Public Service

On May 26, 2016, on Holmes Field, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow congratulated the graduates, telling them, “You have made the law yours and the world will be better for it.”

A number of Harvard Law students from the Class of ’16 received special awards this year during the 2016 Class Day ceremony on May 25. The students were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.

Doaa Abu Elyounes believes that law can change people’s lives. Now, set to graduate with an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School, Abu Elyounes plans to become a public service lawyer to ensure that everybody has access to the laws that changed hers.

When a severe speech impediment left him struggling to be understood, food became a way for Tommy Tobin '16 to connect with others. In high school he volunteered at a food bank and with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and watched his actions speak volumes. "Speaking through service became a theme for me.”

Being Native American defines Elizabeth Reese ’16. Then again, so does being the granddaughter of a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania. Together, the two have helped shape a woman and a lawyer.

Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Daniel Nagin will receive the Boston Bar Association's John G. Brooks Legal Services Award during the association's annual Law Day Dinner on May 12.

Gene Park has found that his greatest challenge this year has been making the transition from decisive cop mode to contemplative student.

Harvard Law students provide legal referrals to outside agencies and other services at Y2Y—the new shelter in Harvard Square for homeless youth aged 18-24 staffed by young people about the same age.

Raheemah Abdulaleem ’01 was standing on a Washington, D.C., street corner in 2009 on her way to work at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division when a man yelled at her from his car to “go back to your country.” An African-American who grew up in Philadelphia in a family whose roots in the United States are nearly as old as the country, Abdulaleem was wearing a hijab, the traditional headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

A judicial temperament involves many qualities. For Merrick Garland, patience is one of them.

There is now a cure for Hepatitis C. But in some states, Medicaid won’t pay for it until patients become seriously and irrevocably ill. Harvard Law’s Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation is trying to change that—through research, advocacy and litigation.

Since graduating from Harvard College in 1985 and then getting his law degree, Alan Jenkins '89 had been on a career fast track, but he felt frustrated about the forces of injustice and inequality he saw around him.

On March 29, in his contribution to the HLS Class Marshals' Last Lecture series, Robert Sitkoff, an expert in trusts and estates, explained the impact and importance of private law in enabling individuals to organize their lives and relationships with one another.

This Spring four members of the Harvard Law School community received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 in memory of the late Professor Gary Bellow ’60, a pioneering public interest lawyer who founded and directed Harvard Law School’s clinical programs.

On April 1, Harvard Law School hosted a conference on 'Presidential Power in an Era of Polarized Conflict,' a daylong gathering in which experts from both sides of the aisle debated the president’s power in foreign and domestic affairs, and in issues of enforcement or non-enforcement.

Thirteen Harvard Law School students were selected as the 2016 Cravath International Fellows. The fellows traveled to 12 countries for winter term clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. Below, four of those students are highlighted.

In an event at Harvard Law School on March 10, leading feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon commented on the state of gender equality law in a conversation with Ron Suskind, Pulitzer-winning journalist and lecturer on law at HLS.

Harvard Law student Aya Saed ’17 was among 30 recipients selected to receive the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.

Each year, teams of Harvard Law School students are given the opportunity to spend their Spring Break experiencing legal services work with clinics and legal organizations in the Boston area, or working on projects around the country and abroad--here, a few students share their accounts, reflecting on the significance of their service.

Harvard Law School 3L Steven Salcedo is among 12 law students recognized by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)-Northeast for “exemplary commitment to ethics in the course of their clinical studies.”

Across HLS, faculty are focusing on international access to lifesaving drugs for underserved populations. One forthcoming book, “The Health Crisis in the Developing World and…