Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Eleventh Circuit Weighs In On Need For Consumer Class Actions' Plaintiffs To Be Ascertainable
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Harvard Law School: The road to marriage equality
Since at least 1983, when a Harvard Law student wrote a third-year paper exploring a human rights argument for same-sex marriage, HLS has participated in anticipating, shaping, critiquing, analyzing and guiding the long path toward marriage equality.
In the 1980s, Harvard Law students wrote papers and student notes debating the pros and cons of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Those students graduated and became advocates who argued before legislatures and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, both for and against legal recognitions of same-sex marriage. Others eventually became judges whose decisions created a legal basis for marriage equality, and some became scholars whose contributions inspired a new generation of students, advocates, and judges to think critically and creatively about LGBT rights. Together, they helped shape the course of a social and legal movement that surprised many by its swift changes in both public perception and legal doctrine.
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1983:
Evan Wolfson ’83 Pens Prescient Paper
In 1983, a decade after a fledgling movement for same-sex marriage came to a grinding halt in the courts, Harvard Law School third-year student Evan Wolfson asked a question that few in the mainstream legal world were seriously deliberating: Does the Constitution, and its myriad explicit and implied protections of expression, privacy and individualistic self-fulfillment, guarantee the right to same-sex marriage?
Many of the arguments Wolfson made then, grounded in a historical framework of marriage as a human rights issue, would later shape legal arguments that would sweep the courts in the decades to come. Twenty years later, Wolfson built on his unpublished thesis in the book “Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry.” Published the year after Massachusetts became the first – and at that point only – state to legalize same-sex marriage, the book provided a legal analysis for why marriage should be a constitutional right for all.
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1985:
Carol Steiker ’86 Explores Constitutional Status of Gay Persons
Carol Steiker
In “The Constitutional Status of Sexual Orientation: Homosexuality as a Suspect Classification,” a widely cited student note for the Harvard Law Review, Carol Steiker ’86, now a professor at Harvard Law, argued that legal classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny beyond the “rational basis” test then used by courts. Steiker argued that the most commonly asserted constitutional foundations for gay rights – the right to privacy and the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and expression – had failed to overcome inequality, and that an equal protection approach would provide a richer framework to address discrimination against gay people. Equal Protection – as well as the Due Process Clause – would later serve as a chief tool for courts finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
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1986:
Laurence Tribe ’66 Argues to Strike Down Georgia Sodomy Laws
In 1986, the Supreme Court heard Bowers v. Hardwick, in which Laurence Tribe ’66 represented Michael Hardwick, a man who had been arrested by Georgia police under a state statute criminalizing sodomy. In a 5-4 decision, the Court upheld Georgia’s law, finding that prescriptions against sodomy “have ancient roots,” against which an argument for a constitutional right to engage in homosexual sex was, “at best, facetious.”
(In 2003 the Supreme Court overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas, a case for which Tribe wrote the ACLU’s amicus curiae brief supporting Lawrence.)
Credit: Bill Wilson Laurence Tribe, who argued the Hardwick case, answers press questions after the oral arguments. March 31, 1986
***
1993:
Evan Wolfson ’83 Joins Landmark Hawaii Litigation for Legal Right to Marriage
Credit: Marilyn Humphries Evan Wolfson ’83 with two of the plaintiffs in Baehr V. Miike, Genora Dancel (left) and Ninia Baehr
In the mid-1990s, Evan Wolfson participated in landmark litigation, serving as co-counsel in Baehr v. Lewin, later Baehr v. Miike, a Hawaii case in which the state’s supreme court held that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage was discriminatory. The state’s highest court sent the case back to trial, where a lower court found in 1996 that the state had no rational reason to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Backlash against the decision later led the state to amend its constitution to cement a ban on same-sex marriage, and inspired Congress to pass the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. In 2003, Wolfson would go on to form the national advocacy group Freedom to Marry.
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1996:
Jean Dubofsky ’67 Lands the First LGBT Rights Win at the Supreme Court
In 1996, after Colorado voters unexpectedly passed Amendment 2 to the state Constitution, which would have prevented local governments from recognizing homosexuals as a protected class, activists asked Jean Dubofsky ’67, an appellate attorney who had been the first woman to serve on the Colorado Supreme Court, to challenge the law. Although her goal was to get rid of Amendment 2 at the state level without landing in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court eventually took the case, Romer v. Evans, and ultimately struck down the amendment as failing under the rational basis test of the Equal Protection Clause, marking the first win for LGBT rights in the Supreme Court.
It also sparked the beginning of a line of opinions by Justice Anthony Kennedy ’61 that, unlike the Court in Bowers, treated gay people as individuals with rights and dignity. “If you look back at Bowers and all the federal decisions after, their language was just horrific,” Dubofsky said. “They belittled people and made their claims seem frivolous and ridiculous. Romer treated people as if they had some dignity. I couldn’t believe it, when I read the opinion, how much of a sea change it was.”
***
2001:
Harvard Scholars Question Marriage as the Unifying Goal for LGBT Rights
Credit: Martha Stewart Professor Janet Halley
As the legal fight for same-sex marriage began to trickle through the courts, Harvard Law Professor Janet Halley examined in 2001 what she viewed as the troubling rhetoric increasingly adopted by advocates for gay marriage. In an essay titled “Recognition, Rights, Regulation, Normalisation: Rhetorics of Justification in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate,” Halley expressed concerns that although limiting marriage to heterosexual couples indeed deprecated the relationships of gay couples who wished to marry, the fight for equality had too readily adopted language emphasizing the normative value of traditional coupling. Instead, Halley argued, the movement should question widespread assumptions about marriage and monogamy, leaving the door open for a broader range of non-traditional relationships.
Credit: Harvard Law School Yearbook Douglas NeJaime ’03
In 2003, then-3L Douglas NeJaime published an article in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review titled “Marriage, Cruising, and Life in Between” that explored a range of ideological positions through case studies of some of the leading gay-based organizations. NeJaime expressed concerns that the push for marriage would homogenize the LGBT movement and leave behind those who did not wish to advocate for traditional relationships or gay assimilation.
