Topics
Ethics
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Algorithm nation
March 14, 2022
A Harvard Law School reading group debates how the law should manage self-driving cars, A.I.-generated art, and other algorithmic technology.
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Combating corruption
March 9, 2022
Professor Matthew Stephenson, an anticorruption law expert and founder of the Global Anticorruption Blog, explains the myriad ways corruption may play a role in Russia's war in Ukraine.
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Remembering Alan Stone 1929–2022
February 4, 2022
Alan A. Stone, the Touroff- Glueck Professor of Law and Psychiatry Emeritus in the faculty of law and the faculty of medicine at Harvard, died Jan. 23. He was 92.
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Faculty Books in Brief: Winter 2022
January 31, 2022
A wide range of books by faculty, from a collection of essays on the ethics of consumer genetic testing to a look at the fate of constitutional institutions in populist regimes to a delightful children's book by a legal philosopher
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‘The algorithm has primacy over media … over each of us, and it controls what we do’
November 18, 2021
Social media’s business model of personalized virality is incompatible with democracy, agreed experts at a recent Harvard Law School discussion on the state of democracy.
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Protecting the media to protect democracy
November 16, 2021
At a Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Martha Minow, along with Vicki Jackson and Nikolas Bowie, discussed why the press is in danger — and how to save it.
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Is it time to swipe left on social media?
October 12, 2021
Leaked revelations about Instagram’s impact on teens have united Republicans and Democrats in considering legal reforms, say Harvard Law School scholars.
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Can Donald Trump still assert executive privilege?
September 28, 2021
Former White House Counsel and Harvard Law Lecturer Neil Eggleston explains the legal doctrine, its origins, and how it applies to ex-presidents.
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Moderating free speech
September 27, 2021
At a Federalist Society event, David French ’94 says government “should keep its hands off” social media and argues that support for free speech is waning across the political spectrum.
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‘We have to spend more time on the inequalities that are embedded in the law itself’
September 21, 2021
September 2021 saw the publication of the inaugural issue of The American Journal of Law and Equality, a project developed by Professors Martha Minow, Randall Kennedy, and Cass Sunstein, in collaboration with MIT Press.
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Mason Marks, POPLAR project lead and Petrie-Flom senior fellow, explains how the initiative will fill a gap in research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of psychedelics law and policy, and previews some of the initiative’s topics of inquiry.
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Oh, what a tangled web we weave
July 7, 2021
Deception spreads faster than truth on social media. Who — if anyone — should stop it?
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‘We’re on a collision course with sanity’
June 22, 2021
Harvard University Professor and former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues for a new Fairness Doctrine and other reforms in a National Constitution Center panel on free speech and media.
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Health law has become especially timely in this year of COVID-19 vaccines and revitalized Obamacare. But for graduating student Phebe Hong ’21, it’s a passion that began in high school.
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Professor Noah Feldman, who first proposed the idea of the Oversight Board to Facebook, weighs in on its decision to deplatform President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
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Harvard Law professors discuss the Derek Chauvin trial, its implications, and potential paths forward
April 22, 2021
A panel of Harvard Law professors discussed the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, which proved an occasion for cautious optimism, a bit of anxiety, and questions about what comes next.
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Banking on crime: The economic contours of policing in America
February 18, 2021
Experts discuss the myriad ways money and wealth influence criminal processes and outcomes as part of the yearlong "Policing in America" colloquium series, led by Harvard Law Professors Alexandra Natapoff and Andrew Manuel Crespo.
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Rethinking digital education in a ‘global classroom’
February 12, 2021
As Harvard Law students across the world logged onto Zoom this fall to connect to their professors and peers, Sidharth Chauhan LL.M. ’21 took virtual education a step further.
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‘Our job is to bring accountability, and oversight, and transparency to government’
February 10, 2021
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz ’87 recently spoke to Harvard Law Today about his work to ensure the integrity of the DOJ and beyond.
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Should smokers be prioritized for COVID vaccine?
February 2, 2021
Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes.
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The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is joining forces with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, its counterpart at Yale Law School, to host a seminar series reflecting on ethical and legal issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Gaining power, losing control
January 28, 2021
As the 2020 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Clare Hall, Cambridge, Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain explores the clash of free speech and public health online.
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Draining the swamp
January 25, 2021
When Joe Biden began presidential duties last week, he issued an ethics pledge for his administration. And the students in the Harvard Law School course Legal Profession: Government Ethics—Scandal and Reform were paying especially close attention.
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Debating stakeholder capitalism
December 16, 2020
Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis intensifying discussions about corporate purpose duties to stakeholders, the European Corporate Governance Institute and the London Business School Centre for Corporate Governance recently hosted a virtual debate on stakeholder capitalism between Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and London Business School Professor Alex Edmans.
