The Supreme Court's NOT Top 10: Cases The Justices Wrongly Rejected Last Term

The usual spate of articles by Supreme Court scribes pronouncing the Roberts Court staunchly pro-business were noticeably sparser as the latest term ended. When journalists are reduced to using the Obamacare and same-sex marriage cases as their main exhibits to prove the Supreme Court’s supposed pro-business tilt, you know it [...]

Berkman’s Internet Monitor project to release new online data platform this fall

Since 2014, the Internet Monitor project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society has been collecting data about Internet access and analyzing what different communities around the world are saying.

Internet Monitor’s online data platform presents and analyzes data from about 100 countries with the two-part goal of providing better data for better decision making, and conducting original research that analyzes this data to see what it says about the status of the Internet.

Data comes in from a number of sources, such as the International Telecommunications Union, Akamai, and NetIndex, and Berkman projects, including those that monitor the mostly anonymous online world of Arab atheists or the growing list of Internet regulations in Russia.

This fall Internet Monitor plans to release a new platform for displaying all this data and more on one dashboard.

“The really exciting thing is that the dashboard format lets us pull in data that we don’t currently have a way to represent or to display,” said Internet Monitor’s senior project manager Rebekah Heacock Jones. “The new dashboard will allow people to see information like the most recent news topics in China, rather than just fixed statistics like the Internet penetration rate for China in 2012.”

Heacock Jones said she hopes the dashboard format will draw in audiences who want to be able to engage more with the data. It can be useful to journalists as a monitoring and storytelling platform, and it’s customizable for someone interested in one specific location or topic. Users are not only able to arrange the data provided in a way that’s useful for them, they’re also invited to contribute data.  As such, the new dashboard will open up new space for data-sharing partnerships with a wide variety of companies and partner organizations.

“There’s a lot of important data out there, but much of it is inaccessible to policymakers and the public—it’s in corporate hands, or it’s sprinkled around on lots of different websites. If you don’t know where to go, it’s really hard to find.” she said. “We’re hoping that by putting this focus on data we can encourage people who do have good data to make it more publicly accessible. And then we can also make that data more easily available for policymakers and others who are making decisions.”

As the dashboard emerges on the scene, Internet Monitor will continue publishing reports and blog posts. A report on the Twittersphere in China will come out this summer, followed by a report on the Twittersphere in Saudi Arabia.

Check out the video below to learn more about Internet Monitor.

9th Circuit Decision Allowing Appeal of Right from Denial of Class Certification Is Ripe for Review

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As A Hunter, I Say Hunters Need To Do More About African Lions; 'Cecil' Should Be Our Rallying Cry

American hunters have been our leading conservationists for more than a century. We need to keep acting like it.

HLS represented at White House event celebrating 25 years of the Americans with Disabilities Act

President Obama types a message to Haben Girma, who is deaf and blind, before she introduced him at ADA reception pic.twitter.com/YsUKEsvWva

— petesouza (@petesouza) July 21, 2015

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. President George H.W. Bush signed the ADA on July 26, 1990, committing the nation to eliminating discrimination against people with disabilities. A special reception was held at the White House on July 20 to celebrate the landmark act.

Read More

My ADA Story: A Deafblind Lawyer Dismantling Digital Barriers

After the event, Girma sent a message to the White House email list, in which she shares her personal story and explains how the ADA is helping Americans with disabilities continue to tear down barriers. Read it at the White House blog.

On hand to introduce President Barack Obama ’91 and Vice President Joe Biden was Harvard Law School graduate Haben Girma ’13, who is currently a Skadden Fellow at Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, Calif. Girma was the first deafblind student to graduate from HLS. While studying at the law school, she was named a White House Champion of Change for her advocacy on behalf of deafblind individuals and her efforts in promoting educational excellence for African Americans. Read more about her journey to HLS and career as an advocate.

“For my grandmother back in Africa, my success in law school seemed like magic,” said Girma in her introduction. “For all of us here, we know people with disabilities succeed not by magic, but through opportunities in America, and the hard won power of the ADA.”

