Civil Rights

Harvard Law Today recently spoke with three of the 11 Harvard Law School students who were selected as Cravath International Fellows this year, who traveled during winter term to Bogotá, Colombia, Paris, France and Singapore to pursue clinical placements and independent research.

William T. Coleman Jr. ’46, the former secretary of transportation and one of the lead strategists and co-authors of the legal brief for the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, died March 31.

In a wide-ranging discussion with Dean Martha Minow, the Hon. Reena Raggi, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since 2002, shared her memories of late ’70s HLS, discussed notable cases she decided, and shared her thoughts on what it takes to be a successful prosecutor.

As part of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association’s (APALSA) annual conference, “Soft Power Hard Knockout: The Asian American Punch,” on Feb. 4, Harvard Law School presented a reenactment of the Vincent Chin trial, written by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Disability rights advocates Steve Holmes and Chester Finn spoke to students at Harvard Law School on March 8, in a workshop presented by the Harvard Project on Disability, part of a series of HPOD trainings and advocacy projects supported by a three-year grant from the law firm Jones Day.

Grande Lum ’91, former director of the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Relations Service (CRS), was on the Harvard Law campus in February to deliver the keynote address of the Harvard Negotiation Law Review’s 22nd Annual Symposium, “Reflections on the Intersection of Alternative Dispute Resolution and Activism.”

Congressman Adam Schiff ’85 (D-Calif.) is in the middle of one of the year’s biggest news stories – the investigation of Russia’s role in the last U.S. Presidential election. He brought some perspective on that story to Harvard on Tuesday, when he spoke at this week’s Journal on Legislation symposium.

On the morning of Jan. 9, Dayne Lee ’17, a student practitioner with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, slipped into a suit after three sleepless nights leading up to his major argument before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a case pitting federally controlled mortgage giant Fannie Mae against homeowner Elvitria Marroquin – a Lynn, Mass. homeowner who has been fighting foreclosure since 2008.

Two Harvard Law School teams competed at the 13th annual Williams Institute Moot Court Competition at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law earlier this month. The event, which featured 30 teams from law schools nationwide, is the only national competition dedicated exclusively to the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity law.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program filed an amicus curiae brief on February 16 in the Eastern District of New York case against President Trump’s executive orders on immigration -- one of several cases currently challenging the president’s actions on immigration.

Khizr Khan LL.M. '86, the Gold Star father who gained fame for his speech at the Democratic National Convention, joined HLS Professor Intisar A. Rabb, director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School, to discuss civil liberties and political action.

Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program has released a report on the effects of President Trump’s Executive Orders on people seeking asylum protection in the United States under long-standing provisions of U.S. and international law, including refugee law and the Convention Against Torture.

During this year’s spring semester, Mark Tushnet, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law, is teaching a novel seminar called “Diversity and Social Justice in First Year Classes.” It combines classroom teaching with an eight-part public lecture series examining how issues of diversity and social justice can be integrated into the core 1L classes.

Growing up in Mexico City as a self-proclaimed geek, Berkman Klein Center Fellow and self-taught computer programmer Paola Villarreal has been developing open source data tools, including interactive maps, to explore inequality in Boston-area justice, health, education, housing, and transportation.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program has been addressing the legal concerns of Harvard students, faculty, staff, and individuals affected in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by recent executive action on immigration.

Since being selected last spring, Harvard Law School's 2016 Public Service Venture Fund seed grant recipients have begun work on projects ranging from environmental litigation and advocacy to transgender healthcare and identity issues.

As Harvard Law School's Public Service Venture Fund enters its fourth year, HLS is looking back on all that its awardees have accomplished since the first awards were conferred in 2013.

In the Harvard Law class “Spanish for Public Interest Lawyers,” Harvard Law School graduate Joey Michalakes teaches a Spanish course for HLS students who need legal Spanish concepts and terminology to deal with their clients, most of whom speak only Spanish.

With just under two weeks left in the presidency of Barack Obama ’91, Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates spoke at Harvard Law School about recent strides in criminal justice reform and why she is optimistic that progress will continue in the new presidential administration.

Harvard Law Review President Michael Zuckerman ’17 recently penned a reflection for Medium on the experience of publishing The President's Role in Advancing Criminal Justice Reform, an article by President Barack Obama -- the first Law Review article by a sitting president -- and his personal take on law and criminal justice reform.

This fall at a symposium presented by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, representatives from academia, government and civil liberties organizations came together to examine the present state of play with respect to government transparency and freedom of information.