Criminal

In her Last Lecture, Harvard Law Professor Alexandra Natapoff urges graduating students to think hard about the choices they make.

During winter term, students in the Criminal Justice Appellate Clinic work in Washington, D.C. with the MacArthur Justice Center on ongoing cases related to civil rights and the criminal justice system.

With support from PSVF and Wasserstein fellowships, Mercedes Montagnes ’09, founder of the Promise of Justice Initiative, has tackled injustices in the Louisiana carceral system.

How attorneys advance civil rights work in their practices, both at private public interest law firms and through pro bono work at large law firms, was the focus of discussion at two panel events at Harvard Law School

Anna Lvovsky ’13 has been promoted to professor of law at Harvard Law School. A scholar of criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and evidence, she joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2017.

Cara Mund ’22 is the winner of the second annual Kristin P. Muniz Memorial Award. Mund is recognized for her commitment to justice, her advocacy, compassion for her clients, and stellar representation of each of those clients.

In the first of the series, “Cases in Brief,” Harvard Law Professor Dehlia Umunna discusses the infamous “Scottsboro Boys” case, Powell v. Alabama (1932), in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that defendants in capital cases have the right to adequate legal counsel.

The Hon. Loretta Lynch ’84, who was Attorney General of the United States from 2015 to 2017, will be this year’s speaker for the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard Law School.

Amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Alex Whiting, deputy specialist prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office in The Hague, outlines the path from investigation to trial, and ultimately to justice.

Ketanji Brown Jackson ’96 was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Biden. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.

For the past two years, students in Harvard’s Prison Legal Assistance Project have helped prisoners they say were targeted for retaliatory violence.

HLS Professor Andrew Crespo was one of 59 members elected to the American Law Institute this year. Thirteen Harvard Law School alumni were also elected.

“This administration needs to get out of its own way, … take action where it can, and create pathways for others to take action where it cannot or will not,” says Premal Dharia, executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

In a case that could have national implications, the Harvard Law School Crimmigration Clinic recently convinced judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to discredit the use of controversial municipal gang databases in immigration proceedings.

In “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality,” Harvard Law Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin traces the tactics of the groundbreaking lawyer amid pivotal protests.

Described as one of the great figures in the history of Harvard Law School, Lloyd L. Weinreb ’62, a leading authority on criminal and copyright law, and an HLS professor for nearly a half-century, died Dec. 15, at the age of 85.

When asked what he wanted to be remembered by, longtime Harvard Law Professor and former Watergate prosecutor Philip B. Heymann ’60 replied: “Speaking truth to power.” Heymann, a beloved colleague and distinguished public servant, died Nov. 30 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.

Retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, now a senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, talks about the verdicts in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, how the trial was conducted, and comparisons to the ongoing trial of the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery.