Civil Rights

In today’s New York Times, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, contributed a post, “Representing the Despised,” in response to the recent release of a video by a conservative advocacy organization, Keep America Safe, which takes aim at lawyers who have represented Guantánamo detainees and are now working in the Justice Department.Dershowitz’s post is one of four commentaries that appeared as part of the Times’ Room for Debate blog post “Attacking Lawyers from the Right and Left.” Dershowitz is the author of many books, including, “Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights.”

The Citizen Media Law Project, joined by the Public Participation Project, the Online News Association, and the Chicago Current, submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Illinois Supreme Court this week, urging the Court to reject two lower courts’ narrow interpretations of the state’s Anti-SLAPP statute.

Harvard law School Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 wrote the book review “States of Detention,” which appeared in The New Republic on March 1, 2010. 

Professor Laurence Tribe ’66 has been named Senior Counselor for Access to Justice in the Department of Justice, and he will lead a newly launched initiative aimed at improving access to civil and criminal legal services.

“Localization of Immigration Law” was the subject of a Feb. 5 HLS symposium featuring speakers who took divergent views on the current American immigration enforcement scheme and its reliance on state and local law enforcement.

A restaurant employee is fired. He didn't violate company policy. In fact, he's a good employee, according to his manager. But he is fired because, as the regional manager put it, he is one of "those people."

Charles Hamilton Houston ’22 S.J.D. ’23, Raymond Pace Alexander ’23, Ben Davis ’29 and William Hastie ’30 S.J.D. ’33—all of these black civil rights attorneys graduated from Harvard Law School within a 10-year period.

Harvard Law School Professors Michael Klarman and Kenneth Mack ’91 both participated in the SCOTUS Blog’s commentary on Race and the Supreme Court. The Blog’s program is in celebration of Black History Month.

On Friday, November 6, Harvard Law School hosted to a day-long conference entitled “Confronting Legal Injustice/Imagining Legal Justice” in Ames Courtroom. A plethora of speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds addressed shortcomings in the law concerning capital punishment. They also looked at the future of the death penalty.

In the three-day Holmes Lecture entitled “Dignity and Defamation: The Visibility of Hate” at Harvard Law School this October, New York University Professor Jeremy Waldron argued for the regulation of hate speech to reinforce society’s collective commitment to uphold one another’s personal dignity.

Samuel Bagenstos ’93, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, U.S. Department of Justice, spoke last week at HLS on the Obama administration’s focus on enforcing disability rights at home and supporting them abroad.

The following op-ed “Race and Reality in a Front-Porch Encounter” by HLS Professor Lani Guinier appeared in the July 30, 2009 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The following Q&A featuring Harvard Law School Professor Robert Mnookin ’68 was featured in the July 24, 2009, edition of the Boston Globe.

Jacqueline A. Berrien ’86 was nominated by President Obama to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She is currently a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree ’78, “The strange jurisprudence of Justice Thomas,” appeared in the July 2, 2009, edition of the Bay State Banner.

The following op-ed, “Trial by Firefighters,” co-written by HLS Professor Lani Guinier and Columbia Law Professor Susan Sturm, was published in the July 11, 2009, edition of The New York Times. They are also the co-authors of “Who’s Qualified: A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action” (Beacon Press, 2001).

As the ground shifts, an expert evaluates the role of litigation.

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Lani Guinier, “No affirmative right to vote,” appeared on the New York Times blog, Room for Debate, on June 23, 2009. Guinier offered commentary on the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, “When arrogance takes the bench,” was published in the June 11, 2009 edition of the New York Times.