Today Posts

The Cambridge Historical Commission’s Cambridge Preservation Recognition Program selected the restoration of 1637 Massachusetts Avenue, Baker Hall and 3 Mellen Street, now law school student residences, for a Preservation Award, in March.

Robert Sitkoff, John L. Gray Professor of Law at HLS, gave this year’s Joseph Trachtman Memorial Lecture at the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel in Los Angeles in March.

The following article by HLS Professor John Palfrey was published March 31, 2009 on the First Amendment Center Online site. Palfrey’s article is part of an online symposiumtitled Cyberbullying & Public Schools.

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84, “A fix for Geithner’s plan,” appeared in the March 31, 2009, edition of the Washington Post.

For 35 years, Washington, D.C. attorney Robert B. Barnett has been one of the nation’s most sought-after lawyers, representing major corporations including McDonald’s, General Electric, and Comcast.

Leaders from the financial sectors of Europe and United States have gathered in Torino, Italy, this week to examine issues affecting their financial markets.

President Barack Obama ’91 has nominated Helen R. Kanovsky ’76 as general counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Harvard Law School Library has announced the creation of the Morris L. Cohen Fellowship in American Legal Bibliography and History.

President Barack Obama ’91 has reappointed Stuart A. Levey ‘89 as undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. 

Hauwa Ibrahim first came to international attention in 2003 when she won an appeal for Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning under Sharia law. Ibrahim has now been involved with more than 150 such cases—using Sharia law to fight Sharia penalties.

Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law at HLS and a nationally renowned expert on sexuality and the law, helped to organize the conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions” [see story], which she says was “one of the best conferences on gender and the law in five years.”

Dean of Yale Law School Harold Hongju Koh ’80 has been named legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State, President Barack Obama ’91 has announced. Kate Stith ’77 has been appointed acting dean of Yale Law School.

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 was a student at HLS in the 1950s, she was one of nine women in a class of more than 500, and women weren’t allowed to live in the dorms. Still, “I found the professors endlessly stimulating and the discussion with my colleagues equally so,” she recalled as the featured speaker at “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions,” a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study co-sponsored by HLS.

On March 22, HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren appeared on NBC’s Dateline in a three-part investigative series “Inside the Financial Fiasco,” on how risky home loans helped cause a chain reaction that led to failures on Wall Street and the near collapse of the American economy.

Brian T. Aune ’10 and Jennifer D. Dein ’11 won the top two spots in the HLS 2009-2010 student government elections held on March 18 and 19. Aune was elected president and Dein was elected vice-president.

LS Professor Mary Ann Glendon, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be honored by the University of Notre Dame with its Laetare Medal.

The following op-ed, “AIG still isn’t too big to fail,” by HLS Professor Lucian A. Bebchuk, director of the corporate governance program at HLS, appeared in the March 20 issue of The Wall Street Journal. This op-ed is based on his forthcoming paper, “Is AIG Too Big To Fail?”

Has the Obama administration changed the legal rules for detaining suspects in the war on terrorism, or is it continuing in the footsteps of the Bush administration? HLS Professor Noah Feldman explores the question in an op-ed, “A Prison of Words,” that appeared in the March 19 edition of The New York Times.

Scott Blake Harris ’76, managing partner of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis in Washington, D.C., has been nominated by President Barack Obama ’91 to be general counsel at the U.S. Department of Energy.

The United States Senate voted today to confirm Dean Elena Kagan ’86 as the 44th solicitor general of the United States. By a 61 to 31 vote, Kagan became the first woman solicitor general in U.S. history.

The following is excerpted from a March 17, 2009, post entitled, “When Bonus Contracts Can be Broken,” which appeared on the New York Times Blog, “Room for Debate: A Running Commentary on the News.”