***
Credit: Martha Stewart
2003:
Chief Justice Margaret Marshall Pens Massachusetts Opinion Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage
On November 18, 2003, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote the majority opinion for a divided court holding that the state’s ban on gay marriage violated the equal protection and due process rights of same-sex couples under the state constitution, making Massachusetts the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Marshall, who in 2012 joined Harvard Law as a senior research fellow and lecturer, wrote a much-lauded and frequently quoted opinion that extolled marriage as a “deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.”
***
Credit: Phil Farnsworth Professor Michael Klarman
2012:
Michael Klarman Reflects on Rapid Change
After dozens of states had legalized same-sex marriage – whether through legislation or the courts – Harvard Law Professor Michael Klarman authored “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
Klarman, who frequently writes about social backlashes that follow controversial court decisions, provided an overview of the growing legal acceptance of same-sex marriage and the role courts played in sparking or responding to social change.
September 2013:
Klarman, along with HLS Professors Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Charles Fried, and Visiting Professor Justin Driver offered their thoughts on a trio of critical U.S. Supreme Court rulings involving same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action.
***
2013:
Harvard Law Professors and Alumni Battle Before the Supreme Court
On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court decided United States v. Windsor, which challenged Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge to California’s Proposition 8. Months earlier, the Supreme Court had tapped Harvard Law Professor Vicki Jackson to argue that the Court lacked jurisdiction to hear Windsor, an argument that neither party to the case had presented, and which the Court ultimately rejected before ruling on the merits.
Paul Clement ’92 argued for the House of Representatives’ Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, a contingent of mostly Republican representatives who argued to uphold the Constitutionality of DOMA after President Barack Obama ’91’s administration refused to continue doing so. In addition, Professors Elizabeth Bartholet ’65, Lawrence Lessig, and Laurence Tribe ’66, Professor Emeritus Frank Michelman ’60, and Lecturers Kevin Russell and Benjamin W. Heineman Jr., filed amicus briefs in the two major cases.
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2015:
Mary Bonauto and Douglas Hallward-Driemeier ’94 Call for full Legal Recognition
Litigators across the country vied for the opportunity to argue for a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in some of the most anticipated cases in LGBT and civil rights history. In January 2015, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to Obergefell v. Hodges and its companion cases to answer the question whether the Constitution required states to perform same-sex marriages, or whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause required states to, at the very least, recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Mary Bonauto, who was also lead counsel for the couples seeking the right to marry in Goodridge and has taught an LGBT reading group at Harvard in recent years, was ultimately picked for the task of arguing the first question, while Douglas Hallward-Driemeier ’94, a partner at law firm Ropes & Gray, took on the Full Faith and Credit question. On April 28, 2015, the pair faced the Supreme Court justices, arguing, as Bonauto put it, that the true question was not whether the government should decide that gay people should be able to marry, but that it was for ” the individual to decide who to marry.”
***
November 2014:
Mary Bonauto reflects on a quarter century of seeking equal treatment under law.
2015:
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61 Writes Majority Opinion Affirming Marriage Equality
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy ’61 delivered the opinion of the Court in the landmark decision, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer ’64, Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’56-’58, Elena Kagan ’86, and Sonia Sotomayor.
SCOTUS Rules Against The Raisin Ripoff -- A Small Win Against The Dead Hand Of The New Deal
Friday, June 26, 2015
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Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Don't Count On The Supreme Court For Vigilance In Defending Your Second Amendment Rights
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Friday, June 19, 2015
Harvard Law Thinks Big: Innovative faculty scholarship in brief
Credit: Martha Stewart
In late May, four Harvard Law faculty members, Charles Fried, Michael Gregory, Kathryn Spier and David Wilkins, each shared a snapshot of innovative research with the HLS community, followed by discussion as part of the 2015 Harvard Law School Thinks Big lecture.
HLS Dean Martha Minow called it one of the great events of Harvard Law School. It marks our commitment to being a community of learning and acknowledges, she said, “that the very best ideas come when many minds work together.”
Charles Fried, the Beneficial Professor of Law, talked about the results of U.S. Supreme Court decisions under Chief Justices Burger and Rehnquist when a compromise was reached on issues such as abortion, affirmative action and campaign finance. These decisions, he said, knitted together incompatible views and theories, “but it sort of worked.” But ever since, advocates on both sides of these decisions have been pushing and the result he said, under the Roberts Court has been “the unraveling.” Fried focused in his talk on campaign finance and a series of Supreme Court decisions that have gradually undone limits put in place. The compromise he said, was a nice idea, but it put together two things that don’t quite go together, “regulated elections and a free-for-all.”
David Wilkins ’81, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law and vice dean for global initiatives on the legal profession, spoke about why disruptive innovation is coming to the legal services profession and what it means for Harvard Law School. Applying the concept developed by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, Wilkins described disruptive innovation as a situation where there is new competition, and the establishment ignores it and then the competition moves its way up the market, and eventually their technology becomes the standard.
Wilkins, faculty director of the Center on the Legal Profession, which researches changes and conduct of the global legal profession, said law has been ripe for disruption, being one of the most conservative and highly self-regulated disciplines in the world, with tight rules on competition. “But all this is breaking down.”
Among the biggest category of disruptors, he said, are those who want to provide ordinary legal services to those who can’t afford them: 80 or 90 percent of the population. Others include those who want to use technology to streamline routine tasks. Others are using matching services likes ebay, putting lawyers together with people who need legal services. All of this, he said, is being driven by sophisticated consumers like general counsel who are being pushed to provide more for less.
But the disruptors haven’t figured it all out either, he said. “They are equating everything that we say about distinctiveness [of the legal profession] as protectionism. But I don’t think that’s true actually. Lawyers are not like taxi cabs, which can be displaced by Uber drivers.”
Part of what HLS has to do, he concluded, is to teach our students how to unbundle complex legal problems. And the really hard part will be putting it all together again. “How do we do this while preserving our core values?” he asked. “We are going to have to work together across divides, including with the disruptors.”
Kathryn Spier, the Domenico de Sole Professor of Law is an economist whose research includes assessing how to analyze the legal system. She focused her talk on current research on trends in civil litigation.
The traditional theory of settlement, she said, is that that plaintiffs either settle or go to trial, but she’s found that is much too simple. There are all sorts of possibilities. “They can tailor their lawsuit around their own tolerance for risk and their own beliefs.”
