Legal History

Harvard Law School Library's Amanda Watson discusses the importance of digitizing the past in light of a recent Magna Carta discovery.

A new online course by Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman explores the history of race and the United States Constitution.

Harvard Law Professor Kenneth Mack says that early unions often excluded Black workers, but that today’s labor and social justice movements often ‘dovetail’.

Harvard Law School Professor Gerald Neuman says a president has no authority at all to change United States citizenship rules.

English medieval law expert Elizabeth Papp Kamali explores the roots of modern criminal procedure through papal precedent and the story of Saint Veronica.

Gannett House, built in 1838 as a private residence and purchased by Harvard Law School in 1897, is the oldest surviving building on the Harvard Law School's campus.

Harvard Law School celebrates the Caselaw Access Project and its efforts to transform justice with the digitization of millions of pages of case law.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, received the 2023 the Order of the Coif award for her book “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.”

Jill Lepore, award-winning American historian and writer, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a professor of law.

Idriss Paul-Armand Fofana, a legal historian whose research examines the relationship between international law and global inequality, has joined the Harvard Law School faculty.

Oren Tamir, a post-doctoral fellow, says that many of the critiques of the major questions doctrine tend to miss the mark — and that, with some changes, the doctrine could be fixed in ways that would make it a valuable contribution for our law and democracy.

A friendly competition between four Harvard Law students in 1960 has grown into the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, with 700 students competing worldwide.

In his last lecture to the J.D. and LL.M. classes of 2023, Michael Klarman celebrates civil rights heroes and issues a clarion call for democratic engagement.

As the inaugural Fred N. Fishman Professor of Constitutional Law, Laura Weinrib described the arc of union power in the 20th century and its relationship to political spending.

At Harvard Law School, Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner discusses differences with the U.S. judiciary and argues that access to justice is a ‘democratic imperative.’

Speakers at a Radcliffe Institute conference look at the divisive, fraught history of Roe v. Wade and predict where legal battles will go next.

At Harvard Law’s Rappaport Forum, panelists debated the Supreme Court's reliance on history and tradition in recent decisions in Dobbs and Bruen.

In a Library book talk, Professor Vicki Jackson and panelists discuss constitutionalism, and rights to effective government