Criminal

The HLS Fair Punishment Project’s Legal Advisory Council has issued an issue brief arguing that a sentencer may impose a life without parole sentence upon a juvenile only after concluding that the child is “the rare juvenile offender who exhibits such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible.”

HLS students Tony Garofano LL.M. ’17 and Sarah Grant ’19 spoke with writers for Harvard Law Today about their experiences serving in the military and studying at Harvard Law.

It’s been eight years since Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana. On Tuesday, they’ll decide whether to tax and regulate the sale and adult consumption of it. The initiative, known as Question 4, would legalize and create a commission to regulate marijuana in Massachusetts.

At 96 years old, the Hon. John Paul Stevens, Associate Justice (Ret.) Supreme Court of the United States, returned to the bench to preside over the final round of Harvard Law School’s 2016 Ames Moot Court Competition.

In 1949, four years after the Nuremberg war crime trials began, the Harvard Law Library received the most complete set of documents from the Nazi prosecutions outside that of the National Archives; now, a small team is working on analyzing and digitizing the documents--often, a difficult and haunting task--for the HLS Nuremberg Trials Project.

In late October Harvard Law School celebrated National Pro Bono Week with a number of events to honor the outstanding work of lawyers who volunteer their time to help people in their communities.

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, Harvard Law School Professor Alex Whiting moderated a conversation between Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, permanent representative of Liechtenstein to the United Nations, and Harold Hongju Koh ’80, who served as legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State.

Last spring, the Criminal Justice Policy Program developed an initiative to provide representation to incarcerated people petitioning President Obama for clemency. Twenty-six Harvard Law students volunteered to work with a team of pro bono attorneys to represent clemency petitioners, in what has become the largest law student-based clemency initiative in the country.

Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program and the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) have released Confronting Criminal Justice Debt: A Comprehensive Project for Reform, a collaborative project that focuses on the financial costs of the criminal justice system.

In commemoration of the 15th anniversary of 9/11, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow asked faculty, alumni and staff to share brief personal reflections about that day and the post-9/11 world in which we live.

It took Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez several years and nearly 10,000 miles, on a journey that included several cities around the world, to find his calling in his hometown.

Addressing the incoming class at Harvard Law School, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland ’77 recalled how, as a federal prosecutor, he helped convict the Oklahoma City bombers and the Unabomber, and also shared some not-so-famous details about his life: his addiction to his iPad, his passion for volunteerism, and his adoration of J.K. Rowling.

"Advancing human rights and social justice has been a primary concern of mine for decades," said Lynn Savarese. "The three years spent at HLS focusing on fairness in myriad complex contexts helped fuel and shape this endeavor."

In a Q&A with the Harvard Gazette, Professor Ron Sullivan discusses the shooting deaths last week of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota at the hands of police, and the subsequent killing of five Dallas officers by a retaliating sniper, events that shocked the nation and left many feeling like the country is unraveling.

Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program has received a generous grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to support the program’s work to advance reform of unfair policies that allow for imposing fees and fines in the criminal justice system.

Early in the spring, first-year Harvard Law School students Chloe Goodwin, Nora Ellingsen, and Josh Looney jumped at the opportunity to volunteer with a national organization to help felons get a second shot at life: Clemency Project 2014, a coalition that supports petitions by nonviolent drug offenders for executive clemency.

Naz K. Modirzadeh '02, the founding director of the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict (PILAC), has been appointed as a professor of practice at Harvard Law School.

For more than seven years, John Carlin ’99 has been at the center of the most sensitive counterterrorism cases, which have often involved tricky technological questions—first as an adviser to FBI Director Robert Mueller and then at the National Security Division.

Now in its 14th year, a compact on policing in Cincinnati, Ohio, focused on building strong police-community relationships is a lauded model nationwide. John Cranley ’99, now the city’s mayor, was there from the start of the landmark agreement known as the Collaborative.

Gene Park has found that his greatest challenge this year has been making the transition from decisive cop mode to contemplative student.

For more than half a century, Phil Heymann has served the nation— and Harvard Law School—with distinction.