Today Posts

Legal education is in a period of profound and much-needed change. That was the unanimous assessment of a group of experts at FutureEd2, a major conference at Harvard Law School that attracted more than 150 legal educators, practitioners, businesspeople and students from around the world.

This recent op-ed by HLS Professor Noah Feldman, "Supreme Court Sibling Rivalry: Will Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan elbow each other to greatness?” appeared in the November 8 edition of Slate Magazine.

More than 100 law students, lawyers, and community activists from around the country gathered at Harvard Law School November 15-16 to learn about Project No One Leaves, the HLS student initiative that has had remarkable success in keeping Boston neighborhoods intact despite the foreclosure crisis.

Glenn Cohen, Assistant Professor of Law and co-director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, addressed health care professionals as a guest speaker at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s 66th annual meeting, as part of the Ken Ryan Ethics Symposium - Cross-Border Care, on Oct. 25 in Denver, Colo.

As part of the Views from Washington lecture series at Harvard Law School, Kenneth Feinberg, the prominent lawyer with a reputation for resolving complicated claims cases, shared his experiences with law students in November. Feinberg is currently the administrator for the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, dealing with the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The history of the death penalty in America has been racially inflected, yet the death penalty reforms and regulations that have taken place over the past 40 years have given very little mention to race. That was the core message delivered by Harvard Law School professor Carol Steiker in a talk sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitutional Society.

In an op-ed for the UK publication the Daily Mail, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig takes a look at the recently-released film “The Social Network” – which he calls an “intelligent, beautiful and compelling film” – and weighs it against the real story of founder Mark Zuckerberg’s popular Internet platform.

Harvard Law School Professor Jody Freeman has been selected as a public member of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent agency of the United States government tasked with improving the efficiency and fairness of federal agencies.

In a special seminar sponsored by the Center for History and Economics at Harvard, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer ’64 of the U.S. Supreme Court discussed his new book, “Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View,” his jurisprudential philosophy, and as the origins of judicial review.

As a spate of head injuries in football made national headlines in October, students in a Sports Law class at Harvard Law School got a firsthand account of the dangers—and consequences—of head trauma in the NFL.

Prominent legal and political scholars explored the relationship between terrorism, diplomacy and law in a panel discussion in early October in light of “Laws, Outlaws, and Terrorists” (2010), a book written by Harvard Law School Professor Philip Heymann ’60 and Associate Professor Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03.

On October 21, Canon Andrew White delivered a lecture titled “Pursuing Reconciliation in Iraq: The Art of Mediation Between Warring Religious Factions.” Co-sponsored by the Human Rights Program and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School, the lecture focused on the role that religion must play in the peacemaking process in the Middle East.

Harvard Law School visiting professor Katherine Porter ’01 testified before the Congressional Oversight Panel on October 27. At a hearing on the TARP Foreclosure Mitigation Program, Porter—who specializes in consumer credit, consumer protection regulation, and mortgage servicing—spoke about how the allegations of legal errors in the foreclosure process may impact the housing markets, the soundness of banks, and the financial markets overall.

Tyler Giannini has been appointed as a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School. He was formerly a lecturer on law at HLS.

Robert H. Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, was elected an Academic Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, a national professional organization of approximately 2,600 lawyers who specialize in trusts and estates.

In 2009, the nation was captivated by the now-infamous Cambridge arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates. Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, who served as Gates’ attorney in the immediate aftermath of the arrest, wrote his latest book, “The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Race, Class and Crime in America” in response to the event. In addition to several appearances on national media outlets, Ogletree recently hosted a panel discussion at HLS featuring Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum and member of the Cambridge Review Committee that was established to review the incident.

Jeannie Suk ’02 has gained tenure as a professor of law at Harvard. The faculty voted to grant tenure on Oct. 14 and Harvard University approved it immediately thereafter.

Harvard Law School professor Adrian Vermeule ‘93, who is an expert on Constitutional Law, recently reviewed two books — one new and one "neglected classic" — which deal with the subject. The first, "Superstatutes," was featured in The New Republic; the other ("The small-c constitution circa 1925") was a contribution to the new Classics section of the online journal Jotwell.

Professor John C. Coates published “Corporate Governance and Corporate Political Activity: What Effect Will Citizens United Have on Shareholder Wealth?” in September, as part of the HLS Working Paper series.  

The White House released a statement from the President on Thursday, October 21 on the life of Paul Miller '86, who advised Presidents Obama and Clinton on disability and equal opportunity matters. Miller, a lawyer who was born with achondroplasia "dwarfism" and became a leader in the disability rights movement, died Tuesday at his home on Mercer Island, Wash. He was 49.