Watch her introduction here:

“It was very moving, indeed, to see Haben Girma introduce President Obama—two extraordinary graduates,” said Professor William Alford ’77, who was also in attendance, accompanying a dozen Special Olympics athletes. Alford has been on the board of directors of Special Olympics International for ten years and has been active in the organization for several decades.

He was also representing the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD), where he is the chair. When Girma was a student at HLS, HPOD “sent her to China where she was a great hit and an inspiration to students both with and without a disability,” said Alford, who is also the vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies and director of East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law School.

In 2007, in his role as chair of HPOD with Visiting Professor and HPOD Executive Director Michael Stein ’88, Alford organized the People’s Republic of China’s first conference on disability law, in conjunction with Renmin University of China and the China Disabled Persons’ Federation.

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HLS panel marks the 25th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Professors Michael Stein, Martha A. Field, Elizabeth F. Emens and Dean Martha Minow.

In April, Harvard Law School commemorated the anniversary of the landmark legislation with a panel discussion on the impact of the ADA on higher education.

The event, co-sponsored by the Dean of Students Office, Advocates for Inclusion, Student Mental Health Association, Students for Inclusion, and Supero, featured three experts on disability law and rights: Professor Michael Stein ’88 co-founder of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability with Professor William Alford ’77; Professor Martha A. Field, who teaches a seminar on disability and law, and is the co-author of “Equal Treatment for People with Mental Retardation;” and Visiting Professor Elizabeth Emens, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in anti-discrimination law.

Dean Martha Minow kicked off the event by asking panelists what changes they have observed since the adoption of the ADA.

Stein, who has been in a wheelchair since he was a teenager, said he believes there has been a “180-change” in attitudes about students with disabilities attending Harvard Law School.

He said when he was a 1L at HLS, there were no accommodations for disabilities. The only dorm room that had a ramp didn’t have modifications to the room or bathroom, and, with no elevators to the Hark, tunnels or Law Review, Stein was forced to drag himself up and downstairs. At the time, he said, the prevailing attitude was, ‘If you don’t like it, you could go to Yale.’

Twenty years later, Stein said, his students are incredulous at what he had to endure. He said he is struck by the differences in accessibility and inclusion, but more importantly in the attitudes and expectations of students, all of whom grew up under the legal protections of the ADA. “In 20 years, to have this complete change in expectations and legal landscape, but more so in the culture,” he said, “speaks to the success of the ADA.”

Field, who joined the faculty as a tenured professor in 1979, also cited the progress that has been made in the availability of resources, including the Project on Disability, and in creating a spirit of inclusiveness.

“The obvious change at the law school is that we’ve become so much more inclusive, in many ways, but especially with disability,” said Field, who recalled serving on an admissions committee with a faculty member who recommended denying a student admission because he believed a blind student couldn’t be a lawyer.

But, said Field, progress has been hampered by the Supreme Court, which has taken out a lot of protections that were intended in the ADA. “It surprises me, in the past 20 years, that the gay rights movement has gotten so much further than the disability rights movement,” said Field. “A lot of that is the function of the courts.”

Emens said there has been a flourishing of ideas around disability in higher education, including a robust critique of the social model and a pushing on its limits. But, she added, “We’re still so much in a compliance model in relation to disability, in contrast to how we think about our other categories of discrimination.”

More Highway Taxes? Put This Idea In A Pothole

This story appears in the August 17, 2015 issue of Forbes. UH-OH! Washington is coming down with another tax-and-spend fever. The cause this time is an old-timer: highway spending. The prospect of ladling out more money for roads even has many Republicans acting like dogs in heat. The Highway Trust Fund--from which [...]

Minow, Whiting and True-Frost publish volume of essays on ‘First Global Prosecutor’ Luis Moreno Ocampo

After co-teaching a course at HLS with Professor Philip Heymann in January 2005, Luis Moreno-Ocampo returned to Harvard Law in 2010 to lead a seminar—developed that year with Martha Minow and Alex Whiting—that reviewed the work of his first seven years as the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, HLS Professor Alex Whiting and Syracuse University College of Law Assistant Professor Cora True-Frost have published a volume of essays that examine the role and the legacy of the first prosecutor for the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Elected in 2003, Moreno Ocampo conducted investigations in seven different countries, presenting charges against Muammar Gaddafi for crimes against humanity committed in Libya, the President of the Sudan Omar Al Bashir for genocide in Darfur, the former President of Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo. His office was involved in twenty of the most serious crises of the 21st century including Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan, and Palestine.

This volume of essays, published in April by the University of Michigan Press, presents the first sustained examination of this unique office and offers a rare look into international justice. The writers, ranging from legal scholars to practitioners of international law, explore the spectrum of options available to the Office of Prosecutor and the particular choices Moreno Ocampo made.

Read More

Combatting Grand Corruption: Is International Law the Answer?

In February, the Harvard Law & International Development Society (LIDS) held an conference on the current international and national legal framework for combating demand-side corruption, and the possibilities of an international tribunal to combat grand corruption. Luis Moreno Ocampo gave the opening remarks. Watch here.

“We had the remarkable chance to explore both on campus and in The Hague many legal, political, strategic and institutional challenges faced by the first prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and that led to this book, the first devoted to the subject,” said Minow and Whiting. “With our co-editor, Cora True-Frost, we were privileged to bring together perspectives from direct participants in the emerging work of international criminal justice and reflective academics who join the first prosecutor himself in offering critical insights into the prosecution office’s first decade and guidance for the work ahead.”

“I am thrilled that we have collected a unique set of writings from diverse legal minds that offers a compelling look at an important legal milestone—the creation of the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC—and its impact on international justice,” said True-Frost.

Credit: Phil FarnsworthDean Martha Minow

Minow, the Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict. Besides her many scholarly articles published in journals of law, history, and philosophy, she is the author of many books, including “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark” (2010). She served on the Independent International Commission Kosovo and helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. In August 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Dean Minow to the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a bi-partisan, government-sponsored organization that provides civil legal assistance to low-income Americans. The U.S. Senate confirmed her appointment on March 19, 2010 and she now serves as vice-chair. After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan, Minow received a master’s degree in education from Harvard and her law degree from Yale. She clerked for Judge David Bazelon of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Credit: Asia Kepka Professor Alex Whiting

Whiting is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School where he teaches, writes, and consults on domestic and international criminal prosecution issues. From 2010 until 2013, he was in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague where he served first as the Investigations Coordinator, overseeing all of the investigations in the office, and then as Prosecutions Coordinator, overseeing all of the office’s ongoing prosecutions. Before going to the ICC, Whiting taught for more than three years as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, again with a focus on prosecution subjects. From 2002-2007, he was a Trial Attorney and then a Senior Trial Attorney with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was a U.S. federal prosecutor for ten years, first with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division in Washington, D.C., and then with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston where he focused on organized crime and corruption cases. Whiting attended Yale College and Yale Law School, and clerked for Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of the Eastern District of New York. His publications include Dynamic Investigative Practice at the International Criminal Court, 76 Law and Contemporary Problems 163-189 (2014).

Syracuse Law Associate Professor C. Cora True-Frost

True-Frost’s scholarship is at the intersection of international relations theory and public international law, with a particular focus on international human rights law. She teaches classes in international and domestic criminal law, international human rights law, and regulatory law and policy. She earned an LL.M. from Harvard Law School and a J.D./M.P.A. magna cum laude as one of two Law Fellows at Syracuse University College of Law and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She has worked in international criminal law in both East Timor and Sierra Leone and she led the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security at UN headquarters. She was also a litigation associate at Cravath, Swaine and Moore LLP. Prior to law school, she taught middle school in Baltimore and Harlem with the Teach for America program.

States Where Regulations Harm Small Businesses The Most

The federal and state governments continue to impose ever-more burdensome regulations on businesses across the country. Overall, in 2014 alone, the Obama Administration imposed an estimated $181.5 billion in proposed and final regulatory costs on the U.S. economy according to a study by the American Action Forum. And, the federal regulatory [...]

The Problem With The White House Threat To Veto The REINS Act

The House this week, and later the Senate, will take up legislation to require that Congress approve all big federal agency regulations, those with $100 million in annual economic impact. Called the REINS Act, or Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny, President Barack Obama promised a veto of [...]