In her scholarship, grounded in theory but also in her work with data sets, she has been focused on instances in which parties in lawsuits “contract around the law.” Before the trial, they might agree that whatever its outcome, the plaintiff will receive a minimum amount from the defendant, but there also might be a cap on that amount: a high/low agreement.
Credit: Martha StewartThis year’s HLS Thinks Big presenters were (from left to right): David Wilkins, Kathryn Spier, Charles Fried, and Michael Gregory.
Spier said she finds these contracts fascinating. Plaintiffs and defendants can tailor lawsuits to suit their own tolerance for risk and their own beliefs. Putting these contracts in bigger framework, she said, it’s as if the plaintiff is playing the role of an insurance company. And the defendant is paying an insurance premium and receiving a reduced risk of exposure, with the contract stipulating by what percentage that rate of risk will be reduced. Spier said one could also think of the defendant playing the role of a litigation funder, paying a flat amount of money for an equity stake in the outcome of the plaintiff’s claim. In these arrangements, she added, the plaintiff and the defendant have much more information than an outside investor ever could and they benefit without the costs of going to an external equity market.
This raises questions about whether these contracts should be regulated or limited. Parties to lawsuits clearly want to engage in these contracts, she said. On the other hand, these agreements may stimulate more litigation, which is risky and costly for the parties themselves and imposes costs on others such as taxpayers.
Michael Gregory ‘04, clinical professor of law at HLS, teaches and practices law as part of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a multidisciplinary partnership between HLS and Massachusetts Advocates for Children. The mission is to ensure that children who have been traumatized by their exposure to violence succeed in school. Gregory along with HLS Lecturer on Law Susan Cole, the founding director of the project, have pioneered an approach that combines advocacy, education, and advising schools.
Gregory described the facets of their approach. Though the Education Law Clinic, HLS students represent individual families with children in the special education system, most often, he said “children have had a traumatic experience that interfaces with their disability.”
The non-lawyers on the team work directly with schools, drawing on ideas TLPI developed in the two volumes of their book: “Helping Traumatized Children Learn” to aid educators figure out how they can help create “safe and supportive school learning environments as a foundation to support the learning of all students, including those who have been impacted by trauma.”
Gregory said they use everything that they learn from families and educators to advocate for policy solutions that address the needs of both groups. They have involved students in these efforts. Last summer this culminated in passage of the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, signed into law in August by then Gov. Deval Patrick ‘82, legislation for which they and HLS students had been zealously advocating.
Among other accomplishments, the legislation, said, Gregory, conveys the message that “you can make creating a safe and supportive school environment just as important as getting those standardized test scores up.”
CA Uber Ruling Is A Worrying Sign For Sharing Economy Fans
Tribe’s ‘Uncertain Justice’ Honored by the American Bar Association
An assessment of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ’79 by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe ’66 and Joshua Matz ’12 has been recognized by the American Bar Association. Their 2014 work, “Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution,” a Washington Post and Kirkus Review book of the year, earned the ABA 2015 Gavel Award Honorable Mention.
From Citizens United to its momentous rulings regarding Obamacare and same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roberts has profoundly affected American life, yet it remains a mysterious institution to many Americans, according to Tribe, and the motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure. In “Uncertain Justice,” Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and one of the country’s leading constitutional lawyers, and Matz, dig deeply into the court’s recent rulings to deliver compelling human stories. They also explore the extent to which the Court is revising the meaning of our Constitution.
On Nov. 21, Tribe participated in a panel discussion of his latest book, “Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution,” with Dean Martha Minow and Professor Richard Lazarus (Watch discussion at Harvard Law Today).
In an earlier Q&A with the Harvard Law Bulletin, Tribe discussed some of the implications of the Roberts Court with regard to gay marriage, gun rights, N.S.A. surveillance, health care, emerging threats to privacy, immigration and more. (Read “Certain Change: How the Roberts Court is revising constitutional law” in the Fall 2014 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin.)
Laurence Tribe ’66 is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, has taught at its Law School since 1968 and was voted the best professor by the graduating class of 2000.
A distinguished legal scholar and a world-renowned professor of constitutional law, Tribe is the author of more than 100 books and articles, including “American Constitutional Law,” “On Reading the Constitution,” and, most recently, “The Invisible Constitution.” He has argued many cases before the Supreme Court of the United States—including the historic Bush v. Gore case in 2000 on behalf of presidential candidate Albert Gore, Jr.—and he has testified frequently before Congress on a broad range of constitutional issues.
He was appointed in 2010 by President Obama to serve as the first senior counselor for access to justice; and has written 115 books and articles, including his treatise, “American Constitutional Law,” cited more than any other legal text since 1950.
Tribe joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1968, and held the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship in Constitutional Law from 1982 to 2004, when he was appointed University Professor—the highest academic honor that Harvard University can bestow upon a faculty member.
Joshua Matz ’12, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a former contributor to SCOTUSblog, is a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ’61.
Together, Tribe and Matz taught an acclaimed course at Harvard College about the Supreme Court and the Constitution.
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Thursday, June 18, 2015
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Wednesday, June 17, 2015
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Tuesday, June 16, 2015
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Friday, June 12, 2015
HLS scholar explores the complicated legacy of the Magna Carta
Jon Chase/Harvard Staff PhotographerMagna Carta Cum Statutis, ca. 1325, at Harvard Law School library.
For centuries Magna Carta, or “The Great Charter,” has been held up as an enduring symbol of freedom and democracy.
It was signed, or more accurately sealed, by England’s King John on June 15, 1215, in a field 20 miles outside London. By all accounts the move was a capitulation, not a heartfelt act of good will. The monarch was pressured into it by barons unhappy with his reign, and in particular with the taxes he levied on them to pay for his disastrous military campaigns in France.
Credit: Jens ZornMedieval law scholar Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07 will join Harvard Law School in July as an assistant professor.
Though initially created to appease only a select few, today the document is considered influential in the establishment of democratic governments and legal systems worldwide — an affirmation that no man, not even a king, is beyond the rule of law. But are the celebrations and the hype surrounding the 800th anniversary warranted? Many scholars argue that the Magna Carta’s importance through the centuries has been greatly exaggerated. Yet for others, its status as a symbol of freedom and a check on absolute power is undeniable.
Elizabeth Papp Kamali ’07, sees merit in both arguments.
“When it was first issued in 1215, Magna Carta was really about the 1 percent, to put it in modern parlance,” said Kamali, a scholar of medieval law who will join Harvard Law School in July as an assistant professor. The document largely addressed property rights for “very elite individuals,” she said. One had to dig to find the clauses “we now associate with due process and the things that we value.”
Complicating its legacy is the fact that King John quickly turned to Pope Innocent III to help him revoke the document, which led to civil war. But in the years that followed, the Magna Carta was repeatedly reissued. Though over the centuries it has become distanced from its roots, with large sections removed, “people just kept coming back to it,” said Kamali.
“People came to see it as all about due-process rights and all about limitations on the power of the monarch. Or later, when the American colonies took it up as something important, it was about the limited role of government and the inherent rights of the people.
“And so in that sense, I think Magna Carta has come to represent the importance of the 99 percent vis-Ã -vis the 1 percent. And for that reason I think, even if the meaning has drifted from its original import, it’s totally appropriate that we make a big fuss.”
The notion of trial by jury is often traced to the charter’s 39th clause. One look at the words and it’s easy to see why. An English translation posted on the British Library’s website reads: “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights and possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.”
Those foundational principles have not lost their power, said Kamali.
“As a country we are dealing with issues of continuing racial injustice and the problem of mass incarceration. To the extent that Magna Carta calls us back to our first principles — even if, again, it’s at a remove from what the charter was originally about — I think that’s something really valuable.
“If the ‘myth’ of Magna Carta helps bring clarity and urgency to issues of current concern, reminding us of fundamental principles,” she added, “then maybe Bad King John will have inadvertently left a worthwhile legacy.”
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The Magna Carta turns 800
The Harvard Law School Library has approximately 30 copies of the document, almost all of which are included in compilations of English statutes dating from around 1300 to 1500.
The library is planning an exhibit to coincide with the anniversary and to highlight its copies, which include those found in a small volume only 3.5 inches long, as well as a sheriff’s copy that would have been read aloud yearly in a public square.
Those unable to make it to Cambridge can browse the library’s online material. Early this year staff members completed the digitization of the collection with help from the Ames Foundation, which is also supporting a project to fully describe the contents of the various statutes.
Reflecting on the anniversary, Karen Beck, manager of Historical and Special Collections at the library, said that the best part of working with the rare documents is the chance to bring them to a wider audience.
“For me, the most exciting thing has been to digitize all of these to make them available,” said Beck. “It feels like … a present, a present that we are giving to the world.”
This story originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette on June 12, 2015.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
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More than 300 research papers have applied the Entrenchment Index of Bebchuk, Cohen and Ferrell
Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84
As of May 2015, more than 300 research studies have applied the Entrenchment Index put forward in the study What Matters in Corporate Governance?, published by Harvard Law faculty members Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Allen Ferrell. The papers using the Entrenchment Index, including many papers in leading journals in law, economics and finance, are listed here.
The paper, first circulated in 2004 and published in 2009 in the Review of Financial Studies, identified six corporate governance provisions—four constitutional provisions that prevent a majority of shareholders from having their way (staggered boards, limits to shareholder bylaw amendments, supermajority requirements for mergers, and supermajority requirements for charter amendments), and two takeover readiness provisions that boards put in place to be ready for a hostile takeover (poison pills and golden parachutes)—that are associated with economically significant reductions in firm valuation. The paper put forward a governance index, commonly referred to as the “Entrenchment Index,” based on these six provisions. It has been cited by more than 650 research studies, and more than 300 of these studies made use of the index in their own empirical analysis.
Bebchuk is William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor of Law, Economics, and Finance and Director of the Program on Corporate Governance at HLS, Cohen is Professor of Empirical Practice at HLS, and Ferrell is Greenfield Professor of Securities Law, Harvard Law School. Their paper putting forward the Entrenchment Index is available for download on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
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Monday, June 8, 2015
Welcome To Forbes Philippines!
HLS report explores potential and limitations of body cameras for police
Mandating that police wear body-worn cameras can help to improve relations between police and communities, and ensure greater accountability for police actions. But these requirements must be carefully and thoughtfully implemented within a much wider set of policy and practical policing reforms. These are the conclusions drawn from a new report released by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice titled Independent Lens: Toward Transparency, Accountability, and Effectiveness in Police Tactics, that explores the potential and limitations of body-worn cameras for police.
Authors Chike Croslin ’16, Justin Dews, and Jaimie McFarlin ’15 of the Harvard Black Law Students Association write: “Overall, the benefits of the data from body-worn cameras as evidence may be limited due to its form as video evidence and the pervasiveness of implicit bias.”
Recent police shootings of unarmed civilians, incidents of police misconduct, high levels of complaints against police, and costly settlements have highlighted the divisions that exist between police and residents, and the lack of trust that frequently exists between police and the communities they serve, particularly communities of color. In response, many are calling for new laws to require police officers to wear body-worn cameras to record their interactions with the public. Because this technology is relatively new and still largely untested, there exist myriad questions about the legality, usefulness, and effectiveness of such requirements
Independent Lens takes a close look at these questions, and concludes that “body-worn cameras, when appropriately integrated into existing police practices and supported by a detailed regulatory architecture, can be a key tool for reinvigorating community policing and reducing costs stemming from complaints, litigation, and settlements.” However, the report also cautions policymakers of the limitations of body-worn camera technology. Such devices do not address the need for deeper reforms within police departments, such as additional training of police officers, greater monitoring of the effects of implicit racial bias, and shifts in agency incentive structures away from arrests and toward greater public safety.
David Harris, the Managing Director of the Houston Institute said: “This timely report provides important insights about how to improve police interactions with the public so as to create safer communities for all of us. While body-cams, if properly implemented, can be helpful, they certainly do not represent ‘the answer.’ Rather, as this report makes clear, we need to look at a host of other structural reforms needed to create more effective and equitable policing practices.”
