Constitutional

An overflow crowd in the Ames courtroom heard Associate Justice Antonin Scalia '60 of the U.S. Supreme Court present a lively defense of originalism on October 2, in the inaugural Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture.

The following article by Professor Noah Feldman, "When judges make foreign policy," was the cover article for the September 28, 2008, New York Times Magazine.

At the Department of Justice, being the inspector general can be a very lonely job.

The U.S. Constitution is 219 years old now, and the revolutionary system of government it created has survived and spread across the globe. No wonder many Americans consider it an almost sacred document, the final say on governmental powers and individual rights.

On executive power, war and anti-terrorism, scholars have a lot to say--and lawmakers are listening.

The following op-ed, The Supreme Court is Wrong on the Death Penalty, written by Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe '66, was published in the Wall Street Journal on July 31, 2008.

The following article, "Disclosure Is the Best Kind of Credit Regulation," co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein '78 and University of Chicago Professor Richard Thaler, was published in the Wall Street Journal on August 13, 2008.

Harvard Law School Professor Martha Minow is co-editor of "Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference," a new book exploring ways to create more equal schools in an increasingly multicultural America.

In his most recent book, “I Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases” (Beacon Press 2008), Professor Mark Tushnet offers an anthology of dissenting opinions, putting them in political context and examining their impact on constitutional law.

"For a long season," writes Professor Richard Fallon in a major article just published in the Harvard Law Review, the desirability of judicial review of legislation was "a complacent assumption" of American constitutional, political and moral thought.

In his new book, “Is There a Right to Remain Silent? Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11,” (Oxford University Press 2008), Professor Alan Dershowitz examines the status of the Fifth Amendment privilege in a post 9/11 “preventive” state.

David Kessler '09 will have an article published in the January 2009 edition of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Though students regularly publish "notes" in law reviews and journals, it is more unusual for them to have articles published.

When the U.S. Supreme Court took up a landmark case on the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban in March, a trio of Harvard Law students could claim modest credit for helping shape the argument. The students assisted lawyers arguing for preserving the ban in the gun-control case—D.C. v. Heller—as part of their work in a new clinical course this year, Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation.

Earlier this month, Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren testified along with two former students - Adam Levitin '06 and Katie Porter '01 - before the House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit regarding a proposed Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights.

Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61 of the U.S. Supreme Court came to Harvard Law School this week for a two-day celebration of the 20th anniversary of his appointment to the Court.

How should judges interpret ambiguous statutes? Fourteen leading legal scholars -- including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer '64 -- took up that question in a conference at HLS yesterday, occasioned by the publication of a new book, "Statutory Default Rules: How to Interpret Unclear Legislation" (Harvard University Press, 2008) by Professor Einer Elhauge '86.

The following op-ed, Sanity and the Second Amendment, written by Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe '66, was published in the Wall Street Journal on March 4, 2008.

For students in Harvard Law School's Supreme Court litigation clinic, helping Laurence Tribe get ready for a constitutional argument is like being in the eye of a storm.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is adopting its first constitution. Will it raise the GNH (gross national happiness)?

Finally, the Supreme Court may have to decide what the Second Amendment means. But how much will really change?