The Number Of Guns Made Has Doubled During Obama's Years In Office -- Here's Why

The Hill reported that “un production has more than doubled over the course of the Obama administration, according to a new report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).” They note that this manufacturing boom has come “in the face of the president’s push to expand background [...]

Civil Asset Forfeiture Victims Are Entitled To Be Made Whole, But Officials Try To Evade The Law

The government wastes vast amounts of money on things it has no business subsidizing, yet officials try to weasel out of paying miniscule amounts the government is obligated to pay when it damages innocent Americans.

Harvard Law’s WTO moot court team competes in global competition, for fourth straight year

In June, law school teams from around the world gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to compete before World Trade Organization experts at the world finals of the ELSA Moot Court competition. The Harvard Law School WTO moot court team advanced to the semifinals and tied for third place. West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences, from Kolkata, India, won this year’s competition.

Team members (l to r) Astina Au LL.M. ’15, Mengyi Wang ’15, Jillian Ventura ’17, Habin Chung ‘16 and co-coach Kamola Kobildjanova ’15.

The HLS team qualified for the world finals after winning the North American regional competition for the fourth consecutive year. This marks the third time in four years that Harvard’s team has advanced to the world semifinals — the most consistent showing of any university worldwide in recent years.

Harvard Law School’s winning team members are Astina Au LL.M. ’15, Mengyi Wang ’15, Habin Chung ‘16 and Jillian Ventura ’17.

The ELSA Moot Court Competition is a simulated hearing of the WTO dispute settlement system and is organized annually by the European Law Students’ Association. The competition is open to teams from around the globe. Panelists included legal staff of the WTO Secretariat, Ambassador to the WTO, law firm partners and leading academics.

Following the event, Ventura, who will coach next year’s team, said: “As a 1L, competing in the ELSA Moot Court Competition was immeasurably helpful to my growth as a law student and legal professional. From brief writing to crafting oral arguments, my repertoire of legal knowledge and skill grew exponentially throughout the course of the year. We spent hours dissecting the complex legal issues and thinking creatively about how to best structure our arguments.”

Harvard Law School Professor Mark Wu, an expert in international trade law, has served as the WTO moot court team faculty adviser since its inception four years ago. “Harvard was represented this year by an amazing group of women from around the world,” remarked Wu. “The team did a fabulous job grappling with a difficult case based on recent real-world events.”

Kamola Kobildjanova ’15 and Jason Nichol ’15, members of the 2013-2014 team that placed second in the world finals, coached this year’s team. Their 2013-14 team also won several writing awards, including best written submissions overall and best complainants’ brief. And team member Daniel Holman ’14 received the best oralist award in last year’s grand final.

“The ELSA WTO Moot Court competition is an invaluable opportunity to dive into complex legal and policy issues in trade law, to meet with trade law professionals, academics, and fellow students from all over the world,” said Kobildjanova. “Jason and I are incredibly proud of the team’s accomplishments and performance during the regional and international rounds this year. We felt really privileged to work alongside the team and get an opportunity to represent Harvard Law School in Geneva yet another year.”

Team members were selected based on tryouts held in the fall. Preparation for the competition included writing briefs for both the complainant and respondent sides of the case, which required significant research on WTO case law and scholarly writings on the issues. After submitting their briefs, the team met several times a week leading up to the competition to prepare for oral arguments.

New Jersey Banned A Church From Selling Headstones, After Business Rivals Lobbied For The Law

Lawmakers deliberately singled out the Archdiocese of Newark and banned it from engaging in honest enterprise. Now their case could thwart economic protectionism.

Student advocacy pays off: Mass State legislature funds An Act Relative to Safe and Supportive Schools

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For the Children who “Fell Through the Cracks”

Credit: Luke Best

For the past 10 years, students and faculty of the HLS Education Law Clinic have been successfully advocating to get such students back on the education track. And in July 2014, after a yearlong effort, they helped to pass—against great odds—a pioneering Massachusetts law to provide much broader protection for students at risk by supporting schools to do such things as aligning existing anti-bullying and dropout prevention programs, recognizing warning signs of stress, and providing positive reinforcement rather than knee-jerk discipline. Read more.

Students in the Education Law Clinic / Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) tirelessly worked over the last few months to encourage Massachusetts state legislators to fund An Act Relative to Safe and Supportive Schools.  

In July, both the House and Senate chambers approved $500,000 for the implementation of the statute.  The funding will allow $400,000 in grants to schools and $100,000 for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to establish safe and supportive learning environments and cultures. The funding will also help schools and districts through provisions for technical assistance, state and regional conferences, and sharing best practices related to the implementation of the framework.

This marks a second victory for TLPI and the students who last August prevailed in having the provisions of the bill enacted into law.

The Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, which is a joint program of the Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School, continues to lead efforts in supporting schools to meet the learning needs of all children. TLPI is also working on a research study to assess school culture outcomes for three schools that are using the Safe and Supportive framework.

Mohammad Hamdy awarded ASIL international law fellowship

Mohammad Hamdy LL.M. ’11, an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law, was selected by the American Society of International Law (ASIL) as a 2015 Helton Fellow.

Selected from a pool of applicants from around the world, Hamdy is one of three students who received the 2015 Helton Fellowship. Fellows receive grants of $2,000 to pursue fieldwork in or research on issues involving human rights, international criminal law, humanitarian affairs, and other international law areas.

A teaching fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Hamdy is currently serving as a research assistant at Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, where he examines state practice and international law for the Extraterritorial Use of Lethal Force Project. Before joining Harvard, he taught public international law for three years at Alexandria University and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport in Egypt.

His research interests include public international law, international economic law, human rights, legal theory, Arab and Islamic law, and legal education. Hamdy wrote his master’s thesis on the Nile Basin dispute. His S.J.D. dissertation focuses on international investment law, with particular emphasis on the relationship between the legal regime of investment and economic efficiency.

ASIL established the Helton Fellowship Program in 2004 in memory of its member Arthur C. Helton, an internationally renowned lawyer and advocate for the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons. Helton died in the August 19, 2003, bombing of the United Nations mission in Baghdad. Helton fellowships are funded by charitable contributions from Society members.

Hamdy’s Helton Fellowship project is part of ongoing research exploring the role and legal status of human rights NGOs in Egypt. In particular, his project seeks to register how NGOs are organized under local laws, how they manage to conduct their activities under current Egyptian legal restrictions, and how they will be able to continue to function after decrees instituting severe criminal penalties for individuals involved in organizations that receive foreign funding.

The Helton Fellowship Program is administered by ASIL through its Career Development Program. It is funded by a grant from the Planethood Foundation and contributions from ASIL members.

ASIL is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, educational membership organization. It was founded in 1906, chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1950, and has held Category II Consultative Status to the Economic and Social Council of the UN since 1993.  ASIL’s mission is to foster the study of international law and to promote the establishment and maintenance of international relations on the basis of law and justice. The Society’s nearly 4,000 members (from more than 100 countries) comprise attorneys, academics, corporate counsel, judges, representatives of governments and nongovernmental organizations, international civil servants, students, and others interested in international law.

When Drug Warriors Burn A Baby, Who's To Blame?

Shortly after midnight on May 28, 2014, Habersham County, Georgia, Deputy Sheriff Nikki Autry asked Magistrate Judge James Butterworth for a “no knock” warrant to search a house on Lakeview Heights Circle in Cornelia. In her application, Autry, a special agent with the Mountain Judicial Circuit Narcotics Criminal Investigation and [...]

Government Is Standing In The Way Of Millennial Entrepreneurs

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A CNN Founder Answers Why The Media Is Often One-Sided When It Comes To Guns

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LegalZoom Takes On A State Bar That Doesn't Want Competition

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A 'Drugged Driver' Who Wasn't Avoids Prison in Pedestrian's Death

A recent "drugged driving" case in Illinois highlights the problems with defining marijuana impairment based on blood tests while showing that justice is not necessarily served by pursuing the most serious charge the law allows. On February 2, 2013,  Chemise Wardlow, a 40-year-old Montgomery resident, struck and killed 54-year-old Donald Early, who [...]

The States Where Small Business Employees Earn The Most

The States Where Small Business Employees Earn The Most

In Michigan, Failing To Renew Your Dog License Costs More Than Just Money

BY RANDAL JOHN MEYER - The state penalizes the failure to obtain a dog license with a $100 fine, which is reasonable as far as these things go—and the potential of 90 days in jail.

