Today Posts

Professor Emeritus Robert E. Keeton S.J.D. '56, a leading scholar on insurance law, torts, and trial tactics who taught at Harvard Law School and served as a District Court judge, died July 2 at the age of 88.

The Supreme Court concluded its 2006-07 term on June 29 by issuing several controversial decisions on topics ranging from campaign finance to school desegregation. The first full term of the Roberts Court was characterized by 24 5-4 decisions, more than any other recent term. Harvard Law School’s cadre of leading constitutional scholars offered their take on this historic term.

The following op-ed, Brown's legacy lives, but barely, written by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree '78 , was published in the Boston Globe on June 29, 2007.

Supreme Confusion Professor Charles Fried
The New York Times, April 26 “[The Supreme Court’s decision in the partial-birth abortion case is] disturbing because Justice Kennedy…

How do we put a value on our (intellectual) capital gains? Or calculate the windfalls (to our minds) that have accrued from our original basis—in this case, from the date that William Andrews ’55 joined the Harvard Law School faculty in fiscal year 1961 and the moment, a few reporting periods later, when Bernard Wolfman arrived in 1976? We can’t—a perfect example of immeasurable, and invaluable, gains.

In “Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence” (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Professor Alan M. Dershowitz contends that fundamentalist Christian political activists are misusing the declaration to Christianize America.

Headlines on any given day underscore the increasing globalization of antitrust law and economics—for example, “Apple iTunes charged by EC with restrictive pricing practices.”

After taking Professor Martha Nussbaum’s spring class Religion and the First Amendment, students are certainly familiar with the Supreme Court rulings on the public display of the Ten Commandments. But they can also quote Locke, Rousseau and Rawls.

How should societies deal with the aftermath of cataclysmic war and mass atrocities? It’s a question documentary filmmaker Rebecca Richman Cohen ’07 has asked former Nuremberg prosecutors.

Last fall, when most new LL.M. students were just settling into their studies in Langdell Hall, Sajjad Khoshroo ’07 found himself on the other side of Harvard Square—and in the middle of a political demonstration. As Mohammad Khatami’s personal assistant and interpreter, he accompanied the former president of Iran to a conference at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Since presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama ’91 launched his campaign earlier this year, some have questioned whether Americans are ready to elect a black president.

With the ongoing war in Iraq and fight against terrorism, questions involving the balance to strike among values of security, liberty and privacy are more pronounced today than at any time in recent memory. At such moments, the work of constitutional law scholars gains special urgency—a fact reflected in the number of HLS faculty members now on the front lines in critical national debates.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is adopting its first constitution. Will it raise the GNH (gross national happiness)?

Finally, the Supreme Court may have to decide what the Second Amendment means. But how much will really change?

If the world of consumer rights law is a battle against modern-day Goliaths—banks, HMOs, mortgage brokers, credit card companies and others with powerful resources—then F. Paul Bland Jr. ’86 is more than ready to play David.

From a blue-ribbon panel, a slate of prescriptions for improving the health of U.S. capital markets.

In the past, state-owned Chinese banks were known for bad loans and poor corporate governance. Recently, four of these institutions went public, with one IPO raising a record $21.9 billion.

Peter C. Krause is managing director of Greenhill & Co., a merchant bank with offices in New York City, Dallas, Toronto, London and Frankfurt.

They came from as far away as Sudan, Brazil, Australia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Taiwan, Russia, Japan and Argentina, and from as near as neighboring Virginia.

Perched on the 21st floor of an office building next to the Statehouse on Boston’s Beacon Hill, Juliette Kayyem ’95 has a spectacular view of the city’s waterfront. But when you’re the person in charge of Massachusetts’ homeland security, that view prompts vigilance more than anything else.