Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow

Points of Inflection: A conversation with a new dean Five months into her new job, Dean Martha Minow shares some insights - and even a little advice.

Winter 2010
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A Question of Interrogation

On Jan. 22, 2009, President Barack Obama ’91 signed an executive order mandating that individuals detained in armed conflict will “be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person.” Harvard Law School Professor Philip Heymann ’60 had an answer. And his proposal may soon become the standard for the how the United States handles interrogations to prevent future terrorist attacks.
Jeannie Suk ’02

The Laws of Unintended Consequences

To prevent domestic violence, do we now overregulate the home? A scholar raises some provocative questions.

Striving Always to Get It Right: Reflections on David Souter

Last spring, David Hackett Souter ’66—the U.S. Supreme Court’s 105th justice—announced his retirement and stepped down at the end of the term. We asked four alumni who had firsthand experience with the justice for their reflections.
Man standing in a room with lots of pictures behind him on the wall

Shutter Speed: 65 Years

A few years ago, retired Judge Bentley Kassal ’40 began giving talks on his World War II experience: He was an air intelligence officer who participated in three invasions and was recognized by the U.S. Army with a Bronze Star for “meritorious service in direct support of combat operations.”

Alumni Focus

A View from the Brink

When the U.S. financial system came excruciatingly close to collapse, Rodge Cohen was suddenly the man to call.

Writ Large: Faculty Books

  • First Fiction

    “Stubborn as a Mule,” is set at a small liberal arts college in Maine. The school’s president, a right-wing economist, tries to unseat a Republican Senate moderate (and HLS grad).

  • Fighting on Several Fronts

    In his book "Negotiauctions: New Dealmaking Strategies for a Competitive Marketplace,” Professor Guhan Subramanian says that, traditionally, academics have looked at deals through one of two lenses. One branch of research examines auction theory, with roots in game theory and microeconomics. Another looks at negotiations, combining microeconomics with experimental economics, social psychology, behavior economics and law.

  • Recent Faculty Books – Winter 2010

    “The Road to Abolition?: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States” (New York University Press, 2009), edited by Professor Charles Ogletree Jr. ’78 and Austin Sarat, takes on an interdisciplinary exploration of the debate surrounding the death penalty at the turn of the 21st century.

David Wilkins

Lawyers Without Borders

In the wake of the current economic crisis and growing globalization, the job market for lawyers is tougher than at any time in recent history. We asked Professor David Wilkins ’80, head of HLS’s Program on the Legal Profession, how these factors will shape legal practice and education.

Socratic But Not Scary

It’s Tuesday afternoon in a Pound Hall classroom. The Socratic method is in use, and the class is engaged. But the professor is a Harvard Law student and he is teaching 13 teenagers—all involved in the juvenile justice system.
David A. Singleton ’91

Finding Common Ground

Singleton, who hails from North Carolina and now lives in Cincinnati, found himself an “East Coast liberal” professor engaging a crop of young conservative law students in criminal justice reform.

Staunching the Foreclosure Crisis

The canvassing effort, dubbed Project No One Leaves, was launched in 2008 by two HLAB students, Nick Hartigan ’09 and David Haller ’09, along with WilmerHale Legal Services Center clinical student Tony Borich ’09.