Today Posts

UCLA School of Law Professor William Rubenstein '86 has accepted a tenured offer to join the Harvard Law School faculty. He is an expert in civil procedure whose scholarship focuses on class action law, and he is a celebrated teacher who has won several teaching awards.

Harvard Law School Professor and bankruptcy expert Elizabeth Warren testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary today about her research linking rising healthcare costs to increasing bankruptcy rates among the middle-class.

Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell '95 testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment yesterday about regulating cross-border exchanges. Ferrell described the current state of international exchanges and discussed ways for the SEC to better regulate international trading.

Harvard Law School Professors J. Mark Ramseyer ’82 and Steven Shavell are launching what will be the nation’s first faculty-edited journal with a broad legal focus. Entitled the Journal of Legal Analysis, the first issue is slated to be published in fall 2008.

Harvard Law School Professor and constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe '66 testified before a packed Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on June 26 about legislation proposed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller to regulate violent programming on television. Tribe warned against adopting the legislation in his testimony, saying it would violate free speech.

One year of planning came down to five hours of drama on June 23, 2007, when three Victorian-era buildings on the Harvard Law School campus were relocated 175 yards up Massachusetts Avenue to make way for the Northwest Corner development, a major new academic complex slated for completion in 2011. A section of an HLS dormitory at the destination on Mass. Ave. was demolished to make space for the houses. Traffic was diverted, and street signs, parking meters and traffic signals were removed. Pictured below: The heaviest of the three buildings, weighing more than 200 tons, was moved by 16 hydraulic dollies, at walking speed.

A quiz, courtesy of the Potter Stewart, of famous quotations.

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?