Berkman initiative spotlights lessons from the Ebola outbreak

Credit: Daniel Dennis Jones

Global Access in Action (GAiA), an initiative of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, hosted a workshop on July 10 to explore lessons from the recent Ebola outbreak for improving future preparedness for public health crises.

Forty leaders from civil society, academia, international procurement and donor agencies, government, and the pharmaceutical industry reviewed the Ebola drug development landscape and explored ways to alter policies to strengthen ongoing research and reduce the incidence and severity of future outbreaks.

Credit: Daniel Dennis JonesQuentin Palfrey ’02, co-director (with Terry Fisher) of Global Access in Action

Almost 40 years after the first outbreak, and 10 years after published reports that a vaccine candidate showed promise in non-human subjects, there is still no cure for Ebola, despite the fact that drug development on average takes about a third of this time frame.  In the past two years, Ebola killed more than 11,000 people and devastated three countries in western Africa.

Participants at the one-day workshop grappled with difficult questions generated by the recent Ebola outbreak, including: What structural and/or policy changes could incentivize R&D into treatments for neglected diseases? and What strategies should be adopted to improve future preparedness for similar public health emergencies?

The group proposed four concrete recommendations:

• Greater attention should be paid to developing systematic incentives for investment in research and development into vaccines and medicines that treat diseases that disproportionately affect the global poor and for which there are not adequate commercial incentives for optimal levels of research and development.  Innovative financing mechanisms such as advance market commitments,  prizes,  challenges, and public-private partnerships  hold particular promise in this regard.
• There should be greater coordination among humanitarian funding agencies to ensure that scarce funds are directed towards the most urgent problems.  An institution dedicated to rigorous identification and surveillance of global-health threats with a ranking system designed to prioritize the most pressing of those threats could help accomplish this objective.
• Greater efforts should be undertaken to ensure that the fruits of humanitarian funding can be deployed to address unmet needs on a sustainable basis.  Those who receive humanitarian research funding should ensure that those who need the resulting drugs and vaccines most get access to them.  Greater transparency and collaboration among recipients of humanitarian R&D financing would help, too.
• Once effective vaccines and drugs are developed, the governments of affluent countries should acquire and stockpile sufficient quantities of the vaccines and drugs to enable them to be distributed rapidly in regions where outbreaks occur.

Optimizing drug R&D incentives, increasing access to medicines, and improving coordination can help save lives in the next global public health emergency

“The Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2013 and 2015 offers a painful illustration of how important it is for the world community to get drug development policy right,” said William Fisher ’82, Global Access in Action co-director and WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School.

“Practical steps can save lives and improve responses to global health crises, such as the recent Ebola outbreak,” said Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School. “Before the next crisis, it is vital to bring attention and political will to such practical steps, including nimble incentives for research and development of responsive drugs and coordination and commitment to enhance access to medicines.”

“Stakeholders across the world need to come together to develop systematic incentives for increasing R&D into diseases that disproportionately affect the global poor, and for which there are insufficient commercial incentives,” said Quentin Palfrey ’02, Global Access in Action co-director and special counsel at the law firm WilmerHale.

Credit: Daniel Dennis Jones From left: HLS Assistant Professor Mark Wu; Katrina Geddes, GAiA project intern; Nathaniel Levy, GAiA project manager; Quentin Palfrey ’02, GAiA co-director and special counsel at the law firm WilmerHale; and Terry Fisher, GAiA co-director and WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at HLS.

“As the Ebola outbreak demonstrates, international coordination to respond to a burgeoning public health crisis is very difficult — and the stakes are enormous,” added Mark Wu, Global Access in Action co-director, Berkman Center faculty co-director, and an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School.

On July 14, Fisher and Palfrey wrote a blog post, “Inside Views: Learning from Ebola,” which summarized the June 10 workshop and elaborated on several of the group’s recommendations.

Global Access in Action explores laws and policies that govern innovation and commercialization of technologies for the poor. The project aims to develop pragmatic solutions to difficult problems that have tangible impact on the lives of the world’s poorest populations.

