Criminal

Six members of the Class of 2019 share their unique perspectives, varied experiences, and the lessons they will take with them from their time at Harvard Law School.

Nearly a decade after Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning shared classified materials with WikiLeaks, the site’s founder, Julian Assange, was arrested in London for his role in the disclosures. The Harvard Gazette recently spoke with three faculty members, including Yochai Benkler, the Harvard Law professor who has publicly defended the disclosure as whistleblowing.

Harvard Law School recently hosted Judge Richard Gergel, U.S. District Judge of the U. S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, for a talk on his book, "Unexampled Courage,” and a discussion with HLS professors Randall Kennedy, Kenneth Mack and Mark Tushnet.

A panel discussion at HLS brought together four faculty members to share their moments of reckoning, when they had to re-examine some of their most closely held ideas.

The 2019 Harvard Negotiation Law Review symposium, “Redressing Harm Through Restorative Justice,” focused on the challenges of addressing power imbalances and trauma through implementation of restorative practices within communities.

Alan Jenkins ’89, president and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communications organization, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a professor of practice in July.

I joined the Prison Legal Assistance Project (PLAP) the fall of my 1L year at a time when I knew very little about the criminal justice system. I knew, however, that PLAP provided important services to prisoners in Massachusetts, including representing them in disciplinary hearings and in their bids for parole.

A trailblazing career leads Patti Saris '76 to cutting-edge science and criminal justice reform.

Five new lawyer-scholars at Harvard Law School are already influencing the national conversation on our criminal law system.

As staff attorney with the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia for more than three years, Assistant Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo '08 represented adults and juveniles charged with felonies ranging from armed robberies to homicides. Passionate about the work, he had no plans to become an academic. But early in his career, then-Dean Martha Minow engaged him in a life-changing conversation.

Assistant Professor Crystal Yang ’13, who joined the HLS faculty in 2014, brings an empirical focus to the study of criminal law. Yang, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard, has in the past focused her empirical studies on criminal sentencing. She has now turned her attention to the extensive use of cash bail and pretrial detention in the U.S., in order to understand their short- and long-term consequences.

"I think criminal procedure is a very fundamental part of the constitutional law of democracy,” says Assistant Professor Daphna Renan, who writes about structural constitutional law, administrative law, and the Fourth Amendment. “When can the government use force against its own citizens? When can it search individuals, communities and communications? How do emergent technologies challenge existing legal frameworks? For anyone who cares about power and how law constrains and enables it, there are no more pressing questions than these.”

There are more than 2 million people imprisoned in the U.S. today. One hundred years from now, historians are likely to be fascinated by this carceral state: How did we get here? Are there better options for society? Some of the answers—or, at least, possible alternatives—may lie in an examination of medieval England. As a Harvard undergrad, Assistant Professor Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07 fell in love with medieval legal history. After graduating from HLS, she got her Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan, then joined the HLS faculty in 2015.

Assistant Professor Anna Lvovsky '13, who joined the HLS faculty in 2017, always planned to teach. A legal historian - she holds a Ph.D. from Harvard - with a focus on the administration of criminal justice, she teaches a seminar on the history of policing in the U.S. as well as courses on evidence and criminal law that invite students to focus on the systemic effects of seemingly neutral legal rules.

“Access to Justice,” the Winter 2019 issue of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences journal Dædalus, features twenty-four essays by leading experts in the field, including Harvard Law School alumni and faculty. It is the first open access issue of the publication.

On Nov. 15, Harvard Law School's Harvard Defenders hosted the 7th annual Litman Symposium. This year's event, titled "Defining Justice: Building a more equitable criminal legal system," featured a Q&A with keynote speakers Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Sarah Boyette ’10 and Simmi Kaur ’17, an attorney with the Bronx Defenders.

John J. Gibbons ’50, a former federal judge who argued for rights for Guantánamo detainees and dedicated his five-decade career to protecting the rule of law in the United States, died Dec. 9. He was 94.

Monika Bickert, head of global policy management at Facebook, joined Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain for a wide-ranging conversation hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, about the social media giant’s policies and its evolution--including some tough questions from audience members on the company’s recent headline-making controversies.

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Sonia Sotomayor was at Harvard Law School on Nov. 13 to hear finalists in the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition.

In October, Harvard Law School's Mock Trial Team won first place at the 2018 Lone Star Classic, an annual invitational mock trial tournament hosted by St. Mary's University School of Law, in San Antonio, Texas.

Virginia Eubanks recently joined the Berkman Klein Center for a discussion of her book, “Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor,” and the impact algorithms can have on different segments of society.