkarim ’11 and Harvard Kennedy School student Julian Simcock.

War between Israel and Iran is not inevitable, argued Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, in an event sponsored by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School last week. 

Harvard Law School Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law Martha L. Minow delivered the annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture on Women and the Law, sponsored by the New York City Bar Association, on February 7. The title of the talk was “Gender and the Law Stories: Learning from Longstanding Debates.”

The United States’ response to the 9/11 attacks has altered the legal landscape. That premise was outlined by William K. Lietzau, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Policy, in his keynote address at a conference titled  “Understanding Detention and Predicting Prosecutions: Legal Challenges and Legislative Options Ten Years After 9/11.” The conference, sponsored by the National Security and Law Association, took place on February 4 at Harvard Law School and featured panel discussions focusing on prosecutions and detentions in the aftermath of 9/11.

Harvard Law School continues to strengthen its commitment to environmental sustainability and to make progress towards Harvard’s university-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal to reduce emissions 30% by 2016. In January, Harvard Law School recorded its 18th straight month of energy reductions.

During a Feb. 4 workshop called “Strategic Decision-Making in International Affairs,” sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at the Center for Government and International Studies, the deans of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School laid out some of the challenges facing the University in this era of increasing globalization. They were joined by Jorge Dominguez, the vice provost for international affairs, who offered the University’s viewpoint, David Hunter, dean for academic affairs at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Beth Simmons, director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

The op-ed “Sometimes, Justice Can Play Politics,” by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, appeared in the February 12, 2011 edition of The New York Times. A constitutional law scholar, Feldman is the author of the recently published book “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of F.D.R.’s Great Supreme Court Justices.”

For the third year in a row, Harvard Law School has won the Northeast Black Law Students Association’s Trial Advocacy competition. HLS sent two teams to the competition this year, and, for the second consecutive year, HLS took both first and second place.

Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins will receive the Outstanding Scholar Award from The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. The award is given annually to a member of the academy who has engaged in outstanding scholarship in the law or in government.

In a Jan. 27 talk titled “Line of Fire: On Being a 'Fortune 10' General Counsel," sponsored by the HLS Program on the Legal Profession, Stephen F. Gates ’72 (M.B.A. ’72) addressed the role and responsibilities of in-house counsel in today’s changing world of legal practice, and he spoke candidly about some of the specific situations he has faced in the “line of fire.”

In a recent lecture given at Harvard Law School and sponsored by the Safra Center for Ethics, Jim Cooper '80, a Blue-Dog Democrat from Tennessee's 5th congressional district, said offered the assessment that Congress is "deeply broken." 

African-American children, who account for just 15 percent of all children in the U.S., represent more than a third of children placed in foster care. The question is: Why? That controversial issue and others surrounding society’s efforts to protect children were the focus of the conference “Race & Child Welfare: Disproportionality, Disparity, Discrimination: Re-Assessing the Facts, Re-Thinking the Policy Options,” held January 28-29 at Harvard Law School.

Harvard Law School has announced the appointments of U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner and Stephen Shay, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as Professors of Practice.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired a hearing on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and the provision that requires, beginning in 2014, every American to maintain health insurance coverage. The law requires all citizens without work-based insurance to purchase plans in the private market.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Mitchell Reich ’12 as its 125th president.