Legal Profession and Ethics

‘Everyone is struggling to understand what this new world is going to look like’

Susan Hendrickson ’93, the new executive director of the Berkman Klein Center, recently spoke with Harvard Law Today about her career path, her advice for law students, what keeps her up at night and why, nevertheless, she continues to be optimistic about tech.

A Harvard Law School reading group debates how the law should manage self-driving cars, A.I.-generated art, and other algorithmic technology.

Professor Matthew Stephenson, an anticorruption law expert and founder of the Global Anticorruption Blog, explains the myriad ways corruption may play a role in Russia's war in Ukraine.

Alan A. Stone, the Touroff- Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus in the faculty of law and the faculty of medicine at Harvard, died Jan. 23. He was 92.

A wide range of books by faculty, from a collection of essays on the ethics of consumer genetic testing to a look at the fate of constitutional institutions in populist regimes to a delightful children's book by a legal philosopher

Social media’s business model of personalized virality is incompatible with democracy, agreed experts at a recent Harvard Law School discussion on the state of democracy.

At a Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Martha Minow, along with Vicki Jackson and Nikolas Bowie, discussed why the press is in danger — and how to save it.

Leaked revelations about Instagram’s impact on teens have united Republicans and Democrats in considering legal reforms, say Harvard Law School scholars.

Former White House Counsel and Harvard Law Lecturer Neil Eggleston explains the legal doctrine, its origins, and how it applies to ex-presidents.

At a Federalist Society event, David French ’94 says government “should keep its hands off” social media and argues that support for free speech is waning across the political spectrum.

September 2021 saw the publication of the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Law and Equality, a project developed by Professors Martha Minow, Randall Kennedy, and Cass Sunstein, in collaboration with MIT Press.

Mason Marks, POPLAR project lead and Petrie-Flom senior fellow, explains how the initiative will fill a gap in research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of psychedelics law and policy, and previews some of the initiative’s topics of inquiry.

Deception spreads faster than truth on social media. Who — if anyone — should stop it?

Harvard University Professor and former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues for a new Fairness Doctrine and other reforms in a National Constitution Center panel on free speech and media.

Health law has become especially timely in this year of COVID-19 vaccines and revitalized Obamacare. But for graduating student Phebe Hong ’21, it’s a passion that began in high school.

Professor Noah Feldman, who first proposed the idea of the Oversight Board to Facebook, weighs in on its decision to deplatform President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

A panel of Harvard Law professors discussed the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, which proved an occasion for cautious optimism, a bit of anxiety, and questions about what comes next.

Experts discuss the myriad ways money and wealth influence criminal processes and outcomes as part of the yearlong "Policing in America" colloquium series, led by Harvard Law Professors Alexandra Natapoff and Andrew Manuel Crespo.

As Harvard Law students across the world logged onto Zoom this fall to connect to their professors and peers, Sidharth Chauhan LL.M. ’21 took virtual education a step further.

Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz ’87 recently spoke to Harvard Law Today about his work to ensure the integrity of the DOJ and beyond.

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes. 

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is joining forces with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, its counterpart at Yale Law School, to host a seminar series reflecting on ethical and legal issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the 2020 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Clare Hall, Cambridge, Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain explores the clash of free speech and public health online.

When Joe Biden began presidential duties last week, he issued an ethics pledge for his administration. And the students in the Harvard Law School course Legal Profession: Government Ethics—Scandal and Reform were paying especially close attention.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis intensifying discussions about corporate purpose duties to stakeholders, the European Corporate Governance Institute and the London Business School Centre for Corporate Governance recently hosted a virtual debate on stakeholder capitalism between Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and London Business School Professor Alex Edmans.

Christopher Lewis, a political philosopher and scholar of the criminal legal system, has been named an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School, effective Jan. 1.

The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project has been used by students, academics, filmmakers and artists among others to support their work in the retelling and documentation of World War II and the atrocities committed during that time.

Can President Donald J. Trump pardon himself before his term ends in January? This hotly debated legal question was given new urgency by the president’s recent decision to pardon Michael T. Flynn, his first national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia.

Cass Sunstein ’78, Robert Walmsley University Professor and former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, believes “Nudge theory” might help bridge the gap between supply and demand for organ transplants.

A new report from the HLS International Human Rights Clinic and the Conflict and Environment Observatory establishes a new framework for addressing human harm resulting from the environmental consequences of conflict.

Harvard Law Today spoke Monday with tax experts Keith Fogg and Thomas Brennan about the New York Times' report on President Donald J. Trump’s taxes.

Anti-corruption law expert Matthew Stephenson focuses his recent scholarship on anticorruption reform in U.S. history.

Mark Tushnet discussed with Harvard Law Today the possibilities for, and potential pitfalls of, any effort by an incoming Democratic majority to pack the Supreme Court.

In the first colloquium of a sweeping new series, “COVID-19 and the Law,” five Harvard Law faculty members grappled with the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of governmental powers during a public health crisis.

Andrew Crespo ’08 recently discussed the federal government’s law enforcement actions in Portland, Oregon with Harvard Law Today.

Lawrence Lessig issues a statement on the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that states can require Electoral College voters to back the victor of their state’s popular vote.

Beatrice Lindstrom, clinical instructor and supervising attorney in the International Human Rights Clinic, has been working for nearly a decade to secure accountability from the U.N. for a devastating cholera outbreak caused by UN peacekeepers in Haiti in 2010.

COVID-19 presents a unique threat to people in prisons and jails, agreed panelists at “Incarcerated Populations and COVID-19: Public Health, Ethical, and Legal Concerns,” a webinar hosted by Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

A physician-researcher, Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20 explored the intersections among empirical science, law, and medicine during her LL.M. year at Harvard Law School.

Years of advocacy by Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program have culminated in a landmark decision recognizing gender as basis for asylum claims.

Student fellows at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics recently celebrated their fellowships’ end virtually when their capstone meeting moved to Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is currently taking the lead in the effort to explore the ways data can be mined to increase understanding of COVID-19 and to fight it more efficiently.

Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan, joined 21 other conservative or libertarian attorneys in a statement condemning inspector general Michael Atkinson’s ouster as part of a “continuous assault on the rule of law.”

HLS Professors Glenn Cohen and Andrew Crespo discuss their proposals to protect doctors and hospitals from potential lawsuits and criminal prosecution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a March 27 Petrie-Flom event on medical debt and universal health coverage, health experts and journalists raise serious concerns about the affordability of testing and hospital care.

Harvard Law School Professor Emily Broad Leib ’08, director of the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic, and her students have been working furiously to ensure that the most vulnerable—and ultimately the rest of us—are fed during the COVID-19 pandemic.