Legal History

On Dec. 14, Harvard Law School Professor Adriaan Lanni gave the annual Kyriakos Tsakopoulos Lecture on Aristotle and the Moderns at Columbia University. The title of the talk was “Reconciliation after Mass Atrocity: Lessons from Ancient Athens.”

It took a Hook to hand a Howe.

Harvard Law School Assistant Professor Jed Shugerman has received the prestigious American Society for Legal History Cromwell Prize for his Ph.D. dissertation, “The People’s Courts: The Rise of Judicial Elections and Judicial Power in America.” The award was presented at the Society’s annual conference this past weekend.

The American Constitution Society of HLS sponsored “The Constitution in 2020,” a panel discussion in November featuring Harvard Law School Professors Yochai Benkler ’94, Frank Michelman ’60, Mark Tushnet, and Noah Feldman, all contributors to a recently published book of the same title. The book’s goal is to contest the conservative idea that constitutional law should not be influenced by contemporary understandings of law and the political landscape.

Adriaan Lanni and Matthew Stephenson ’03 have been promoted to tenured professorships of law at Harvard Law School, and current Lecturer on Law Michael Gregory ’04 has been appointed as an assistant clinical professor of law.

Experts on the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and veterans who served under it drew a-standing-room-only crowd at Harvard Law School last week, during a panel discussion sponsored by the student organization Lambda and moderated by Dean Martha Minow.

On Oct. 14, HLS Professor Elizabeth Warren, an expert on consumer and bankruptcy law, received the 2009 Lelia J. Robinson Award from the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts. The Robinson Award, named after the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts bar, recognizes women who are engaged in groundbreaking work in the legal profession, and who have served as mentors and role models for other female attorneys.

The family stories of black Americans and the findings of population geneticists make clear that Michelle Obama’s family history is far from unique. The vast majority of black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in North America have some degree of mixed ancestry.

The following op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree ’78, “The strange jurisprudence of Justice Thomas,” appeared in the July 2, 2009, edition of the Bay State Banner.

The following op-ed, “Trial by Firefighters,” co-written by HLS Professor Lani Guinier and Columbia Law Professor Susan Sturm, was published in the July 11, 2009, edition of The New York Times. They are also the co-authors of “Who’s Qualified: A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action” (Beacon Press, 2001).

In June, HLS Professor Bruce H. Mann, was elected to the Council of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Va., for a three-year term. He is a legal historian who studies the relationship between law, economy and society in early America and also teaches Property and Trusts and Estates.

In an April 29 lecture, Harvard Law School Professor Robert H. Sitkoff discussed the causes and consequences of revolutionary changes in American trust law. The talk, entitled “Lawyers, Banks, and Money: The Quiet Revolution in American Trust Law,” was part of an event honoring Sitkoff on his appointment as the John L. Gray Professor of Law. (Watch a webcast of the event.)

This spring, two faculty members, Bruce Mann, the Carl F. Schipper, Jr. Professor of Law, and Robert Sitkoff, the John L. Gray Professor of Law, gave lectures to commemorate their appointments to endowed chairs. News coverage and video of their lectures are included below.

Intelligent minds have long differed on the U.S. Constitution’s role as a blueprint for democracy. Some see it as the sacrosanct product of an enlightened era, its text to be followed literally. Others say that the Constitution must be interpreted more generally in order to apply its principles to current times.

The Harvard Law School Library has announced the creation of the Morris L. Cohen Fellowship in American Legal Bibliography and History.

In March 2009, HLS Dean Elena Kagan ’86 was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 44th solicitor general of the United States. Kagan, the first woman to hold this position, joins a long line of solicitors general with ties to Harvard Law School.

Professor Bruce H. Mann has been elected a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

In a two-day conference sponsored by Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice—titled “Charting New Pathways to Participation and Membership”—attendees from the worlds of law, labor, government, academia talked about the obstacles to justice faced by many groups and how those impediments might be overcome.

Some say the Clinton-Obama fight reflects a historical tension between blacks and women in the struggle for equality. A legal historian says the truth is not so simple—and far more interesting.