Hands On
There are now 16 clinics at HLS, enabling students to do fieldwork at home and abroad. Here are stories from three of them, taking students inside inner cities and inner sanctums.
At Home in the World
The new curriculum embraces law’s increasingly transnational nature
The Ultimate Cafeteria
With the help of Harvard Law School’s new curriculum reforms, it’s getting easier for law students to take part in Harvard University’s intellectual feast.
Insider Insights
The 2008 presidential race got off to an unusually early and competitive start. Few political observers are better equipped to analyze how this unusual campaign year will play out than two Harvard Law School alumni: David Gergen ’67 and Robert M. Shrum ’68.
A Curriculum of New Realities
At Harvard Law School, some new answers to the question, What do future lawyers need to know?
Building a Bridge of Redemption
Christina Greenberg’s client was labeled disruptive and was sent home from elementary school every single day last spring. The 8-year-old—who is mentally disabled, has hydrocephalus, seizures and is in a wheelchair—then lost summer services because his school district failed to submit the necessary paperwork. His mother—struggling to care for her son and his disabled twin on $1,000 a month—was desperate when she reached Greenberg, a summer intern with Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
The Rap on RAP
A renowned expert on trusts and estates, Professor Robert Sitkoff joined the HLS faculty this fall from New York University School of Law. He says we are in the midst of a “quiet revolution in modern American trust law.” Here, he explains.
The Minister of Thought
Two years ago, HLS Professor Roberto Unger LL.M. ’70 S.J.D. ’76 publicly denounced the government of his native Brazil, calling it “the most corrupt in history.” He also called for the impeachment of its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known throughout Brazil as “Lula.”
Leaving the Mound
This fall, the classrooms and lecture halls of Harvard Law School no longer reverberated with the voices of two of the institution’s best-known teachers—Professors Arthur R. Miller ’58 and Paul C. Weiler LL.M. ’65. Miller ended his 36-year HLS career last year, and Weiler retired after 26 years of teaching at the school.
Writ Large: Faculty Books
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For all his eloquence and conviction, Jack Goldsmith is a quiet man. For three years, he remained silent about his brief and controversial stint as head of the Office of Legal Counsel in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice. And even following the much-publicized publication of his book “The Terror Presidency” in September, Goldsmith does not relish the steady demand for comment about his Department of Justice tenure.
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At first, the notion that Israel could sit down with its sworn enemies and achieve a limited agreement to protect civilians seemed far-fetched to Gabriella Blum LL.M. ’01 S.J.D. ’03. The year was 1997, Blum was a young officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and she’d just been assigned to a group with the task of monitoring that noble, if dubious, effort.
Alumni Notes and Newsmakers
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For Paul Butler ’94, it’s been gospel music 24/7—ever since he joined the Gospel Music Channel in 2006, as vice president of business affairs and development.
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Like so many of his classmates, when Jay Munir graduated from Harvard Law School in June 2001, he was headed for a job as a litigator at a large firm. If someone had asked him the standard interview question, Where do you see yourself in five years? his answer certainly would not have been, “Anbar Province, Iraq.”
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As law becomes more global, options for foreign study expand Like his peers at Harvard Law School, Nels Hansen ’08 faced a heavy academic load…
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As a teenager growing up in a suburb of Chicago, Susan D. Page ’89 already knew she wanted to live overseas: “I think it was an early reflection of my feelings about the U.S. and how I fit in. I have never felt like it’s really been home.”
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High in the Andes mountains, five Harvard Law School alumni are changing the way law professors in Colombia are trained—and they are using HLS as a model.
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Sheela Murthy LL.M. ’87 founded the Murthy Law Firm in Baltimore County, Md., in 1994. Her firm, of which she is managing partner and president, employs 14 lawyers who primarily practice U.S. immigration law.