Today Posts

The following op-ed was written by Professor Elizabeth Warren and published in The Washington Post on February 9, 2005: "Nobody's safe. That's the warning from the first large-scale study of medical bankruptcy...."

Nearly half of all Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical expenses, according to a new study released jointly by researchers at Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School this week. The study, which is based on surveys of 1,771 individuals filing for bankruptcy, is the first of its kind to gather extensive information on the correlation between medical conditions and expenses and bankruptcy.

Scholars from as faraway as Hong Kong and as nearby as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences gathered last week at Harvard Law School for a conference on professionalism in China. The event, The Professions and Professionalism in China, sponsored by the East Asian Legal Studies Program and the Harvard University Asia Center, addressed fields ranging from law, medicine, and religion to journalism, architecture, and business.

On Wednesday, January 19, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, spoke to students at Harvard Law School. Moderated by Professor Martha Minow, an expert in international justice, Ocampo spoke about his role as the first I.C.C. prosecutor and the challenges of working within an emerging legal system.

Following Friday's decision by the Department of Justice to allow Rodi Alvarado Pena, a Guatamalan woman, to remain in the United States, leaders of the the Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic offered cautious praise.

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the 2004 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at Harvard University in November, sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The following is an edited version of Justice Breyer's text, which was published in the January 2005 issue of Harvard Law Today.

Every day on university campuses, graduate students defend their scholarship in front of faculty panels whose interrogations can be withering. At Harvard Law School, the tables are being turned. Professor Kingsfield is in the hot seat, and the students are doing the questioning.

The story of a current Harvard LL.M. student who is taking the Slovakian government to court over allegations of forced sterilization of poor women.

In a wide-ranging conversation, election law expert Heather Gerken, an assistant professor, takes a look at the legal issues surrounding the 2004 race.

On Friday, January 7, beginning promptly at 12:30 pm, the East Asian Legal Studies program is hosting a panel discussion focusing on the catastrophic events following the earthquake and tsunami in Asia. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Ames Courtroom in Austin Hall.

Professor Morton Horwitz's class on the Supreme Court -- specifically the Warren court -- was the subject of a feature on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program on Monday, January 3. Click here to listen to a webcast of the NPR piece.

Following a vote of the Harvard Law School faculty, Guhan Subramanian has been promoted from assistant professor to professor of law -- a tenured faculty position. A corporate law expert who specializes in deal making and corporate governance, Subramanian joined the HLS faculty in 2002 as the Joseph Flom Assistant Professor of Law and Business. Prior to this appointment, he spent three years on the faculty of Harvard Business School, where he taught courses on negotiations and business law.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic's Women Refugees Project has submitted an amicus curiae brief in the case of Thomas v. Ashcroft. The brief urges the court to allow asylum in the United States based upon family membership. The case, which was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, involves a woman whose family was subjected to attacks and whose lives were threatened because of racist actions taken by her father-in-law.

A recent article by Professor Guhan Subramanian '98 has people in the M-and-A world talking -- and the article has yet to be published. Although it has a decidedly academic title, "Post-Siliconix Freeze-Outs: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Subramanian’s paper has received significant coverage in legal and business trade journals such as The American Lawyer, The Deal and Corporate Control Alert.

Scott Smith was living in Ames Hall in early 2003 when he got a call that sent him to his room to pack his things and leave school immediately. "I had 48 hours to report for duty," said Smith, who was then a captain in the Marine Reserves. "I was packing all my stuff and people kept coming by my room, saying, 'Where are you going?' When I said I was mobilized, they were shocked."

On Dec. 10, leaders of the internet campaigns for President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry will debate the influence of the web in the 2004 election. This discussion is part of a three-day conference—Votes, Bits and Bytes—hosted by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society to take a skeptical look at whether online technologies have changed political participation, citizenship, and governance, both in the United States and worldwide.

A team of Indian law experts met recently at Harvard Law School to finalize updates to Felix Cohen's landmark "Handbook of Federal Indian Law." Scholars consider the Cohen handbook--published in 1941--to be the leading text on federal Indian law. Cohen wrote the first edition while serving as an assistant solicitor in the Interior Department during the Roosevelt administration.