Human Rights

On Jan. 5, New England Patriots Defensive Captain Devin McCourty, teammates Johnson Bademosi, Matthew Slater and Duron Harmon, and team president Jonathan Kraft participated in a 'Listen and Learn' event at HLS, organized by the Fair Punishment Project and the Office of Public Interest Advising, featuring panel discussions on inequities in the criminal justice system.

On Saturday, November 20, family, friends, students, and colleagues of the late Harvard Law School Clinical Professor David Grossman gathered at HLS to celebrate his life, honor his community activism, and support his fight for social justice at the second annual David A Grossman (DAG) Fund fundraiser.

The Harvard Law School Library uniquely owns and manages approximately one million pages of documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials: thirteen trials conducted just after World War II to prosecute leaders of the Nazi regime. To preserve the contents of these documents—which include trial transcripts and full trial exhibits—the library has undertaken a multi-stage digitization project to make the collection freely accessible online.

2017 was a year of notable accomplishments for Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), and for Bonnie Docherty '01, associate director of Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection and lecturer on law at HLS.

In this three-part lecture, Professor Randall Kennedy draws on a course he teaches in Race Relations Law to discuss the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Bryan Stevenson has battled through the courts, defending the wrongly convicted and children prosecuted as adults, while condemning mass incarceration and racial bias in the criminal justice system; now, he is embarking on a fight to start a national conversation about the painful legacy of slavery, which he says “continues to haunt us today.”

This fall, the Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of book talks by HLS authors, with topics ranging from Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts to a Citizen's Guide to Impeachment. As part of this ongoing series, faculty authors from various disciplines shared their research and discussed their recently published books.

This year, Jon Hanson challenged his torts students to create short documentaries about how tort law might apply to social issues and problems on the edge of the law’s reach. This challenge culminated in the inaugural Torty Awards--a screening and ceremony celebrating their inventive films on climate change, driverless cars, and the Flint water crisis.

In honor of Harvard Law School’s bicentennial, in October the Harvard Law Review published a collection of six articles exploring Harvard’s contribution to the development of the law, and how that history will shape the future of the law in theory and practice.

Julian SpearChief-Morris ’17 is the first indigenous student to lead the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, marking his place in the storied history of the bureau which was founded in 1913 to provide legal services to low-income clients in the Boston area.

Each year, as we honor military veterans nationwide for their service, Harvard Law Today profiles students in the incoming class who have held positions in the Armed Forces. The Class of 2020 includes the largest number of former or current service members in Harvard Law's recent history.

As a JAG officer in the U.S. Marine Corps for more than six years, Jenna E. Reed LL.M. ’18 prosecuted and defended some of the most serious cases in that branch of the military, focusing on violent and special victims crimes, including shaken-baby cases and others involving children.

“The Remarkable Evolution of American Environmental Law from Nixon to Trump and Beyond” panel during Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit focused on the uncertain future of the Environmental Protection Agency in the current administration. Panelists A. James Barnes ’67, Richard J. Lazarus ‘79, William Reilly ’65 and Gina McCarthy looked at the EPA’s distinguished history.

In many ways, Jane's life in Kenya was idyllic: She was an educated, confident professional woman with a flourishing career, raising a daughter whom she loved dearly. There was only one problem in her life: her husband, who had become increasingly violent and abusive in the privacy of their own home.

Over a year ago, a group of students in Harvard Law School's Criminal Justice Policy Program (CJPP) began working to propel forensic science reform in Massachusetts. On Oct. 2, the students' work culminated in a Wrongful Conviction Day event at the Massachusetts State House.

It took an all-star team of panelists to honor the scope and influence of Charles Ogletree’s career last week at HLS—eminent friends, students and colleagues all paying tribute to a man that the world knows as a leading force for racial equality and social justice, and that the Harvard community knows affectionately as Tree.

Hundreds of friends, former students, colleagues, and well-wishers gathered last Monday in a joyful celebration of the life and career of Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree, advocate for Civil Rights, author of books on race and justice, and mentor to former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), with which Harvard's International Human Rights Clinic collaborated during the negotiations of a nuclear weapon ban treaty, received the Nobel Peace Prize today. IHRC joined ICAN and UK-based disarmament organization Article 36 in the efforts for the new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 

HLS Professor of Practice Naz K. Modirzadeh ’02 gave a talk at a United Nations General Assembly event on Sept. 22 called, “International Humanitarian Law: Addressing violations in light of recent conflicts,” which focused on failures of international law to protect health care systems in armed conflict in Syria involving designated terrorists.

Thurgood Marshall is revered as a titan of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the architect of the landmark court case that ended legal segregation in America’s public schools, and the first African-American Supreme Court justice. Yet for five of his former law clerks gathered Wednesday at Harvard Law School, he was more than that.

In advance of a conference on Saturday, Sept. 23 at HLS, Harvard Law Professor Matthew Stephenson spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the global phenomenon of "populist plutocrats:" politicians who exploit anti-elite sentiment to win elections, then use the presidency to advance the interests of themselves and their allies.