The workshop cut across two Global Access in Action thematic topics:  access to lifesaving medicines for the poor and incentives for research into neglected diseases that disproportionately affect the poor.

In 2014, the project hosted a workshop on ways to increase access to pharmaceutical products in the developing world, with particular emphasis on intra-country price discrimination and humanitarian licensing strategies.

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In Memoriam: David Grossman ’88, Clinical Professor and Lawyer for the Poor

David Abraham Grossman ’88, a lawyer and teacher who devoted his career to addressing the legal needs of the poor and served as Director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, died on July 12.

Grossman had been director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB) since 2006, when he was appointed to the position by Elena Kagan, then-dean of Harvard Law School. HLAB provides free legal counsel to indigent clients while simultaneously providing hands-on training to HLS students.

“David devoted his life to pursuing justice with creativity, integrity, and craft–and to inspiring and enabling students to do so as well,” said Martha Minow, Dean of Harvard Law School. “As Clinical Professor, he played pivotal roles both at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center and then as managing attorney and faculty director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, where among other great efforts he guided the nationally recognized Project No One Leaves (PNOL), a nonprofit tenants’ rights organization. In this effort, he made sure that lawyers and law students worked hand-in-hand with clients, community members, and community organizations in bringing legal education to low-income people facing foreclosure and eviction, advancing protections for individuals, families, and communities, changing and enforcing laws, and strengthening the tools and spirit necessary for helping people in serious need. With a formidable intellect and constant courage, David also brought his tremendous humility, humor, and friendship to every encounter, elevating allies and opponents alike. We were truly honored to have his work and leadership and will do our best to continue his vital efforts.”

Grossman began his work with indigent clients as a student at HLS, enrolling in the Legal Services Center (LSC), established by Gary Bellow ’60 and Jeanne Charn ’70. They established the center with the aim of promoting social justice by providing free legal counsel to those in need while simultaneously providing hands-on training to law students.

Grossman found his professional calling at the LSC and found a life-long friend, mentor and role model in Gary Bellow, who died in 2000. About Bellow, Grossman said, “Gary was one of the few people about whom it can accurately be said that he devoted his life to performing mitzvot, or good deeds, to trying to fix a broken world, a concept known in Jewish thought as tikkun olam. But what was even more remarkable about Gary than his own mitzvot was his ability to both inspire and enable others to perform mitzvot of their own, to carry out the work of tikkun olam. Gary was the only one who really inspired me. He was the only professor I knew who was not only thinking about and analyzing how to do the right thing, but was actually spending his life doing it. For that reason, he became my mentor and, in a sense, my hero—someone whom I sought to model my life after.”

Charn, director of the Bellow Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project and Senior Lecturer on Law said, “David practiced law at the highest level of craft in service of a relentless commitment to improving housing for residents buffeted by Boston’s volatile markets. His efforts included a focus on strategies that enabled people to help themselves and each other and a concern with cost effective paths to excellent outcomes. He preferred working in teams and knew how to build strong ones. He believed in and modeled rigorous peer review – the heart of the profession’s claim to self-regulation. These qualities made him a compelling teacher in the law office as well as the law school classroom. David was an ardent cause lawyer who never conflated himself with or ceded his life to the cause. He had a sharp wit and warm humor. He was a loyal and caring friend who gave unstintingly when friends were in need. He cherished his wife Stacy and their children Lev and Shayna who were ever his first, most joyous and constant commitment.”

U.S. Representative Joe Kennedy ’09, one of Grossman’s former students, said, “Professor Grossman was a talented lawyer, a dedicated teacher and a passionate advocate. He committed his life to the fair implementation of the law, believing that it applies to all of us and protects each of us. Throughout his career, he showed how words like justice and fairness were not just ideas for discussion but principles that had to be fought for, protected and defended. In so doing, he protected thousands of people in need and inspired hundreds of young lawyers. Our community has lost a champion, but his values and vision live on through all those he touched. My thoughts and prayers are with Stacy, Lev and Shayna during this difficult time.“ In addition, Kennedy planned to read a statement about the impact of Grossman’s work on the floor of the U.S. House this week.

Grossman was born and raised in New Jersey, and spent his adult life in Boston. He graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in 1980, received a Master’s Degree in Eastern Religions from Harvard Divinity School in 1982, and earned his JD at HLS in 1988.

