Constitutional

On Feb. 4, more than 70 Harvard Law School students, faculty, and other members of the Harvard community gathered in Wasserstein Hall to hear Dr. Enver Hasani, president of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo, speak on “European Self-Determination and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Kosovo.”

Justice Clarence Thomas has become known as a quiet presence on the Supreme Court. But on Jan. 29, members of the Harvard Law School community got to hear him speak—and he did so with great humor and warmth. As part of the Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture Series, Thomas participated in a conversation with HLS Dean Martha Minow, after a day in which he met with faculty and students.

On Feb. 12, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe ’66, a constitutional law scholar, participated in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Proposals to Reduce Gun Violence: Protecting Our Communities While Respecting the Second Amendment.”

An article written by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried was named an exemplar of good legal writing by The Green Bag, a quarterly journal devoted to readable, concise, and entertaining legal scholarship. A number of Harvard Law School alumni were also included on Green Bag’s 2012 list of “Exemplary Legal Writing.” Their work will appear in the “2013 Almanac & Reader.”

“Medical tourism—the travel of patients who are residents of one country (the ‘home country’) to another country for medical treatment (the ‘destination country’)—represents a growing and important business," writes Assistant Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03 in a recent article.

In a recent review essay for the online journal Jotwell, Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93 takes a look at Norton E. Long’s article “Bureaucracy and Constitutionalism,” published in 1952 in the American Political Science Review.

At a time when Americans are expressing record dissatisfaction with Washington, the publication this fall of Professor Lawrence Lessig’s latest book couldn’t be more opportune. “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It” (Twelve) is an exhaustively researched and passionately argued indictment of Capitol Hill and the money-centered daily dance between lawmakers and lobbyists.

This fall, visitors to Langdell Hall have an opportunity to take a deeper look at the professor who saved a School. “A Storied Legacy: Correspondence and Early Writings of Joseph Story” is an exhibit of letters and manuscripts on display through Dec. 7 in the Harvard Law School Library’s Caspersen Room.

“Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities,” by Marjorie Corman Aaron ’81 (Oxford). No one likes to deliver bad news—attorneys included. But oftentimes providing honest and difficult advice is a crucial part of the job, and Aaron offers her own advice on how best to do it.

U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz calls for a “return to the framers’ vision of a constitutionally limited government”

Professor Einer Elhauge ’86 is author of the e-book “Obamacare On Trial” (Edward Elgar), focused on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act case decided by the Supreme Court in June. Elhauge raises points that were not aired in the courtroom, including the fact that the constitutional framers themselves had approved mandates to buy health insurance.

What he’ll miss most, what he’ll do next, and the song he can’t get out of his head

At a Sept. 19 event commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor Michael Klarman, an expert on constitutional law and constitutional history, gave a lecture entitled "Why the Tea Party Has It Wrong: The Story of a Multifaceted Founding."

On Sept. 5, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan ’86 joined Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow for a conversation on life as a Supreme Court Justice. The former and current deans spoke before an overflow audience in the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing building.

In light of the late-June Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule '93 recently reviewed Michael J. Gerhardt's "The Power of Precedent" (Oxford University Press) for The New Republic’s online review ‘The Book.’  According to Vermeule, Gerhardt's book is a “learned overview” of the role of past decisions in today's legal system.

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried has written a major article analyzing the Supreme Court’s late-June decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The article, which is scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, and also in a volume to be published by Oxford, has been given a rare advance publication by SCOTUSblog, which posted it on August 2.

In the mid-1990s, Dennis Davis, then a judge of the High Court of Cape Town, sought out HLS Professor Frank Michelman ’60 to advise South African officials on constitutional interpretation. “From that moment on, he became a resource person for us. We regard him as one of ours,” said Davis. “It’s a very, very deep relationship.”

Today, about 90 percent of state judges must run for office, and the elections have become increasingly expensive and nasty. Assistant Professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman provides historical perspective on judicial elections and other methods of judicial selection in his new book, “The People’s Courts: Pursuing Judicial Independence in America” (Harvard, 2012).