Constitutional

Just days after the Supreme Court decided McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which struck down aggregate limits on individual campaign contributions, U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes ’88 (D-Md.) delivered a keynote address at a Harvard Law School symposium on proposed legislation to reform campaign finance and dilute the influence of major donors.

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down aggregate campaign contribution limits, in a ruling that frees individuals to donate to as many candidates as they wish. Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Bemis Professor of International Law, spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the ruling, and what it means for elections and for the future of campaign-finance reform.

More than 100 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decided a series of cases that left citizens of territories including Puerto Rico, Guam and the American Samoa with only limited Constitutional rights, Harvard Law School hosted a conference to reconsider the so-called Insular Cases and the resonance they continue to hold today.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Augustine that the Massachusetts constitution prohibits law enforcement officials from gathering cellphone records that…

Harvard Law School Professor Benjamin Sachs, a labor law specialist who focuses on unions in politics, sat down with a reporter for the HLS News office to reflect on the Supreme Court's increased involvement in labor cases and the state of labor law today.

However much presidents want to influence the future through their judicial appointments, the problem, Professor Mark Tushnet writes in his new book, “In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court” (Norton, 2013), “is that things change.”

The Harvard Gazette recently spoke with Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet about two upcoming challenges to the Affordable Care Act involving for-profit companies that object on religious grounds to providing contraceptive coverage to their employees.

SCOTUS Blog co-founder and Tom Goldstein, visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School, joined HLS Professor Charles Fried last week in discussing the Court's current docket at an event co-sponsored by the Harvard Law chapters of the American Constitution Society (ACS) and the Federalist Society.

On Oct. 23, Professor Kenneth Mack ‘91 delivered a lecture at the Supreme Court as part of the Supreme Court Historical Society’s 2013 Leon Silverman Lecture Series. This year’s theme was “Litigants in landmark Supreme Court cases of the 20th century.”

Q&A with Margaret Marshall, who wrote the landmark state ruling allowing gays to wed On Nov. 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court published its…

The 2013 Ames Moot Court competition was held at Harvard Law School on Oct. 23. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg '56-'58 presided at the Ames final round. She was joined by Judge Merrick B. Garland '77 of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

The average week for a typical law school student involves poring over a list of daunting cases and deconstructing complicated arguments. But on Oct. 30, the work of three Harvard Law School students included something else: an appearance in federal court. The students, who are part of the School’s Veterans Legal Clinic, stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims last Wednesday to argue for the rights of their client, a decorated U.S. Army veteran.

Harvard Law School Professor Vicki Jackson marked her appointment to the Thurgood Marshall Professorship of Constitutional Law with an Oct. 3 lecture titled “Proportionality…

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman will give a Master Class on the 1927 Supreme Court Ruling Buck v. Bell on Oct. 9, at an event sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. The lecture will be streamed live from the Barker Center, Room 110, Harvard University beginning at 6:00 p.m.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of his appointment to the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer visited Harvard Law School on Oct. 1 for an informal chat with HLS Dean Martha Minow, and later took part in a panel discussion with several HLS professors who examined his tenure and some of his most notable opinions.

During a Sept. 26 discussion at Harvard Law School, moderated by Dean Martha Minow, four of the School’s constitutional experts offered their thoughts on a trio of critical U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action.

Harvard Law School Professor David J. Barron '94, an expert in administrative law and the separation of powers, was nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit by President Barack Obama '91 on Tuesday.

To commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman, an expert on constitutional law and constitutional history, gave a lecture at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, Sept. 17. His talk, titled “Not Written in Stone,” focused on the reasons he believes the U.S. Constitution should not be given undue reverence.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week on several major cases including United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry in regard to same-sex marriage, Fisher v. University of Texas on Affirmative Action, and Shelby County v. Holder, which concerned the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A number of HLS faculty shared their opinions of the rulings on the radio, television, on the web and in print.

In April, Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet, a specialist in constitutional law and theory, was interviewed by his colleague and former collaborator Vicki Jackson on the new book “Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law” (Routledge 2012). Tushnet co-edited the book with Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Saunders.