Family, Gender & Children

A panel convened by Harvard Law School Professor Charles J. Ogletree Jr., director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, reflected on what the recent crisis in Ferguson, Mo. means for broad policy issues, including racial discrimination, political disenfranchisement, policing, and the criminal justice system.

For the past year, Harvard Law students in the Education Law Clinic have travelled back and forth to the Massachusetts State House to lobby state legislators to pass an Act Relative to Safe and Supportive Schools. On August 13, all that work paid off, when Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Safe and Supportive Schools provisions into law.

Margaret H. Marshall, Harvard Law School senior research fellow and lecturer on law, will receive the American Bar Association’s 2014 Thurgood Marshall Award. A retired chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Marshall is being recognized for her long-term contributions to advancing civil rights, civil liberties and human rights in the United States.

On June 17, about 200 Harvard Law School alumni and students gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC). It was a celebration of "30 Years of Social Change Lawyering," and it brought together advocates from around the country and the world.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that closely held, for-profit corporations have a right to exercise the religious beliefs of their owners and therefore cannot be required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide contraception coverage to employees if it conflicts with those views. The Gazette spoke with Harvard Law School Professor Mark Tushnet  about the decision and what it means for future corporate challenges to the Affordable Care Act.

Five Harvard Law School professors presented a sampling of their innovative ideas in late May at the 2014 Harvard Law School Thinks Big lecture, an annual event that challenges faculty to explain those big ideas in short talks.

Until last month, scores of destitute people—virtually all of them African Americans— languished in the city jail of Montgomery, Ala., for unpaid traffic tickets they…

“Religious Accommodation in the Age of Civil Rights,” a conference held at Harvard Law School April 3–5, brought together a group of distinguished legal scholars to discuss a broad range of controversies that have developed in recent years as marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws have prompted some religious organizations and private companies to assert claims of religious liberty and exemption from compliance with the law.

From March 15-23, many Harvard Law students used their spring break to learn about the law outside the classroom.

Vicki C. Jackson, Thurgood Marshall Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, and an expert in constitutional law, federalism, and gender equality, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Nearly 70,000 young people in the United States are held by law in detention or correctional facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm…

On January 28, 2014, Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB) student attorneys Nicholas Pastan ’15 and Breana Ware ’14 found themselves conducting a trial in federal court and asking a Judge to decline to enforce a Petition brought against their client pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Harvard Law School Professor of Practice Nancy Gertner has been selected as a recipient of the 2014 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, established by the ABA Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession.

In honor of International Women’s Day, Harvard Law School is hosting a photo exhibit, “Inspiring Change, Inspiring Us,” featuring portraits of influential women.

At a recent Askwith Forum on income inequality and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, panelists including Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow discussed interventions that have proven effective and detailed a set of building blocks for an American solution.

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet received an award from the National Human Rights Committee of Qatar, in Doha, on Jan. 8, 2014. The award was presented by Sultan Hassan al Jamali, assistant secretary general of the National Human Rights Committee of Qatar.

34 Harvard Law School faculty members and 24 faculty from Boston College Law School have signed a letter urging the U.S. Congress to support the core principles in the pending legislation known as CHIFF (Children in Families First), S. 1530 and H.R. 3323.

Catharine A. MacKinnon, the Elizabeth A. Long Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School and the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, received the 2014 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Lifetime Achievement Award from the AALS Section on Women in Legal Education.

The Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a nationally recognized collaboration between Harvard Law School and Massachusetts Advocates for Children (MAC), recently published the second volume of its landmark report “Helping Traumatized Children Learn” which offers a guide to a process for creating trauma-sensitive schools and a policy agenda to provide the support schools need to achieve that goal.

Q&A with Margaret Marshall, who wrote the landmark state ruling allowing gays to wed On Nov. 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court published its…

‘We are always working for greater inclusion’ HLS Lambda Co-presidents John Dey ’14 and Shane Hunt ’15 on what they owe their predecessors and where…