In Massachusetts, the report’s findings and recommendations are particularly salient. Representative Denise Provost (D-27th Middlesex) and Sen. Jamie Eldridge (D-Middlesex and Worcester) have filed body-cam bills in the House and Senate respectively. First, the report explains some of the issues surrounding the relationships between police and communities of color, noting: “Police brutality harms police-community relations when the victimized groups see a particular incident of excessive force as typical of the police and vent their anger against the continuation of that discriminatory pattern of brutality.”
The report also found that police misconduct can be exceedingly expensive. In its survey of financial costs to municipalities of police misconduct, the report argues that payouts of millions of dollars (such as Chicago’s $84.6 million in police misconduct settlements, judgments, and legal fees in 2013) could be far more effectively put to use in programs and trainings aimed at improving public safety and relationships between police departments and the communities they serve. It also found that the vast majority—97% —of unconstitutional police search and seizures produce no evidence.
The report concludes with examples of model body-cam legislation, and offers a host of related policy analyses, including funding, scale, public access to the recordings, privacy concerns, data storage, and oversight.
The Executive Summary and full report are available at: http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/2015/05/independent-lens-toward-transparency-accountability-and-effectiveness-in-police-tactics/
Friday, June 5, 2015
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CHLPI launches campaign to promote federal law and policy reforms for type 2 diabetes
As a direct response to the looming health epidemic, the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI) officially launched a campaign to promote federal law and policy reforms for type 2 diabetes prevention and management on May 19. This effort is part of CHLPI’s broader, multi-phase Providing Access to Healthy Solutions (PATHS) initiative that first worked to strengthen local and state policy to address diet-related health conditions and more specifically improve type 2 diabetes treatment and prevention. PATHS is now focusing on federal law and policy reform.
The Federal Report, written by CHLPI staff and the clinic students, offers specific recommendations to decrease the incidence of type 2 diabetes and to promote effective management of the disease in those who have already been diagnosed. Beating Type 2 Diabetes: Recommendations for Federal Policy Reform builds off of the best-practices identified through years of work at the state and local level and the guidance of people living with and at-risk-for diabetes, health and social service professionals, food providers and producers, government officials and other stakeholders,” says Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of its Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI).
Without federal action, one in three Americans will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by 2050. Not to mention that the staggering total cost of the disease to the United States is up to $245 billion dollars a year and continuing to climb
Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the HLS Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation
HLS students in the Health Law and Policy Clinic of CHLPI contributed to the report creation over the past two years, researching such issues as: Medicare coverage of medically-appropriate food as a cost-effective diabetes intervention; prediabetes services in Essential Health Benefits to improve health and reduce costs; and coordinated diabetes care models through diabetes-specific Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation Awards. “I found the opportunity to work on the PATHS report very rewarding,” says Krista White, ’16. “There’s a clear intersection between diabetes and many other serious and disabling health conditions, and the report calls for the types of policy reform and action that are needed to keep Americans healthy. It also suggests important measures to curb rapidly escalating costs associated with the healthcare system’s failure to effectively prevent and treat diabetes.”
CHLPI’s campaign also includes a series of federal policy roundtables, the first held on May 19 in Washington, D.C. Beating Type 2 Diabetes: A Policy Roundtable on Increasing Access to the Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Self-Management Education focused on the need for stronger federal laws and policies to support cost-effective diabetes prevention and self-management programs. Two more roundtables, one looking at the role of community health workers in providing diabetes care and the other focusing on the role of food in federal diabetes policy, are slated to follow. Like the first, the upcoming roundtables will gather thought leaders from across disciplines, including legislators, federal and state agency staff, health payers and providers, and diabetes advocates to move the diabetes policy agenda forward as outlined in the Federal Report.
Visit www.diabetespolicy.org for more information about the PATHS initiative and to find the Beating Type 2 Diabetes: Recommendations for Federal Policy Reform report and executive summary.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation launches a campaign to promote federal law and policy reforms for type 2 diabetes
As a direct response to the looming health epidemic, the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI) officially launched a campaign to promote federal law and policy reforms for type 2 diabetes prevention and management on May 19. This effort is part of CHLPI’s broader, multi-phase Providing Access to Healthy Solutions (PATHS) initiative that first worked to strengthen local and state policy to address diet-related health conditions and more specifically improve type 2 diabetes treatment and prevention. PATHS is now focusing on federal law and policy reform.
The Federal Report, written by CHLPI staff and the clinic students, offers specific recommendations to decrease the incidence of type 2 diabetes and to promote effective management of the disease in those who have already been diagnosed. Beating Type 2 Diabetes: Recommendations for Federal Policy Reform builds off of the best-practices identified through years of work at the state and local level and the guidance of people living with and at-risk-for diabetes, health and social service professionals, food providers and producers, government officials and other stakeholders,” says Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of its Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (CHLPI).
Without federal action, one in three Americans will be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes by 2050. Not to mention that the staggering total cost of the disease to the United States is up to $245 billion dollars a year and continuing to climb
Robert Greenwald, Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the HLS Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation
HLS students in the Health Law and Policy Clinic of CHLPI contributed to the report creation over the past two years, researching such issues as: Medicare coverage of medically-appropriate food as a cost-effective diabetes intervention; prediabetes services in Essential Health Benefits to improve health and reduce costs; and coordinated diabetes care models through diabetes-specific Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation Awards. “I found the opportunity to work on the PATHS report very rewarding,” says Krista White, ’16. “There’s a clear intersection between diabetes and many other serious and disabling health conditions, and the report calls for the types of policy reform and action that are needed to keep Americans healthy. It also suggests important measures to curb rapidly escalating costs associated with the healthcare system’s failure to effectively prevent and treat diabetes.”
CHLPI’s campaign also includes a series of federal policy roundtables, the first held on May 19 in Washington, D.C. Beating Type 2 Diabetes: A Policy Roundtable on Increasing Access to the Diabetes Prevention Program and Diabetes Self-Management Education focused on the need for stronger federal laws and policies to support cost-effective diabetes prevention and self-management programs. Two more roundtables, one looking at the role of community health workers in providing diabetes care and the other focusing on the role of food in federal diabetes policy, are slated to follow. Like the first, the upcoming roundtables will gather thought leaders from across disciplines, including legislators, federal and state agency staff, health payers and providers, and diabetes advocates to move the diabetes policy agenda forward as outlined in the Federal Report.
