Today Posts

Harvard Law School's John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business recently hosted a conference at which authors presented their chapters for a forthcoming two-volume Handbook of Law and Economics. The Handbook, which will be edited by HLS Professor Steven Shavell and A. Mitchell Polinsky of Stanford Law School, is part of a prestigious series of handbooks in economics under the overall editorship of Stanford University Professor Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel laureate in economics.

Showing that pro bono work knows no national boundaries, Harvard Law School Professor Bill Alford is engaged in the development of the Special Olympics movement in China. Recently, this work took Alford to Beijing, where, with Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver and CEO Tim Shriver, he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao to discuss ways to enhance opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities in the world's most populous nation. That meeting was followed by the signing of an agreement to hold the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai.

Leaders in the field of disability will speak about whether disability rights fit into the traditional civil rights paradigm, how recent government action has affected the situation of people with disabilities, and a variety of other topics during the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Panel on Disability at Harvard Law School. The panel, which will take place in Austin East on March 23 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., will bring together speakers from several different disciplines to reflect on current pressing issues in the disability community.

On April 20, Harvard Law School will kick off five productions of The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s provocative 1953 play about the Salem witch trials. Professor Bruce Hay will direct a cast of Harvard students in a version of the play that will incorporate a scene not often used in previous productions.

To better understand the transformation of legal practice from a profession traditionally made up of small independent firms to a multi-billion dollar global business, Harvard Law School has established the Program on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry, the first program of its kind in the nation.

In an effort to prevent the confusion and mistakes that marked the 2000 election, a group of Harvard Law School students have launched a project to ensure that 2004 presidential election voters are given proper access to the ballot. The new group, Just Democracy, plans to recruit and place more than 1,000 law students with expertise in election law at what they believe could be high-risk polling places around the nation.

Two panels of academic experts, practitioners and activists from across the nation will gather for the Harvard Law School Journal on Legislation’s Spring Symposium on March 15, 2004, at 1:30 p.m. in the Austin West auditorium at Harvard Law School. The event is free and open to the public

On March 12 and 13, the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association at Harvard Law School and the Asian American Policy Review at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government will be hosting the 10th Annual National Asian Pacific American Conference on Law & Public Policy. The conference, entitled "Border Crossings: Globalizing the Asian Pacific American Movement for the 21st Century," will feature the presentation of the inaugural Yuri Kochiyama Award for Social Justice to life-long human rights activist Yuri Kochiyama, who will also give the keynote address.

The Harvard Law School Library has announced the opening of a new exhibition entitled "The Legal Portrait Project Online." The exhibition is the culmination of an 18-month project to catalog, digitize and make available the law school's 4,000-item portrait collection of lawyers, jurists, and legal thinkers dating from the Middle Ages to the late twentieth century. The exhibition, which is on display in the Caspersen Room of the library, is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until March 31.

On Monday, March 8, British Home Secretary and Member of Parliament The Right Honorable David Blunkett will give an address entitled, "Human Rights and the Terrorist Threat: Defending the Democratic State and maintaining Liberty--Two Sides of the Same Coin." The speech, which is sponsored by the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies, will begin at 5 p.m. in the Ames Courtroom.

On Saturday, March 6, the Harvard Women's Law Journal will hold a conference exploring the role of emotion in the law. The conference, which is free and open to the public, will feature a keynote address by Professor Kathryn Abrams of the Boalt School of Law and four panel discussions focusing on different aspects of the intersection of emotion and law. Registration for the daylong conference will begin at 9:30 a.m. in Pound 102.

The Harvard Law School Black Law Students Association and Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr. are hosting members of the Congressional Black Caucus at the 21st annual BLSA spring conference entitled "Aggressive Advocacy: Our Role in the Courtroom, the Corporation, and the Halls of Congress Fifty Years After Brown v. Board of Education." The three-day conference will begin on March 5.

The Harvard Law Review has elected second-year student Thiru Vignarajah as its 118th president. Vignarajah was elected from a slate of ten candidates.

Beginning today, February 12, Harvard Law School Professor Janet Halley will hold a series of workshops to reexamine notable--and often controversial--books. Entitled "Book Trouble 2004," these discussions will explore the role specific books play in the development of people's professional roles, historical crises, social alliances and social movements.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School has launched a new project, AudioBerkman, which will spotlight controversial issues related to the Internet, technology and the law. With one click, listeners can hear what industry experts and decision makers have to say about the subjects that are making news in cyberspace.

The Harvard Law School Immigration and Refugee Clinic at Greater Boston Legal Services is filing a friend of the court brief this week asking the U.S. attorney general and the Department of Homeland Security to treat women refugees seeking asylum protection fairly and consistently with its own rules and precedents. The clinic is submitting the brief in the case of Rodi Alvarado, a woman who is facing deportation back to Guatemala after suffering 10 years of human rights violations by her husband from which the Guatemalan government did not protect her. The brief, endorsed by more than 100 scholars, law professors and organizations, maintains that the violence and Guatemalan government’s failure to protect is grounded in Alvarado’s gender and her status as a married woman.

Third-year Harvard Law School student O. Grace Bankole has been selected as a 2004 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow. The fellowship funds lawyers, advocates and organizers who initiate litigation, public education, grassroots organizing and advocacy projects that will have a measurable impact on a host of criminal justice issues. Bankole intends use the two-year fellowship to create a program, Families Empowering Families, that will provide intensive legal and advocacy training to friends and families of Louisiana’s incarcerated children.

Harvard Law Student Advocates for Human Rights, a student group that works closely with the law school’s Human Rights Program, has recently filed a friend of the court brief with the Indian National Human Rights Commission regarding the disappearance of thousands of Sikhs in Punjab by the Indian government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The brief argues that international law requires the government to investigate thoroughly all allegations of disappearances and to accept and consider a wide variety of evidence in making its determinations.

Amanda Leiter has been named the first recipient of the Beagle/Harvard Law School fellowship. A 2000 graduate of HLS, Leiter will begin her fellowship at the conclusion of her current clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

Yesterday 54 members of the Harvard Law faculty filed a friend of the court brief in support of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the Society of American Law Teachers and other plaintiffs in their challenge to the Solomon Amendment as enforced by the Department of Defense. In 2002, the Department of Defense had threatened to withdraw federal funding from universities that did not provide access to law students by military recruiters.