Civil Rights

On April 17, Janet Reno ’63, the first woman attorney general of the United States, received the 2009 Justice Award of the American Judicature Society, in Washington, D.C. The Justice Award is the society’s highest honor.

The future of Native American sovereignty under the Roberts Court is bleak, a panel of experts concluded at an April 6 conference examining 'Tribal Justice: The Supreme Court and the future of federal Indian law' at Harvard Law School.

Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law at HLS and a nationally renowned expert on sexuality and the law, helped to organize the conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions” [see story], which she says was “one of the best conferences on gender and the law in five years.”

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58 was a student at HLS in the 1950s, she was one of nine women in a class of more than 500, and women weren’t allowed to live in the dorms. Still, “I found the professors endlessly stimulating and the discussion with my colleagues equally so,” she recalled as the featured speaker at “Gender and the Law: Unintended Consequences, Unsettled Questions,” a conference at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study co-sponsored by HLS.

A day-long symposium on the current status of immigration law drew immigration lawyers, policymakers and other experts from around the country to discuss a wide range of issues, from undocumented aliens to under-resourced courts and controversial enforcement methods.

On Saturday, Feb. 21, the United States Postal Service released a new commemorative stamp in honor of lawyer and noted social justice reformer Charles Hamilton Houston ’22.

In commemoration of Black History Month, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) offered a tribute to 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, in the Senate on Monday, February 23.

Delivering the Francis Biddle Memorial Lecture at HLS on November 12, Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres applied his unique brand of number crunching to evaluate statistical models that have been employed to measure police racial bias in decisions to stop vehicles and pedestrians.

In a two-day conference sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice—titled “Charting New Pathways to Participation and Membership”—attendees from the worlds of law, labor, government, academia talked about the obstacles to justice faced by many groups and how those impediments might be overcome.

Not enough progress has been made toward racial equality in education, said former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at Harvard Law School last week. She called for the continuation of race-based affirmative action, in her keynote address at the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute’s conference, “Charting New Pathways to Participation & Membership.”

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who attended the law school from 1956 to 1958, was the star attraction of Celebration 55, a four-day event which drew 600 alumnae, students and guests and marked the 55th anniversary of female enrollment at the law school.

Professor Michael Klarman, a constitutional law and history scholar, joined the faculty earlier this year after a distinguished tenure at the University of Virginia since 1987. In a recent Q&A, he discusses the current state of race relations in America.

Vanderbilt University Law School Professor John Goldberg, an expert in tort law, tort theory, and political philosophy, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured professor this fall.

Eric Nguyen '09 has just had a paper published in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal about how hard parents fight to keep their family homes in times of economic distress.

Some say the Clinton-Obama fight reflects a historical tension between blacks and women in the struggle for equality. A legal historian says the truth is not so simple—and far more interesting.

Nationwide, only 24 percent of all judgeships are held by women. In federal courts, women make up barely 20 percent of the bench. Massachusetts Appeals Court Judge Fernande “Nan” Duffly ’78 wants to see these numbers rise and is passionate about making it happen.

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree ’78 joined 13 other HLS alumni on National Law Journal’s “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America,” which was published on May 26.

On May 7, Lena Konanova '08 capped off her law school experience by representing a client bringing a case of employment discrimination before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

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--was the guest speaker Friday afternoon for a lecture series, sponsored by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

In a March 5 event sponsored by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy discussed his new book, entitled "Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal."

Panelists at a February 23 event on the Harvard Law School campus discussed the benefits and consequences of pursuing “color-blind” policies.