Constitutional

HLS Professor Adrian Vermeule ’93, one of the leading scholars of public law and constitutional theory, will participate in a program focused on his new book “The System of the Constitution” (Oxford University Press, 2011) at University College in London on Friday, Jan. 13.

In December, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic submitted an amicus curiae brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of petitioners in a major Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. The brief in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. argues that corporations can be held liable for violations of the law of nations under the ATS.

The United States is experiencing “an environmental law-making crisis,” said Harvard Law School Professor Richard Lazarus at “Harvard Thinks Green,” an environmental sustainability event held at Harvard in December. The event was co-hosted by Harvard Thinks Big, the Office for Sustainability and the Center for the Environment at Harvard University.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor of Law I. Glenn Cohen, co-director of HLS’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics, is the author of three recently published articles on health law topics.

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman was recently a guest on Voice of America’s “Press Conference” radio program, speaking with host Carol Casteil about the meaning of Sharia Law and the role that it could play in the burgeoning democracies of Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt and Libya.

Margaret H. Marshall, who served over a decade as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, will join the faculty at Harvard Law School this spring as a senior research fellow and lecturer.

HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig was a guest on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” on Dec. 13.

Appearing at Harvard Law School a year and a half after being released from federal prison, a contrite Jack Abramoff expressed a desire to thwart the political corruption he once infamously practiced. The event on Dec. 6 was sponsored by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, whose director, HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig, interviewed Abramoff, a former lobbyist who pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. “His experience,” said Lessig, “has an enormous amount to teach us.”

As Harvard Law School’s first female dean and the first woman ever to serve as U.S. solicitor general, Elena Kagan ’86 has made a habit of making history. On Oct. 1, Kagan sat on the far right-hand side of the Supreme Court’s courtroom in a chair first used by Chief Justice John Marshall, poised to make history once again at her formal investiture ceremony.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, a leading expert on legal history, education law, and civil rights, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a tenured Professor of Law this summer. She will also serve as an affiliate of the History Department in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

As the groundbreaking anti-foreclosure work by HLS students continues to land significant victories for homeowners in Massachusetts, a recent conference to spread the Harvard model was attended by more than 150 lawyers, law students and community organizers from around the country who want to halt foreclosures in their own communities. The second annual HLS “Community Responses to the Foreclosure Crisis” conference, organized by the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB), ran for three days and included panel discussions and small, interactive workshops where participants received practical advice for fighting foreclosures.

The experience of earlier moot court contests and many hours of rigorous study can seem to melt into the ether when surviving third-year Harvard Law School students face not just any panel of esteemed judges but one led by a U.S. Supreme Court justice. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the teams in the showdown round of the Ames Moot Court Competition tried to persuade a panel headed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to change the law of the land.

Former White House Counsel Robert Bauer addressed students at Harvard Law School in October, sharing his insights on the lawyer’s role in law and politics. Bauer, who served as counsel to President Obama from November 2009 to June 2011, is currently a partner at Perkins Coie and is now representing the president’s re-election team and the Democratic National Committee.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the U.S. Supreme Court presided over the oral argument in the final round of the 2011 Ames Moot Court Competition on Thursday, November 17th, 2011.The competition was held in the historic Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear challenges to the constitutionality of the Health Care Law. In an op-ed and a debate this past week, two HLS faculty members (Professors Einer Elhauge '86 and Laurence Tribe '66) and a prominent alumnus (former Solicitor General Paul Clement '92) shared their opinions on the mandate's constitutionality.

At an event about the national implications of state-led immigration reform, sponsored by Harvard Immigration Project, Advocates for Human Rights, and ACLU-HLS, Lucas Guttentag, senior counsel and former founding national director of the ACLU's Immigrants’ Rights Project, discussed Alabama's new immigration law, its significance for state efforts to regulate immigration, and where immigration advocates go from here.

At a recent event at Harvard Law School, HLS Professor Lawrence Lessig and Harvard Kennedy School Professor David Gergen discussed Lessig’s new book, “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It.” The event was co-hosted by the Harvard Law School Library, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

At HLS Reunion Weekend last weekend, Justices Breyer and Souter (who retired from the court in 2009) exchanged good-humored banter and insights about their service on the nation’s highest court, in an event, “A Conversation with the Justices,” moderated by HLS Dean Martha Minow.

At an event sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society on October 18, Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) ’77 spoke about proposed legislation that would end the federal ban on marijuana, as well as the need for drug policy reform at the federal level and why marijuana policy is an issue better handled by the states.

At “Challenging and Litigating DOMA's Constitutionality”— an event that was co-sponsored by the Harvard Law School American Constitution Society, Lambda, and the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Journal—Mary Bonauto, the Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), spoke about litigating the Defense of Marriage Act in federal courts in the wake of the Department of Justice's recent decision to stop defending the law.