Family, Gender & Children

Haben Girma ’13, the first deaf-blind student to graduate from HLS, discusses her advocacy on behalf of individuals with disabilities and her work at the intersection of law, education and civil rights.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program’s Crimmigration Clinic and the Immigrant Defense Project issued two new resources for advocates and attorneys defending the rights of immigrants fighting removal to countries where they will be persecuted.

AI-based tools are increasingly being used by people and organizations in positions of authority to make important, often life-altering decisions. A new report from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society addresses this issue and weighs the positive and negative impacts of AI on human rights.

At a recent Harvard Law School Library Book Talk, Catharine A. MacKinnon, a pioneer of legal theory and practice and an activist for women’s rights, discussed her latest book "Butterfly Politics," in which she argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can have a butterfly effect that generates major social and cultural transformations.

During the introduction to the book launch event for “Big Data, Health Law, and Bioethics,” one of the editors, Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03, faculty director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, told a story about how powerful – and perhaps foreboding – big data can be.

A team of volunteers from Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center recently partnered with Veterans Legal Services to provide legal advice to homeless or at risk veterans at Veterans Stand Down 2018, a one-day event that brings service providers and veterans together allowing veterans to access services ranging from employment assistance to legal support to medical care.

Sixty-five years ago, Frederica Brenneman ’53 graduated from Harvard Law School as member of the first HLS class to admit women. A retired Connecticut Superior Court judge, Brenneman was the second woman appointed to the bench in Connecticut history. In this segment, she shares her HLS experience and discusses her career as a juvenile court judge.

On Sept. 17, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD) will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Special Olympics with Timothy Shriver, Special Olympics International Board Chairman.

This September, Harvard Law School will commemorate 65 years since women first graduated from Harvard Law School. In this "Countless Stories" video series, Boston City Counselor Michelle Wu ’12 discusses her advocacy for inclusion, innovation, and transparency in city government.

Many HLS alumni and students are engaged in legal and advocacy work related to immigration, including the situations of refugees and asylum seekers. For some of these lawyers, this interest predates their time at HLS, but has dovetailed with their coursework and hands-on learning during their time as law students.

The founder and director of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic Deborah Anker LL.M. ’84 received the Federal Bar Association’s NGO Lawyer of the Year Joint Award on May 18. She was honored alongside Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law.

In July, Harvard’s Labor and Worklife Program began an ambitious effort to fix a broken system of labor laws. The program, with the overall title “Rebalancing Economic and Political Power: A Clean Slate for the Future of Labor Law,” began with a daylong seminar at Wasserstein Hall last month.

Summer reading: From a queer critical legal studies approach to law reform, to a memoir about growing up bi-racial, to a biography of Chief Justice Marshall.

As they prepared to graduate, four members of the Class of 2018 took time to reflect on their unique interests and share experiences they will take from their time at Harvard Law.

Cameron Clark ’18 is the winner of this year’s Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 to honor the late Harvard Law professor Gary Bellow, his commitment to public service, and his innovative approach to the analysis and practice of law.

On the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the Harvard Gazette sat down with Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and faculty director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice, to discuss Houston’s role and influence in the Civil Rights Movement.

Three Harvard Law School students, Edith Sangueza ’18, Tabitha Cohen ’18 and Annie Manhardt ’18, received the 2018 Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award for exemplifying a pro bono public spirit and demonstrating an extraordinary commitment to improving and delivering high quality volunteer legal services in low-income communities.

In a last lecture to the HLS Class of 2018, Visiting Professor Paul Butler ’86, author of "Chokehold: Policing Black Men," delivered a talk titled "A Litany for Survival" about how his personal and professional experiences informed his critique of the criminal legal process.

Margaret Kettles ’18 is the winner of the Outstanding Clinical Student Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association. An exemplary clinical student and advocate for public interest, Kettles served as the executive director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau

After a landmark victory for gay rights in Kenya, Eric Mawira Gitari will continue to work for legal reform in Africa. “There are so many democratic changes going forward on the African continent right now," said Gitari. "We need to make sure that sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the debate.”

Harvard has announced the creation of a new, interdisciplinary project called the Behavioral Insights Health Project—a partnership between faculty members at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, and other schools at Harvard that will explore how behavioral science and behavioral economics can help improve health outcomes for patients, and decisions made by doctors.