Today Posts

David Shapiro represents the true Renaissance man of legal academia. He has been a scholar, reformer, advocate, public servant and teacher, and at every turn, he has been a leader and model of excellence. There is much in his brilliant career to celebrate.

Imagine for a moment a lawsuit involving, as so many of them do, a dispute over accounting practices. Now add some complex questions of federal jurisdiction and procedure. Then assume that the parties decide—wisely—to settle. As the saying goes, “Who you gonna call?”

The influence of a great teacher like Dave Herwitz brings him nearer to immortality than most of us get. In my own nearly 50 years of professional life, I have met numerous wonderful individuals and benefited from the wisdom and character of many.

Scholars have long been fascinated by the democracy of classical Athens and the ways it is mirrored in democratic governments of today. Athenian law, on the other hand, has received little attention, since no modern legal system is descended from it.

The Bulletin asks Professor William P. Alford ’77 about the development of the legal system amidst the historic changes taking place in China.

Can law keep up with technology? Some Harvard lawyers are finding out.

Annette Lu LL.M. ’78 was wary of Ma Ying-jeou S.J.D. ’81 when they were students at HLS. Today she is vice president of Taiwan, and he is a leader of the opposition. Their intertwined stories may foretell Taiwan’s future.

Once known for producing more engineers than lawyers, Japan is embarking on a journey of legal expansion.

It’s no coincidence that Japan’s new three-year graduate law schools look a lot like the model of legal education Harvard Law School helped craft over the last century.

In Nepal, lawyers helped restore the rule of law. But not without paying a price.

The Honorable Richard Owen ’50 once penned an order for a “cursed Quaker” woman to be tied to a cart and driven through several towns where she was to be whipped “10 stripes.”

Diana Daniels ’74 was a Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate doing project finance in 1978 when she heard The Washington Post needed a lawyer.

After 20 years as Harvard Law School’s associate dean for development, Scott Nichols concluded his service on April 30 to become vice president for development and alumni relations at Boston University.

The following op-ed by Professor Alan Dershowitz, Arithmetic of Pain, was published in The Wall Street Journal on July 19, 2006: There is no democracy in the world that should tolerate missiles being fired at its cities without taking every reasonable step to stop the attacks. The big question raised by Israel's military actions in Lebanon is what is "reasonable."

The following op-ed, co-written by Professor Hal Scott, The End of American dominance in capital markets, was published in The Financial Times on July 19, 2006: Is a ticker-taped Trojan Horse soon to be planted on European shores, filled with an army of US regulators, Sarbanes-Oxley accountants and overzealous plaintiff lawyers?

Sabin Willett leads a double life as a lawyer. Most days, he works on bankruptcy litigation in the Boston office of Bingham McCutchen. He likes the work. Really, he says, sitting in a conference room with a sweeping view of Boston harbor.

HLS delegation barnstorms through Asia in mid-winter tour

When I first began to work with Frank Sander ’52 as a 3L at Harvard Law School in 1997, I realized that when it came to finding a mentor in alternative dispute resolution, I had struck gold.

The following op-ed by Professor Howell Jackson, Big Liability, was published in The New Republic Online. Jackson argues that the first test for Hank Paulson, the new Treasury secretary, will be a little-noticed government accounting dispute that could soon dwarf the Enron scandal.

The following op-ed by Professor David Kennedy, Recasting UN's Role, was published in The Boston Globe on July 8, 2006: Today's most significant global challenges, whether humanitarian or military, are being addressed by diverse ad hoc coalitions. This new multilateralism will require more from the United Nations, making the selection of the next secretary general more important than at any time in the organization's history.