Civil Rights

On Nov. 15, Harvard Law School's Harvard Defenders hosted the 7th annual Litman Symposium. This year's event, titled "Defining Justice: Building a more equitable criminal legal system," featured a Q&A with keynote speakers Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Sarah Boyette ’10 and Simmi Kaur ’17, an attorney with the Bronx Defenders.

John J. Gibbons ’50, a former federal judge who argued for rights for Guantánamo detainees and dedicated his five-decade career to protecting the rule of law in the United States, died Dec. 9. He was 94.

A six-year-long study by Harvard Law School's Access to Justice Lab (A2J Lab) evaluated and analyzed the effectiveness of pro bono representation in divorce cases in Philadelphia County. The recently released study found that people who received legal representation were 87% more likely to achieve a divorce than people without it.

It was Thursday night and the Ames Courtroom was decked out for a Hollywood-style awards ceremony--1Ls and their dates arrived in tuxes and ball gowns while a jazz combo played, and anticipation was in the air. The winter’s first snow was falling outside, but in Austin Hall, the Tortys had come to town.

Andrew Leon Hanna ’19 recently won the 2018 Bracken Bower Prize from the Financial Times and McKinsey & Company for the best book proposal about emerging businesses from someone 35 or under. Hanna’s book proposal, “25 Million Sparks”, aims to celebrate refugee entrepreneurs.

In October, David J. Harris, managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, received the Massachusetts Governor's Award in the Humanities. Harris was one of four leaders recognized for their "public actions, grounded in an appreciation of the humanities, to enhance civic life in the Commonwealth."

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Sotomayor was at Harvard Law School on Nov. 13 to hear finalists in the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition.

In October, Harvard Law School's Mock Trial Team won first place at the 2018 Lone Star Classic, an annual invitational mock trial tournament hosted by St. Mary's University School of Law, in San Antonio, Texas.

Eve L. Howe ’21 is an expert in nuclear submarines -- specifically, the fluid systems that cool the nuclear reactors in military submarines. Drawn to military service because she wanted to use her engineering skills for public service, Howe spent five years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, where she solved complex technical problems to ensure the submarines would be able to accomplish their missions.

On Oct. 22, Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who spearheaded a national class action lawsuit against the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy on immigrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, spoke to HLS staff and students about the litigation’s claims and the ongoing efforts to reunite families.

At a recent Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Catharine A. MacKinnon, a pioneer of legal theory and practice and an activist for women’s rights, discussed her latest book "Butterfly Politics," in which she argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.

A team of volunteers from Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center recently partnered with Veterans Legal Services to provide legal advice to homeless or at risk veterans at Veterans Stand Down 2018, a one-day event that brings service providers and veterans together allowing veterans to access services ranging from employment assistance to legal support to medical care.

Sixty-five years ago, Frederica Brenneman ’53 graduated from Harvard Law School as member of the first HLS class to admit women. A retired Connecticut Superior Court judge, Brenneman was the second woman appointed to the bench in Connecticut history. In this segment, she shares her HLS experience and discusses her career as a juvenile court judge.

While the data firm Cambridge Analytica and questions of data privacy propelled Facebook into the headlines in recent months, Facebook has been under the critical…

Former Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch ’84, the first African-American woman attorney general, shares her HLS experience and discusses her career as the country’s chief law enforcement officer. Lynch will be one of hundreds of Harvard Law alumnae gathered on campus on Sept 14-15 to commemorate Celebration 65. 

On Sept. 17, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD) will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics with Timothy Shriver, Special Olympics International Board Chairman.

The Trump administration’s recent “zero tolerance” policies on immigration resulted in the separation of several thousand children from their families at the U.S. border. Harvard Law alumni from dozens of law firms have pulled together to help reunite children who had been forcibly separated from their families.

Many HLS alumni and students are engaged in legal and advocacy work related to immigration, including the situations of refugees and asylum seekers. For some of these lawyers, this interest predates their time at HLS, but has dovetailed with their coursework and hands-on learning during their time as law students.

A letter drafted by HLS's Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic Director Wendy Jacobs, and signed by nearly 100 hospital leaders and Harvard faculty, calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its proposed rule on scientific “transparency,” saying that the change would drastically limit the scientific and medical knowledge that underlie a host of EPA regulations that protect human health.

The founder and director of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic Deborah Anker LL.M. ’84 received the Federal Bar Association’s NGO Lawyer of the Year Joint Award on May 18. She was honored alongside Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law.

For six months, Harvard Law School students and alumni worked with legal professionals to create strategies promoting diversity in the legal workplace; those ideas were unveiled at Diversity Lab's Diversity in Law Hackathon, co-sponsored by Harvard Law School Executive Education and Bloomberg Law.