Public Service

Until last spring, scores of destitute people—virtually all of them African-Americans—were locked up in the city jail of Montgomery, Alabama, for traffic tickets they couldn’t pay, sentenced to a day in jail for every $50 they owed. They could earn a $25 credit daily by providing free labor, scrubbing blood and feces off jail floors and cleaning buildings.

On the second floor of the City-County Building in Madison, Wisconsin, there now hangs the portrait of a man named Nathan Dane. The same steady gaze examines visitors 1,100 miles away as they step off the elevator on the fourth floor in Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School.

Twenty-two years. That’s how long Tom Mela ’68 and his colleagues fought the Boston Public Schools in a class-action lawsuit over huge backlogs in providing special education to students with disabilities.

Since 2001, a select group of HLS students have undertaken public service internships under the auspices of the Chayes International Public Service Fellowship, dedicated to the memory of HLS Professor Abram Chayes '49.

Third-year Harvard Law School students clashed in the high drama of the venerable Ames Moot Court Competition on Tuesday under the jurisdiction of visiting federal judges, including…

The final round of Harvard Law School's annual Ames Moot Court competition was held this year on November 18, and was presided over by the Hon. Antonin Scalia ’60, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; the Hon. Adalberto Jordan, U.S. Court of Appeals Eleventh Circuit; and the Hon. Patricia Millett ’88, U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Benjamin B. Ferencz ’43, known for his role as chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials and for his work promoting an international rule of law and the creation of an International Criminal Court, has been awarded Harvard Law School’s highest honor: the Medal of Freedom.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited the Harvard Law School campus last week to share some of the lessons learned as adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

This fall, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, issued the "Deans' Food System Challenge" (one of several competitions held by the Harvard Innovation Lab and sponsored by Harvard Schools), encouraging students across the university to come up with fresh ideas for solving complex problems facing our food system.

In just two years, more than 30 HLS students have enrolled in the Veterans’ Legal Clinic—housed at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC) in Jamaica Plain, of which HLS Clinical Professor Daniel Nagin is faculty director—and represented more than 100 clients in the areas of federal and state veterans’ benefits, discharge upgrades, and estate-planning matters.

In August, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust significantly increased an existing grant to expand its support of the Veterans Legal Clinic and other veterans’ advocacy program at Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.

The service and unique perspective of the veterans currently enrolled at Harvard Law School enriches the entire HLS community, elevating awareness about the legal and policy issues affecting veterans and the significance of law in contemporary warfare; two of the 12 U.S. military veterans in this year’s entering class at recently shared their experiences in the military and at HLS.

Harvard Law School graduates across the country won political victories as part of the nation’s midterm elections. Rep. Tom Cotton ’02 (R-Ark.) successfully challenged two-term…

On Wednesday, Oct. 22, Martha Minow hosted a Q&A session with Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Nancy Ramirez at an event sponsored by the Black Law Students Association, La Alianza and The Journal on Racial and Ethic Justice.

Lawrence Lessig has become an activist. And he is taking on the system he critiqued with a bold effort to appropriate what he sees as one of its corrupting forces.

Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center—one of the leading providers of legal aid in Greater Boston and surrounding communities—has announced that Daniel Nagin, Clinical Professor of Law, will be its Faculty Director.

Last Spring, Eric Lesser took a leave from his Harvard Law School studies to run for a seat in the Massachusetts Senate. In September, he won the Democratic primary and will move on to the November election in his bid to represent First Hampden and Hampshire District.

Twenty-three public service visionaries and social entrepreneurs from Harvard Law School have been selected as recipients of grants from the Public Service Venture Fund, a unique program that awards up to $1 million each year to help graduating Harvard Law students and recent graduates obtain their ideal jobs in public service.

In an entertaining talk in HLS’s Wasserstein Hall with Dean Martha Minow on Wednesday, Associate Justice Elena Kagan '86 displayed her trademark wit and wisdom, honed during her years as a Harvard Law School student, professor, and dean, her work with the Clinton administration, and her stint as solicitor general.

For the past year, Harvard Law students in the Education Law Clinic have travelled back and forth to the Massachusetts State House to lobby state legislators to pass an Act Relative to Safe and Supportive Schools. On August 13, all that work paid off, when Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Safe and Supportive Schools provisions into law.