Visit www.diabetespolicy.org for more information about the PATHS initiative and to find the Beating Type 2 Diabetes: Recommendations for Federal Policy Reform report and executive summary.
Fisher Case Produces Strange Bedfellows: The Court Should Say No To Racial Preferences
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Emily Broad Leib named Assistant Clinical Professor of Law
Credit: Martha StewartEmily Broad Lieb
Emily Broad Leib ’08, cofounder and director of Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic, has been named Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at HLS.
Broad Leib has worked at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, of which the Food Law and Policy Clinic is a part, since 2010. She founded the Food Law and Policy Clinic in 2011, and in 2013 was appointed Deputy Director of the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation.
“In a few short years, she has helped build the Food Law and Policy Clinic into the nation’s most innovative and influential clinic addressing complex problems surrounding the production, distribution, and safety of food and related issues of health and equity,” said Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School. “Emily’s passion, imagination, and strategic analysis have inspired students and faculty around the country. We are so delighted she is joining Harvard Law School’s clinical faculty.”
Broad Leib is recognized as a national leader in Food Law and Policy. She teaches courses on the topic and focuses her scholarship and practice on finding solutions to today’s biggest food system issues, aiming to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related disease, and reduce barriers to market entry for small-scale and sustainable food producers. She has published scholarly articles in the Wisconsin Law Review, the Harvard Law & Policy Review, and the Journal of Food Law & Policy, as well as in the Routledge International Handbook of Food Studies.
In February, Broad Leib was awarded a research grant in the inaugural year of Harvard President Drew Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund. Broad Leib’s project, “Reducing Food Waste as a Key to Addressing Climate Change,” was one of seven chosen from around the university to confront the challenge of climate change by leveraging the clinic’s food law and policy expertise to identify systemic solutions that can reduce food waste, which is a major driver of climate change. Broad Leib’s groundbreaking work on food waste has been covered in such media outlets as CNN, The Today Show, MSNBC, TIME Magazine, Politico, and the Washington Post.
“I am filled with gratitude and enthusiasm about joining the Harvard Law School faculty. It has been an honor to work at such a supportive institution and help foster Harvard Law School’s emergence as a leader in the field of food law and policy,” Broad Leib said. “I am grateful for the opportunity to continue to grow this burgeoning field and to work with such innovative, passionate, and committed students and faculty to forge a more just, healthy, and sustainable food system.”
Prior to joining the Center, Broad Leib spent two years in Clarksdale, Mississippi, as the Joint Harvard Law School/Mississippi State University Delta Fellow. There, she directed the Delta Directions Consortium, a group of university and foundation leaders who collaborate to improve public health and foster economic development in the Delta region. In that role, she worked with community members and outside partners, and with support from more than 60 HLS students, to design and implement programmatic and policy interventions on a range of critical health and economic issues in the region. Broad Leib received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, cum laude, and her B.A. from Columbia University.
Deval Patrick ’82 returns to Harvard to deliver Commencement Address
Deval Patrick with Dean Martha Minow at Harvard’s 2015 Commencement ceremony.
Deval Patrick `82, who recently concluded two terms as the 71st governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was Harvard’s 2015 commencement speaker.
As governor, Patrick was known for his strong support for public education, winning a federal Race to the Top education grant. He also implemented the Massachusetts health care reform program put into place by his predecessor, Mitt Romney ’75, supported statewide growth of the life sciences, clean technology, and digital technology industries, and helped create the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Under his leadership, Massachusetts led the way in job growth, affordable health care, public infrastructure, government reform, veterans’ services, and marriage equality.
Credit: Martha StewartA former president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, Deval Patrick '82 delivered the keynote address during the bureau's 100th Anniversary Celebration, held at HLS Nov. 8-10, 2013. “I can't begin to count the number of ways that the bureau shaped my experience at Harvard Law School, not to mention my approach to the law,” he told the audience. (Watch video; go to 4:50 to hear Patrick).
Raised on Chicago’s South Side, Patrick came to Massachusetts at age 14, having won a scholarship to Milton Academy. He went on to Harvard College, the first person in his family to attend college. At HLS, he was president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Last year, when the Bureau celebrated its 100th anniversary, he was the keynote speaker. (Watch video; Go to 4:50 to hear Patrick.) He has returned to Harvard Law on other occasions, including for the 3rd Celebration of Black Alumni, in September 2011 (see story and video).
Early in his career, Patrick served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Los Angeles, as a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund working on voting rights and death-penalty cases, and then as a partner at the Boston law firm Hill & Barlow.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton named him assistant attorney general for civil rights, the nation’s top civil rights post. In that role, he led the Justice Department’s efforts in such areas as prosecuting hate crimes and enforcing laws on employment discrimination, fair lending, and rights for the disabled.
He went on to become the first chair of Texaco’s Equality and Fairness Task Force, and later served as a senior executive at Texaco and then at the Coca-Cola Co.
Patrick recently joined the Boston investment group, Bain Capital, as the firm’s first African American managing director.
On the Bench, Commencement 2015 (video)
Always a popular photo spot, the Harvard Law School sign (and sometimes bench) is even more popular at graduation. This time-lapse video, taken on May 28, condenses six hours of foot-traffic to and from Commencement ceremonies into two minutes.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Texas v. U.S. (The Immigration Case) And The Administrative State
Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court associate justice receives Radcliffe Medal
Credit: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff PhotographerU.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the Radcliffe Medal on Friday, May 29. Since the 1970s, Ginsburg has constantly sought to break down traditional male/female stereotypes “that held women back from doing what their talents would allow them to do.”
At 82, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a major pop icon.
Facts don’t lie. She is the subject of a new American opera with her colleague, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. She recently had an emoji fashioned after her, Harvard’s Class Day speaker, actress Natalie Portman, is set to play her in a forthcoming biopic. She even has a blog about her life, “Notorious R.B.G.”
To those who have followed her career closely, this development is unsurprising. As an outspoken woman in a male-dominated institution with a razor sharp legal mind, a passion for and devotion to family, a love of regular workouts, and a keen eye for style, (just check her judicial robe’s jabots), Ginsburg has become a role model for women.
