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Civil Rights

  • Charles Ogletree and family in audience

    ‘Tree’s’ tremendous legacy: Celebrating Charles Ogletree ’78

    October 11, 2017

    It took an all-star team of panelists to honor the scope and influence of Charles Ogletree’s career last week at HLS—eminent friends, students and colleagues all paying tribute to a man that the world knows as a leading force for racial equality and social justice, and that the Harvard community knows affectionately as Tree.

  • Honoring Charles Ogletree

    Honoring Charles Ogletree

    October 11, 2017

    Hundreds of friends, former students, colleagues, and well-wishers gathered last Monday in a joyful celebration of the life and career of Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, advocate for Civil Rights, author of books on race and justice, and mentor to former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

  • IHRC's partner in negotiations of Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty wins Nobel Peace Prize 2

    IHRC’s partner in negotiations of Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty wins Nobel Peace Prize

    October 6, 2017

    The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), with which Harvard's International Human Rights Clinic collaborated during the negotiations of a nuclear weapon ban treaty, received the Nobel Peace Prize today. IHRC joined ICAN and UK-based disarmament organization Article 36 in the efforts for the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

  • At the UN General Assembly, Modirzadeh discusses protecting health care in armed conflict 1

    At the UN General Assembly, Modirzadeh discusses protecting health care in armed conflict

    October 4, 2017

    HLS Professor of Practice Naz K. Modirzadeh ’02 gave a talk at a United Nations General Assembly event on Sept. 22 called, “International Humanitarian Law: Addressing violations in light of recent conflicts,” which focused on failures of international law to protect health care systems in armed conflict in Syria involving designated terrorists.

  • Thurgood Marshall panelists

    Thurgood Marshall: The soundtrack of their lives

    September 29, 2017

    Thurgood Marshall is revered as a titan of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the architect of the landmark court case that ended legal segregation in America’s public schools, and the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Yet for five of his former law clerks gathered Wednesday at Harvard Law School, he was more than that.

  • Spotlight on populist plutocrats

    Spotlight on populist plutocrats: A Q&A with Matthew Stephenson

    September 22, 2017

    In advance of a conference on Saturday, Sept. 23 at HLS, Harvard Law Professor Matthew Stephenson spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the global phenomenon of "populist plutocrats:" politicians who exploit anti-elite sentiment to win elections, then use the presidency to advance the interests of themselves and their allies.

  • Ordained and established: HLS scholars dissect the framers' contributions

    Ordained and established: HLS scholars dissect the framers’ contributions

    September 18, 2017

    On Sept. 17, 1787, the framers of the U.S. Constitution gathered to sign the historic document created to unite a group of states with different interests, laws and cultures; today, HLS faculty voices are providing us with history, interpretation and critical analysis of that document.

  • Looking back at the founding of Harvard Law School

    Looking back at the founding of Harvard Law School

    September 13, 2017

    To officially open Harvard Law School’s Bicentennial celebration, a panel of Harvard Law School faculty members gathered on Sept. 5 to discuss the law school’s early history.

  • Kurdish people looking out of beige tents in a sandy landscape

    From Cambridge to Kurdistan

    September 6, 2017

    A typical Harvard Law School student has limited free time. It might be filled with journal work, or student practice organizations, or intramural sports. For a year, Crispin Smith ’18, Nick Gersh ’18, and Ahsan Sayed ’18 spent their free moments exploring the successes and challenges facing religious and ethnic minorities in Iraqi Kurdistan on behalf of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

  • Dean Manning: 'There are lots of good ways to do this thing called law school. Your job is to find the one that’s right for you'

    Dean Manning: ‘There are lots of good ways to do this thing called law school. Your job is to find the one that’s right for you’

    September 6, 2017

    In his first address to incoming students since he was named dean of Harvard Law School on July 1, John Manning ’85 welcomed this year’s 1L class at Sanders Theatre on Aug. 29.

  • Harvard Law School unveils memorial honoring enslaved people who enabled its founding 2

    Harvard Law School unveils memorial honoring enslaved people who enabled its founding

    September 5, 2017

    On Sept. 5, at the opening of its Bicentennial observance, Harvard Law School unveiled a memorial to the enslaved people whose labor helped make possible the founding of the school.

  • Prosecutors Conference_Panel

    Redefining the role of prosecutors

    August 31, 2017

    The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School joined forces with the ACLU of Massachusetts to host a daylong conference at Harvard Law School in June, titled “Redefining the Role of the Prosecutor within the Community.”

  • HLS faculty maintain top position in SSRN citation rankings

    Four Harvard Law faculty ask DOE to change campus sexual-assault policies

    August 28, 2017

    Four members of the Harvard Law School faculty have called on the U.S. Department of Education to revise the Obama Administration’s policies enforcing Title IX in matters of sexual harassment and sexual assault on college and university campuses.

  • Joseph Singer: 'Some things are beyond words' 4

    Joseph Singer: ‘Some things are beyond words’

    August 25, 2017

    On Sept. 15, 2017, Professor Joseph Singer ’81 was among the artists who showcased their talents during an evening of performances at HLS in the Arts, one of several events that celebrated the 200th anniversary of the founding of Harvard Law School.

  • Student Voices: Humanizing individuals in the criminal justice system

    Alec Karakatsanis ’08 puts ‘human caging’ and ‘wealth-based detention’ in America on trial

    August 23, 2017

    In early 2014, Alec Karakatsansis, ’08, used some of the money that he and a Harvard Law School classmate had recently received from the school’s Public Service Venture Fund seed grant to buy a plane ticket to Birmingham, Alabama, and rent a car.

  • Minow_Martha

    Minow: Nation, President ‘need to remember and reclaim the founders’ vigilance against bigotry’

    August 21, 2017

    Harvard Law School Professor and former Dean Martha Minow delivered a keynote address at Newport's Touro Synagogue. The Aug. 20 event commemorated the 70th public rereading of George Washington's letter to the Jewish community promising that the country would give “bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."

  • Martha Minow on the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education

    Martha Minow on the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education

    August 16, 2017

    In a three-part lecture, Martha Minow, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, discusses the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 civil rights case in which the Supreme Court declared state laws concerning the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional.

  • Judge Reena Raggi

    Unfazed: Reena Raggi looks back at 30 years on the federal bench

    August 16, 2017

    When Reena Raggi graduated from Harvard Law School in 1976, the student body was only 20 percent female. But Raggi, who went on to serve 30 years on the federal bench—on the District Court for the Eastern District of New York from 1987 to 2002 and since then on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit—never thought of herself as a Harvard pioneer.

  • Jeffrey Machado in Afghanistan

    Clinic files class action suit on behalf of veterans denied Welcome Home Bonuses

    August 14, 2017

    In June, the Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of Army combat veteran Jeffrey Machado and an estimated 4,000 veterans from Massachusetts who have served abroad since 9/11, but deemed ineligible to receive the state’s $1000 Welcome Home Bonus for honorably discharged servicemembers.

  • Mark Wu, Ruth Okediji and panelists

    HLS hosts conference on law and development

    August 10, 2017

    Legal scholars from across the globe gathered at HLS in July for a two-day conference on law and development, the latest iteration of a series of conferences held periodically by a loose consortium of schools including Harvard Law School, the University of Geneva, Renmin University of China, and the University of Sydney, Australia.

  • A group of women take a selfie

    Pathways Upward

    August 9, 2017

    Latino Leadership: Embracing the Challenge