Legal History

In honor of the Harvard Law School bicentennial, and in celebration of the long tradition of the Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School, here is a look back on Ames featuring historical footage and photographs spanning the competition's more than 100-year history.

As part of Harvard Law School's bicentennial summit, former Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch ’84 and Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School Annette Gordon-Reed ’84 looked back on their time together at Harvard Law School and discussed their subsequent careers.

At a time when American politics are beset by deep divisions and regular paralysis, five U.S. senators--Tim Kaine, Jack Reed, Mark Warner, Tom Cotton, and Elizabeth Warren--told a Harvard Law School audience Friday that there is real reason for concern, yet some hope for their institution and the country.

The opening event of Harvard Law School’s Bicentennial summit was one for the history books. Six Supreme Court justices joined Dean John F. Manning ’85 to share memories and a few priceless anecdotes.

The Harvard Law Review has announced the launch of the Harvard Law Review Blog, a new platform created to encourage timely discussion of current legal issues, and to connect readers to today’s leading legal scholars and practitioners, providing regular expert analysis of recent legislation, the latest legal theories, and pending cases across the country.

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 Harvard Law School Library has over 200 handwritten medieval manuscripts, including the largest collection of early English legal manuscripts outside the United Kingdom. This video offers a brief glimpse of these beautiful volumes and the work that goes into caring for them and making them available to the world.

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.

Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan ’86 joined the newest dean of Harvard Law School John Manning ’85 for a discussion and a Q&A with HLS students on Aug. 31.

To officially open Harvard Law School’s Bicentennial celebration, a panel of Harvard Law School faculty members gathered on Sept. 5 to discuss the law school’s early history.

In a three-part lecture, Martha Minow, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, discusses the legacies of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 civil rights case in which the Supreme Court declared state laws concerning the segregation of public schools to be unconstitutional.

The post-9/11 war on terror was only 3 years old when David Barron ’94 began researching whether presidents enjoy as much unfettered power to conduct wars as was assumed by many at the time. A dozen years after he began, Barron, now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit and a visiting professor at HLS, has published the results of his research in a book titled “Waging War: The Clash Between Presidents and Congress 1776 to ISIS” (Simon & Schuster).

From the Supreme Court, to the SEC, to an unidentified city under siege: legal analysis, memoir, a documentary and more works from HLS alumni.

Harvard Law School has announced that the family of the late Samuel Pisar LL.M. ’55 S.J.D. ’59, has endowed a professorship and a fund to support the International Human Rights Clinic.

Drawing on his interests in constitutional law, constitutional history, and racial equality, Professor Michael Klarman’s Last Lecture explored the obstacles faced — and in many ways, overcome — by feminist lawyers and African-American civil rights lawyers in the middle of the last century.

In January, it was as if the U.S. Supreme Court were playing host to a tournament of champions for past winners of the Ames Moot Court Competition, with three attorneys who argued Midland Funding, LLC v. Johnson having been on teams that won the competition within four years of each other at Harvard Law School.

A look back at the beginnings of Harvard Law School

The mood was festive, rather than disputatious, on Friday evening as Supreme Court Associate Justices Stephen G. Breyer, J.D. ’64, and Neil M. Gorsuch, J.D. ’91, sat down to discuss “the rule of law,” capping off a Harvard Marshall Forum dinner in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic scholarship.

Each May since 2011, Harvard Law School has presented "HLS Thinks Big," a TED Talks-style event that invites faculty members to present a "big idea" in front of an audience of faculty, students and staff.

John Manning, the Bruce Bromley Professor of Law and Deputy Dean at Harvard Law School, and an eminent public-law scholar with expertise in statutory interpretation and structural constitutional law, will become the School’s next dean on July 1.