Her powerful opinions and dissents are legendary, as is her refreshing candor. When asked recently about occasionally falling asleep during State of the Union addresses, she admitted to being a little tipsy before President Obama’s speech early this year. “I wasn’t 100 percent sober,” Ginsburg told National Public Radio, adding that her colleague, retired Justice David Souter, used to act as her safety net, faithfully giving her a pinch when she started to nod off.
But it’s Ginsburg’s tireless fight for equal rights, her reputation as an exceptional and fearless litigator, her grasp of complicated legal arguments, and her strength and determination in the face of personal adversity that has defined her life and lengthy career.
On Friday, after the pomp and circumstance of Harvard’s 364th Commencement had begun to fade, the capstone annual event to honor both the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and an individual “who has had a transformative impact on society” unfolded under a tent in Radcliffe Yard during Radcliffe Day. Following a morning panel with legal scholars on the major trends and precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts, in addition to the court’s relationship to Congress, Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen presented Ginsburg with the Radcliffe Medal.
“This year’s Radcliffe medalist is an individual whose life and work represent the values that Radcliffe was founded upon and continues to uphold today,” said Cohen in her introductory remarks. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, has challenged and changed expectations throughout her life.”
Cohen praised Ginsburg for her fight for equal rights for women and her efforts that helped pave the way for women to take on high-profile roles in business, government, the military, and the Supreme Court.
“We are here today to honor how one person — our honoree, Ruth Bader Ginsburg — knocked on closed doors, opened them, and held them open for others.”
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1933, Ginsburg had an early life defined by a love of learning. A gifted student, she attended Cornell University, and later Harvard Law School as one of only nine women in the class of 1956. While at Harvard, Ginsburg cared for her young daughter, and her ailing husband Marty, who was diagnosed for testicular cancer. (He died from metastatic cancer in 2010.)
Later, she left Harvard with her daughter to follow Marty to New York City. There, she enrolled at Columbia Law School, where she graduated in 1959 at the top of her class. She was the first woman to serve on two major law reviews. After being turned down for a clerkship by Supreme Court Associate Justice Felix Frankfurter, as a woman and mother, Ginsburg secured a clerkship with U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri.
She went on to become a law professor and the co-founder of the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. As the project’s chief litigator, she argued several cases before the Supreme Court, securing increased rights for women. She later served as judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In that role, said Cohen, “She demonstrated a commitment not to generating heat, but to shedding light.”
In 1993, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the Supreme Court.
“What animates all her opinions is an unqualified commitment to fairness and a willingness to grapple with what the founders’ vision of equality means today,” said Cohen.
Former Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter introduced her, with humorous and heartfelt remarks. The two served together for 16 years and voted alike more often than any other two current justices during their overlapping tenures.
Souter recalled Ginsburg’s first day on the court in 1993. Like his colleague Scalia, Souter said he was a rigorous questioner of lawyers appearing before the court. The two quickly realized they had new, fierce competition in Ginsburg, who “was off the mark with her first question before Justice Scalia and I had our mouths open.”
At one point, remembered Souter, Scalia whispered to him: “You and I may have asked our last question in this courtroom.”
Souter called Ginsburg a “tiger Justice,” and praised her intelligent initiative, her intellectual, and her emotional stamina. Those qualities, he said, are what make a great Justice, “and a great Justice is what Justice Ginsburg is.”
Preparing for his introductory remarks, Souter returned to the notes he’d made from the arguments the court had heard and the discussions the members of the court had had during Ginsburg’s first week almost 22 years ago. Quoting himself, he read: “I can’t reserve caution in my delight with Ruth.”
During the event, Kathleen Sullivan, ’81, former professor of law at Harvard and Stanford University and the former dean of Stanford Law School, walked Ginsburg back through some of the highlights of her career.
In the 1970s, Ginsburg litigated a number of cases before the Supreme Court that helped to overturn laws that discriminated against women, including Reed v. Reed, a 1971 case that declared sex discrimination a violation of the 14th Amendment. The case involved the estate of a deceased teenager. The boy’s mother, who had long separated from her husband, felt she should be the administrator, but Idaho law said that in such instances males “must be preferred to females.”
“It was the perfect statute to attack as discriminating arbitrarily against the woman,” said Ginsburg. “But what Sally Reed’s case brought home to me … [was that Reed] thought she had suffered an injustice and that the legal system could make it right.”
Ginsburg said she constantly sought to break down traditional male/female stereotypes “that held women back from doing what their talents would allow them to do.” She even challenged laws that privileged women on behalf of men who were unjustly affected, upholding the notion that any type of gender discrimination was unconstitutional. In 1979, she successfully challenged a Missouri law before the Supreme Court that made jury duty service for women optional.
“A law that says ‘women aren’t on our juries unless they volunteer’ is saying that women are expendable; we don’t need them,” said Ginsburg. That kind of law, she added, also deprives women brought to trial of the opportunity to face a jury of their peers.
In reflecting on her work, Ginsburg said her legal successes before the Supreme Court had much to do with the climate of the times. In the 1970s, “a sea change in attitude” saw more women in the workforce, wide access to effective birth control, longer life expectancies, and inflation, which meant a “two-earner family became the ideal.”
“It was that change, which had already occurred in society, that led the court at last to catch up to that change.”
Turning to earlier Supreme Court rulings, Ginsburg said she remained opposed to the way the court decided the landmark 1973 abortion case Roe v. Wade.
“In one fell swoop, the court made unconstitutional every abortion law in the country … so the court had done it all, and the people who were advocating for a woman’s ability to control her own destiny, they retired, while the opposition mounted. Now they had, instead of having to fight in the trenches state by state … they had this one single target to aim at.”
Sullivan inquired about Ginsburg’s work on the Court, in particular the 1996 United States v. Virginia case that struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s (VMI) male-only admissions policy. Ginsburg, who wrote for the majority in the decision, called the case satisfying, not just for allowing women equal access to the school, but for other reasons.
“For one thing, the VMI faculty was very much in favor of the admission of women. The reason should be obvious. If they could include women in their applicant pool, they would upgrade the quality of their students.”
