Public Service

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.

Rachel A. Viscomi ’01 has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and named director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. She was formerly a lecturer on law at HLS and the acting director of HNMCP.

Alice Cherry ’16 and Kelsey Skaggs ’16 have been named 2018 Echoing Green Fellows. In 2016, Cherry and Skaggs co-founded Climate Defense Project (CDP), a legal nonprofit that provides advice and support to the climate movement in the United States and internationally.

For six months, Harvard Law School students and alumni worked with legal professionals to create strategies promoting diversity in the legal workplace; those ideas were unveiled at Diversity Lab's Diversity in Law Hackathon, co-sponsored by Harvard Law School Executive Education and Bloomberg Law.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who has taught courses at Harvard Law School each year since 2008, has been nominated by President Donald J. Trump to fill the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61.

Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61 announced today that he will retire from the Supreme Court, on which he has served since 1988.

In April, Harvard Law School’s bicentennial programming came to a close with HLS in the Community, a day of hackathons and workshops. The spirit of the clinics infused the event.

As attorney general of the Navajo Nation, Ethel Branch ’08 aims to strengthen tribal law and native voices.

After Hurricane Maria roared over Puerto Rico in September 2017, crippling the island where Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19 grew up and where much of her family still lives, she felt “completely overwhelmed.” Within days, however, she put together an event that raised about $40,000 for relief efforts, collected enough emergency goods to fill three large trucks, and joined Harvard Law Assistant Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo ’08 and Lee Branson Mestre of the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs to plan the school’s response to the disaster.

There is no shortage of serious legal issues facing poor people in Greater St. Louis, especially people of color, says Blake Strode ’15, who was born and raised in the area. Just three years out of HLS, Strode is back home fighting the criminalization of poverty as executive director of ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit civil rights law firm in St. Louis that has filed landmark cases that have already improved the lives of tens of thousands of low-income people.

Renowned human rights expert Martha Minow, the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School and a Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, has been named a University Professor, Harvard’s highest faculty honor. Minow, who was dean of Harvard Law School from 2009 to 2017, will begin her appointment on July 1.

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.

As dozens of HLS students plan to pursue public service work abroad this summer, Jonathan Kaufman ’06 and Lillian Langford JD/MPP ’13 recall that seeds planted during their own 1L summers grew, strongly and directly, into the work they are doing today

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard University and renowned legal scholar and behavioral economist, received the prestigious Holberg Prize at the University of Bergen, Norway, on June 6.

Blessing Jee knew when she arrived at Harvard College that she would take time off from her studies, but she didn’t expect was that it would make her “fall back in love with Harvard”—and set her, newly energized, on her future path: pursuing public interest law Harvard Law School.

On Class Day, May 23, U.S. Senator Jeff Flake told the Class of 2018 assembled on a sunny Holmes Field that they were entering the legal profession in a critical moment.

In recognition of their demonstrated excellence in representing clients and undertaking advocacy or policy reform projects, Amy Volz ’18 and Ha Ryong Jung (Michael) ’18 were named the 2018 recipients of the David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award, named in honor of the late Clinical Professor David Grossman ’88.

Professor of Practice Alex Whiting chose a personal story for his Last Lecture to the class of 2018, one about the development of, and lessons learned from, an unexpected relationship.

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.

Carol Steiker '86 began her Last Lecture to the class of 2018 by sharing the questions she is frequently asked by students--what electives and classes to take, what summer job they should seek--and the advice she gives them: “It doesn’t matter that much.”