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Political philosopher Christopher Lewis, a scholar of criminal law system, to join HLS
December 9, 2020
Christopher Lewis, a political philosopher and scholar of the criminal legal system, has been named an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School, effective Jan. 1.
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Access to history
December 9, 2020
The Harvard Law School Library's Nuremberg Trials Project has been used by students, academics, filmmakers and artists among others to support their work in the retelling and documentation of World War II and the atrocities committed during that time.
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All the president’s pardons
December 1, 2020
Can President Donald J. Trump pardon himself before his term ends in January? This hotly debated legal question was given new urgency by the president’s recent decision to pardon Michael T. Flynn, his first national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russia.
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Nudging organ donation in the United States
November 13, 2020
Cass Sunstein ’78, Robert Walmsley University Professor and former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, believes “Nudge theory” might help bridge the gap between supply and demand for organ transplants.
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Confronting conflict pollution
September 30, 2020
A new report from the HLS International Human Rights Clinic and the Conflict and Environment Observatory establishes a new framework for addressing human harm resulting from the environmental consequences of conflict.
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Not ‘manifestly criminal’
September 29, 2020
Harvard Law Today spoke Monday with tax experts Keith Fogg and Thomas Brennan about the New York Times' report on President Donald J. Trump’s taxes.
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A history of corruption in the United States
September 23, 2020
Anti-corruption law expert Matthew Stephenson focuses his recent scholarship on anticorruption reform in U.S. history.
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Should Democrats pack the Supreme Court?
September 23, 2020
Mark Tushnet discussed with Harvard Law Today the possibilities for, and potential pitfalls of, any effort by an incoming Democratic majority to pack the Supreme Court.
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The law is ‘tested and illuminated during this pandemic’
September 16, 2020
In the first colloquium of a sweeping new series, “COVID-19 and the Law,” five Harvard Law faculty members grappled with the challenges, limitations, and opportunities of governmental powers during a public health crisis.
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For the Sake of Argument
July 23, 2020
Singer seeks to help lawyers and the general public make reasoned arguments, promote civil discourse, and consider alternative perspectives.
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Professor Crespo says events in Portland raise serious concerns about unlawful police tactics
July 21, 2020
Andrew Crespo ’08 recently discussed the federal government’s law enforcement actions in Portland, Oregon with Harvard Law Today.
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Lessig, who argued on behalf of ‘faithless electors,’ responds to the Supreme Court’s decision
July 8, 2020
Lawrence Lessig issues a statement on the unanimous Supreme Court ruling that states can require Electoral College voters to back the victor of their state’s popular vote.
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Beatrice Lindstrom, clinical instructor and supervising attorney in the International Human Rights Clinic, has been working for nearly a decade to secure accountability from the U.N. for a devastating cholera outbreak caused by UN peacekeepers in Haiti in 2010.
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COVID-19 presents a unique threat to people in prisons and jails, agreed panelists at “Incarcerated Populations and COVID-19: Public Health, Ethical, and Legal Concerns,” a webinar hosted by Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.
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Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20: A physician-researcher with a curious mind turns to the practice of law
May 24, 2020
A physician-researcher, Machteld van Egmond LL.M. ’20 explored the intersections among empirical science, law, and medicine during her LL.M. year at Harvard Law School.
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Years of advocacy by Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program have culminated in a landmark decision recognizing gender as basis for asylum claims.
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At year-end celebration, Petrie-Flom student fellows present their independent research projects
April 27, 2020
Student fellows at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics recently celebrated their fellowships’ end virtually when their capstone meeting moved to Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is currently taking the lead in the effort to explore the ways data can be mined to increase understanding of COVID-19 and to fight it more efficiently.
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Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general under President Ronald Reagan, joined 21 other conservative or libertarian attorneys in a statement condemning inspector general Michael Atkinson’s ouster as part of a “continuous assault on the rule of law.”
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Emergency statutes must be passed to protect doctors and hospitals from potential lawsuits, say Harvard Law professors
April 7, 2020
HLS Professors Glenn Cohen and Andrew Crespo discuss their proposals to protect doctors and hospitals from potential lawsuits and criminal prosecution during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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‘Medical debt is a violation of human rights’
April 7, 2020
At a March 27 Petrie-Flom event on medical debt and universal health coverage, health experts and journalists raise serious concerns about the affordability of testing and hospital care.
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Waste not, want not
April 1, 2020
Harvard Law School Professor Emily Broad Leib ’08, director of the HLS Food Law and Policy Clinic, and her students have been working furiously to ensure that the most vulnerable—and ultimately the rest of us—are fed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Protecting rights in a global crisis
March 25, 2020
In a Q&A, scholars at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School raise important legal and ethical questions about health care delivery and the enactment of extraordinary public health measures in response to the ongoing epidemic.