Constitutional

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University and renowned legal scholar and behavioral economist, received the prestigious Holberg Prize at the University of Bergen, Norway, on June 6.

On Class Day, May 23, U.S. Senator Jeff Flake told the Class of 2018 assembled on a sunny Holmes Field that they were entering the legal profession in a critical moment.

On the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Harvard Gazette sat down with Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, to discuss Houston’s role and influence in the Civil Rights Movement.

It’s been two decades since Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig published ‘The Laws of Cyberspace;’ recently, an event at the Berkman Klein Center celebrated how that groundbreaking paper provided structure to the Center's field of study.

In a last lecture to the HLS Class of 2018, Visiting Professor Paul Butler ’86, author of "Chokehold: Policing Black Men," delivered a talk titled "A Litany for Survival" about how his personal and professional experiences informed his critique of the criminal legal process.

After a landmark victory for gay rights in Kenya, Eric Mawira Gitari will continue to work for legal reform in Africa. “There are so many democratic changes going forward on the African continent right now," said Gitari. "We need to make sure that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the debate.”

The global impact of populist movements was the topic of “Human Rights in a Time of Populism,” a two-day symposium held at Harvard Law School, where participants examined the challenges that current developments characterized as populist pose to the goals of the international human rights system.

Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School received the American Philosophical Society’s 2018 Henry Allen Moe Prize in the Humanities in recognition of his paper “Reflections on the ‘Natural Born Citizen’ Clause as Illuminated by the Cruz Candidacy.”

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program joined the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Human Rights First and Kids in Need of Defense in filing a brief of amicus curiae in the case Matter of A-B-, a case that originated in immigration court but that is now before review of the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

In March, Harvard Law School Professor Intisar Rabb, director of the Islamic Legal Studies Program at HLS, was awarded the Trailblazer Award by the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (MBLA), an award that recognizes “leaders who have enriched the legal profession and created career pathways for black lawyers."

Stephen Gageler AC, LL.M. ’87, a justice of the High Court of Australia, returned to Harvard Law School in March to meet with faculty members, participate in classes, and speak on 'Alternative Facts in the Courts.'

“Disabling Punishment: The Need for Remedies to the Disparate Loss of Instruction Experience by Black Students with Disabilities,” a new report from the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law and UCLA’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies, finds dramatic racial discipline disparities between black children with disabilities and their white peers.

Students of Professor Urs Gasser’s Spring 2018 Comparative Digital Privacy seminar hosted a symposium on 'Privacy by Design,' convening experts from government, private practice, industry, and academia to weigh in on all things privacy-related, from the difficulty of defining privacy to a comparison of the regulatory regimes in the United States and the European Union.

Visiting Professor of Law and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability Michael Ashley Stein ’88 tackled the global issue of equal access to information in his book “Disability, Human Rights, and Information Technology,” co-edited by Jonathan Lazar, professor of Computer and Information Sciences and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Information Systems at Towson University.

On April 20, Harvard Law School will host the third and final major event in its year-long program celebrating 200 years of HLS. HLS in the Community will convene alumni, faculty, students, and staff to explore the extraordinary reach and impact of Harvard lawyers.

Georgetown University Professor Sheryll D. Cashin ’89 delivered the Francis Biddle Memorial Lecture at Harvard Law School on Feb. 28 on “The Descendants: From Slavery to Jim Crow to Dark Ghettos, A Call for 21st Century Abolition.”

John Leshy, former solicitor for the U.S. Interior Department, sought to set the record straight on public lands Wednesday at Harvard, disputing activists’ views opposing U.S. government ownership and reminding listeners that the divisiveness of the debate is what should concern users of those vast areas traditionally managed for public benefit and enjoyment.

The Holberg Prize—one of the largest international prizes awarded annually to an outstanding researcher in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, law or theology—named U.S. legal scholar Cass Robert Sunstein as its 2018 Laureate. Sunstein is currently the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University.

At a workshop on immigrants’ rights held Monday morning at the Memorial Church, attorneys Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program shared legal advice on how to deal with the more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration.

Three Harvard professors and a Ph.D. student in African and African American studies have launched the DACA Seminar, a series of events on campus aimed at sparking conversations about the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and immigration policy and reform, while working to understand options available to Harvard's undocumented students.

An event at HLS in February honored the work of Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus and Civil Rights Theorist Lani Guinier. Renowned for her books, including “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy,” Guinier joined the HLS faculty as Bennett Boskey Professor of Law in 1998.