Science & Technology

Subsidies offered by the federal government for the purchase of new electric vehicles (EVs) may actually increase total greenhouse gas emissions without similar aid for secondhand buyers, concludes a new study led by Ashley Nunes, Ph.D., a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program.

A Harvard Law School reading group debates how the law should manage self-driving cars, A.I.-generated art, and other algorithmic technology.

A Harvard Law class explores possibilities for a U.S. central bank digital currency, which would be sheltered from the wild fluctuations in value for which crypto is known.

Since 2007, Gabriel Swiney has served in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser. His work in space law, he says, has allowed him to merge his experience and his passion to help future generations chart a safer, fairer path to the stars.

A new Harvard Law initiative examines the legal and ethical aspects of therapeutic psychedelics

A wide range of books by faculty, from a collection of essays on the ethics of consumer genetic testing to a look at the fate of constitutional institutions in populist regimes to a delightful children's book by a legal philosopher

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University has announced the appointment of Susan Hendrickson ’93 as its new executive director.

Social media’s business model of personalized virality is incompatible with democracy, agreed experts at a recent Harvard Law School discussion on the state of democracy.

Leaked revelations about Instagram’s impact on teens have united Republicans and Democrats in considering legal reforms, say Harvard Law School scholars.

Helping key players across Massachusetts — including the City of Boston and environmental nonprofits — reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is a focus for the Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

A new study led by Dr. Ashley Nunes, a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, concluded that, counterintuitively, fleets of electric, autonomous taxis could dramatically increase energy consumption and emissions that contribute to climate change — not reduce them.

Harvard University Professor and former Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow argues for a new Fairness Doctrine and other reforms in a National Constitution Center panel on free speech and media.

Health law has become especially timely in this year of COVID-19 vaccines and revitalized Obamacare. But for graduating student Phebe Hong ’21, it’s a passion that began in high school.

As Harvard Law students across the world logged onto Zoom this fall to connect to their professors and peers, Sidharth Chauhan LL.M. ’21 took virtual education a step further.

Should smoking be among the pre-existing health risks that qualify people for priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine? Harvard Law public health expert Carmel Shachar says the answer is yes. 

The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School is joining forces with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, its counterpart at Yale Law School, to host a seminar series reflecting on ethical and legal issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the 2020 Tanner Lecturer on Human Values at Clare Hall, Cambridge, Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain explores the clash of free speech and public health online.

Even if there was no COVID-19, online courts would still be the wave of the future: This idea was the starting point for a recent webinar, “Online Courts: Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar,” a half-day event convened by the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.

Public health expert Carmel Shachar discusses the COVID-19 vaccine, who is likely to get it first, and whether people can be required to get vaccinated.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society researchers Yochai Benkler and Robert Faris document how polarized media in the United States shape political discourse and the 2020 election.

Experts gathered this week to discuss the ethical, social, and legal implications of technological advancements that facilitate the early detection of dementia.

Professor Jim Greiner at the Access to Justice Lab is aiming to find out whether the practice of law can be transformed by using evidence to determine which legal interventions are safe and effective, both for individuals in the justice system and society as a whole.

Andrew H. Choi ’23 was eager for a serious challenge in his first Army posting, so he chose as radically different an environment as he could imagine: Fairbanks, Alaska.

By March 17, just two weeks after Texas reported its first case of COVID-19, Judge Emily Miskel ’08 was back on the figurative bench, presiding over a one-hour virtual temporary restraining order hearing from home.

In an effort to combat multiple potential vectors of attack on the 2020 U.S. election, two Berkman Klein Center affiliates have published a package of “tabletop exercises,” freely available to decisionmakers and the public to simulate realistic scenarios in which disinformation threatens to disrupt the 2020 election.

In the “good old days” of cybersecurity risk, we only had to worry about being hacked or downloading malware. But the stakes have ramped up considerably in the past decade, say Berkman Klein directors James Mickens and Jonathan Zittrain.

In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Carmel Shachar, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, says that political interference in the FDA’s process for ensuring that a vaccine is both safe and effective “opens the door to a public health disaster.”

Cass Sunstein ’78, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard, has been tapped by the World Health Organization to chair its Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.

“Confused,” “frustrating,” “fragmented,” “acute,” and “a reckoning” were just some of the ways three health care experts described the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic during a recent Berkman Klein virtual discussion.

“I’ve always had a passion for engaging in my curiosity,” says João Marinotti ‘20, a linguist turned lawyer whose work focuses on sustainability, business, property, and private law.

With a background in chemical engineering and business, Brian Kulp ’20 is eyeing a future in appellate law

Student fellows at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics recently celebrated their fellowships’ end virtually when their capstone meeting moved to Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Students, faculty and staff in the Harvard Law School's Emmett Environmental Law & Policy Clinic are still hard at work, pushing back against the current administration’s attempts to undo environmental regulations approved under former President Barack Obama ’91.

The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is currently taking the lead in the effort to explore the ways data can be mined to increase understanding of COVID-19 and to fight it more efficiently.

In a Q&A, scholars at the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School raise important legal and ethical questions about health care delivery and the enactment of extraordinary public health measures in response to the ongoing epidemic.

Harvard’s Animal Law & Policy Program filed its first Supreme Court brief challenging the Trump administration’s waiver of laws regarding the U.S.-Mexico border wall construction. Ashley Maiolatesi ’20 recently corresponded with Harvard Law Today about what is at stake, the specific ramifications of these waivers, and her own personal connection to the project.

This month, Harvard Law Professors Jim Greiner and I. Glenn Cohen teamed up with bioethics scholar Holly Fernandez Lynch to author “Overcoming obstacles to experiments in legal practice,” in which the collaborators argue in favor of randomized studies in legal research over the common practice of relying on the expertise and judgment of individuals.

During Winter Term, 12 Harvard Law School students traveled to 12 countries as Cravath International Fellows to pursue clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus.

Rebecca Tushnet, the inaugural Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and a director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, on Feb. 11, on “The Digital Millennium Copyright Act at 22: What is it, why was it enacted, and where are we now?”

In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Cass Sunstein discussed his research, and a recently published paper on how people decide what they do or do not want to know.

On Nov. 1, German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed the "Ethics of Digital Transformation" at an event hosted by Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Deputy Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel Hanan Melcer, who chaired Israel's Central Elections Committee, shared his experience protecting Israel's elections from online manipulation and cyber threats.

The “Innovation, Justice and Globalization” conference, hosted by HLS professor and leading intellectual property scholar Ruth Okediji, brought international academics and policymakers to campus to discuss intellectual property issues.

A recent report out of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic calls for greater nutrition education in the medical field, and identifies policy approaches to increase nutrition competency of U.S-trained physicians.

Calls are growing for the U.S. to lift a ban on mitochondrial replacement therapy, or MRT, a procedure developed to enable women who are at risk of passing on rare but devastating diseases to have healthy, biologically related children.

As part of a series called Focal Point, in which the Harvard Gazette asks a range of Harvard faculty members to answer the same question, I. Glenn Cohen explains why we should scrutinize what is and then ponder what should be.

The U.S. is falling behind in fiber optic technology, but cities and localities are leading the way.