Discussing collegiality on the court and her famous friendship with conservative Justice Scalia, Ginsburg said that while they have different views on how the Constitution should be interpreted, they both respect and revere the court, saying they were “different in our beliefs, but one in our reverence for the federal judicial system.”
Ginsburg even offered the crowd a preview of the libretto for “Scalia/Ginsburg.” To Scalia’s aria, which includes the lines “the justices are blind, how can they possibly spout this, the Constitution said absolutely nothing about this,” the stage Ginsburg replies, “You are searching for bright-line solutions to problems that don’t have easy answers. But the great thing about our Constitution, it can evolve.”
She also said, to cheers from the crowd, that at one point during the opera she comes to the rescue of Scalia, who has been locked up in a dark room for excessive dissenting, by “entering through a glass ceiling.”
“There isn’t a glass ceiling that you haven’t broken, Justice Ginsburg,” said Sullivan. “Thank you for the inspiration you have given to all of us who are privileged to have benefited from the pathways you have forged in the law.” Asked by Sullivan to offer advice to women today, Ginsburg said: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
This article originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette on May 29, 2015.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Texas V U.S. (The Immigration Case) And The Administrative State
No time to rest, Patrick says (video)
Former governor urges graduates to rise to the issues of the day
Credit: Martha Stewart
On a day of celebration and achievement, Deval Patrick ’78 AB ’82, the former governor of Massachusetts, told Harvard graduates he hoped they felt uneasy, unsure, and restless: uneasy about the planet’s big problems, unsure they know all they should, and restless enough to act.
“I don’t want unrest in the streets. But I do want unrest in our hearts and minds,” Patrick said. “I do want us all to be uneasy about the grim realities of black men and families and the widespread nonchalance about poverty. I want us to be uneasy about the chronic desperation of communities some of us are just one generation away from living in; about the way we dehumanize the fellow souls we call ‘alien’; about the carelessness with which we treat the planet itself.
“I want us to ask ourselves hard questions and to ask our leaders hard questions about the state of the American Dream, why the poor are stuck in poverty and why the middle class are just one paycheck away from being poor. And I want us all to be a little uncomfortable about how few of our comforts we share.”
Patrick spoke at the Afternoon Exercises of Harvard’s 364th Commencement on Thursday. During Morning Exercises, the University conferred some 6,500 degrees to graduates of Harvard College and the Schools. The Afternoon Exercises, officially the annual meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, also featured a speech by President Drew Faust, who cautioned the University’s newest alumni to be wary of the selfie generation of which they are part.
The wider culture, abetted by social media, increasingly celebrates the individual and devalues collective institutions, Faust said.
“As one social commentator has observed, we are ceaselessly at work building our own brands. We spend time looking at screens instead of one another. Large portions of our lives are hardly experienced: They are curated, shared, Snapchatted, and Instagrammed—rendered as a kind of composite selfie.”
Though some say they’re being replaced by online education, universities remain essential institutions, Faust said.
“Assertions about the irrelevance of universities are part of a broader and growing mistrust of institutions more generally, one fueled by our intoxication with the power and charisma of the individual and the cult of celebrity. Government, business, nonprofits are joined with universities as targets of suspicion and criticism. There are few countervailing voices to remind us how institutions serve and support us. We tend to take what they do for granted.”
Faust reminded alumni that Harvard’s work is “about that ongoing commitment,
Deval Patrick ’82 Returns to Harvard to Deliver Commencement Address
Credit: Martha StewartAs governor, Patrick was known for his strong support for public education, winning a federal Race to the Top education grant. He also implemented the Massachusetts health care reform program put into place by his predecessor, Mitt Romney ’75 ....
not to a single individual or even one generation or one era, but to a larger world and to the service of the age that is waiting before it.”
Other speakers at Afternoon Exercises included the president of the Harvard Alumni Association, Cynthia Torres, who welcomed the graduates into the University’s alumni community—320,000 strong, and living in 189 countries. Torres also announced the winners of the medals awarded by HAA for extraordinary service to the University: Charles Egan Jr., Michael Gellert, Thomas Lentz Jr., Sandra Ohrn Moose, and Robert Reischauer.
In his speech, Patrick recalled his childhood, growing up on welfare on Chicago’s South Side, as well as his time as a College undergrad in the mid-1970s, in the wake of the struggles over Vietnam and Civil Rights. Students then, he said, seemed hungry for something to protest. Thus came the march over cold breakfasts at Dunster House.
“If we wanted an egg, we’d have to walk a block to Leverett House. Outrageous!” said Patrick, to laughs from the crowd. “So, one spring morning, we marched on Leverett, complete with banners, beating drums, and scores of fellow students never before seen at breakfast time. We took to the streets over pancakes!”
Patrick praised today’s students for their activism and for the causes that have won their attention: poverty, racial injustice, climate change.
But action on those issues, he said, will require more than just protest. It will require sustained effort, and big ideas rooted in core American values: freedom, equality, opportunity, and fair play.
Such values “are the ties that bind us across time and all sorts of mostly superficial differences and that have made America the envy of the world,” Patrick said. “As one great Israeli statesman puts it, ‘America is the only superpower whose power comes from giving, not from taking.’ Indeed, our greatest gift—to this poor black kid from Chicago and to strivers of every type and kind for generations—is reason to hope.”
GALLERY: Commencement 2015
On Thursday May 28, 2015, the Harvard Law School Class of 2015 officially became HLS alums. Here is a look at their day of celebration, filled with families, gavels, a former governor—and at least one kazoo.
On the Bench, Commencement 2015
Always a popular photo spot, the Harvard Law School sign (and sometimes bench) is even more popular at graduation. This time-lapse video, taken on May 28, condenses six hours of foot-traffic to and from Commencement ceremonies into two minutes.
Voices from the Class of 2015 (video)
In this video, first shown during HLS Commencement ceremonies on May 28, 2015, students look back on their unique experiences and shared journey at Harvard Law School. A common theme is appreciation for the eclectic backgrounds, interests and points of view of their classmates. One student observes, “we have students who are in the military, founders of non-profits, doctors, artists, social activists, and scientists all converging in one place.” The students also value their globally diverse community. “We developed invisible but strong bonds across cultures, continents [and] religions,”one student reflects. Watch the video, for more summations from the Class of 2015.