Criminal Law and Procedure

The American Law Institute has announced that it will award its Early Career Scholars Medal to Professor Crystal S. Yang ’13 and Professor Leah Litman of the University of Michigan Law School.

On March 7, the Harvard Law School Library kicked off a series of events on the subject of capital punishment in connection with their exhibit Visualizing Capital Punishment: Spectacle, Shame, and Sympathy.

Rebecca Richman Cohen, a Harvard Law School lecturer, debuts a new documentary on the unintended consequences following the recall of the judge in the Brock Turner assault case.

Chief counsel of a respected mid-’70s Senate inquiry into improper federal investigations says the credibility of the oversight function is at stake.

Experts on law and policy say the originalist view used to overturn Roe v. Wade could upend a 1976 ruling based on the cruel and unusual punishment clause.

‘Unintended consequences’ and the legacy of of the 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia

During winter term, students in the Criminal Justice Appellate Clinic work in Washington, D.C. with the MacArthur Justice Center on ongoing cases related to civil rights and the criminal justice system.

Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner asks whether ‘it is fair to use the criminal legal system’ to assess the actor’s responsibility.

The Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of talks on the death penalty in conjunction with the library’s exhibit “Visualizing Capital Punishment: Spectacle, Shame and Sympathy.”

HLS Alexandra Natapoff argues in her revised book that snitching undermines justice and recommends what we should do about it. 

With support from PSVF and Wasserstein fellowships, Mercedes Montagnes ’09, founder of the Promise of Justice Initiative, has tackled injustices in the Louisiana carceral system.

Anna Lvovsky ’13 has been promoted to professor of law at Harvard Law School. A scholar of criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and evidence, she joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2017.

In the first of the series, “Cases in Brief,” Harvard Law Professor Dehlia Umunna discusses the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case, Powell v. Alabama (1932), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that defendants in capital cases have the right to adequate legal counsel.

Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Alex Whiting, deputy specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, outlines the path from investigation to trial, and ultimately to justice.

For the past two years, students in Harvard’s Prison Legal Assistance Project have helped prisoners they say were targeted for retaliatory violence.

HLS Professor Andrew Crespo was one of 59 members elected to the American Law Institute this year. Thirteen Harvard Law School alumni were also elected.

“This administration needs to get out of its own way, … take action where it can, and create pathways for others to take action where it cannot or will not,” says Premal Dharia, executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

In a case that could have national implications, the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic recently convinced judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to discredit the use of controversial municipal gang databases in immigration proceedings.

In “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” Harvard Law Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin traces the tactics of the groundbreaking lawyer amid pivotal protests.

Described as one of the great figures in the history of Harvard Law School, Lloyd L. Weinreb ’62, a leading authority on criminal and copyright law, and an HLS professor for nearly a half-century, died Dec. 15, at the age of 85.

A highly principled public official and beloved colleague, Heymann had a distinguished career in academia, and serving in four presidential administrations, including in the solicitor general’s office under President John F. Kennedy, in several U.S. State Department jobs for Lyndon Johnson, as a Watergate prosecutor, as assistant attorney general during the Carter administration, and as deputy attorney general under Bill Clinton.