In 1995, Grossman rejoined LSC as a clinical instructor in the housing unit, after a short stint working for the New York law firm, Kramer Levin and a few years at Community Lawyers in Jamaica Plain, Mass. For 11 years he was the Managing Attorney of the Housing Unit.

While at LSC, Grossman revived the partnership between LSC and City Life/Vida Urbana, a community organization with a focus on tenants’ rights. Together with Steve Meacham, the coordinating director at City Life/Vida Urbana, Grossman developed a combined lawyering and organizing approach to gentrification-driven rent increases. The effort resulted in numerous collective bargaining agreements with developers and landlords guaranteeing long-term stability and affordability for buildings full of tenants who had been threatened with displacement.

Grossman was also involved in initiating, developing, and staffing a “lawyer for the day” program in Boston Housing Court, which has both provided assistance each week to scores of otherwise unrepresented tenants facing eviction and given numerous law students unparalleled educational experience in staffing the law equivalent of an emergency room.

At HLAB David continued to work collaboratively with City Life/Vida Urbana to broaden the scope of HLAB’s role so that it not only provides free legal counsel to those in need, but also enacts real social change to benefit the community at large. In 2007 enormous waves of foreclosures devastated neighborhoods throughout the country and in Boston. Under Grossman’s leadership, HLAB along with City Life/Vida Urbana, adapted their anti-gentrification model into a fierce anti-foreclosure movement.

The anti-foreclosure movement—which now encompasses HLAB, CityLife/Vida Urbana, LSC and many other organizations—works with homeowners and tenants to thwart the efforts of lenders to displace families after foreclosure. Grossman and HLAB students played a key role in this mobilizing effort, canvassing foreclosed properties on a weekly basis, conducting weekly clinics in which they educate occupants about their rights, and deploying a legal “shield” for all of the movement’s members by vigorously defending post-foreclosure evictions through a variety of creative and successful approaches. (The “shield’s work is complemented by that of the “sword”: rallies, protests, and other demonstrations, including acts of civil disobedience, coordinated by City Life/Vida Urbana organizers as a means of calling public attention to the problem of post-foreclosure displacement.)

The movement Grossman helped to initiate has become so effective in Boston that it has inspired activists in cities throughout the country to do the same. Grossman helped to secure generous funding from the Oak Foundation to help finance these efforts for years to come.

Grossman, who fought a courageous seven-year battle with cancer, is survived by his wife, Stacy, his son, Lev, and his daughter, Shayna. He also leaves a sister Rachel, an aunt, Helen Kaplan, and parents-in-law Leonard and Madeline Soave, as well as sisters- and brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews, and cousins. He was predeceased by his parents, Harold and Gloria Grossman.

Donations in his memory can be made to CityLife/Vida Urbana 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 or The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, 23 Everett Street #1, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Worker's Choice: A Way To Make Sure We Don't Undo Right-To-Work

BY F. VINCENT VERNUCCIO - Instead of forcing workers to accept union representation and forcing unions to represent workers who do not pay them, Congress and state legislatures should let nonmembers represent themselves.

Hillary Clinton's Economic Intervention Agenda Unveiled

In her major New School speech outlining her economic agenda, Hillary Clinton had a lot to say about jobs and higher incomes for Americans, but not much about what matters to those expected to provide them. Hiring and business startups are suffering, fewer are self employed. Any politician concerned about jobs would first [...]

Berkman study finds public broadband can succeed

A new report by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, “Holyoke: A Massachusetts Municipal Light Plant Seizes Internet Access Business Opportunities,” documents the success of a municipally-owned electric utility in providing Internet access services.

The case study, which was co-written by Berkman Fellow David Talbot, Waide Warner, Carolyn Anderson, Kira Hessekiel, and Daniel Dennis Jones, found that the broadband network created by Holyoke’s municipal utility has saved the city about $300,000 per year in Internet costs and has been profitable for five of the last 10 years.

Massachusetts has 41 such “munis” –- serving more than 900,000 people and thousands of businesses -– but only 10 are in the Internet access business as allowed by state law.  The Holyoke Gas & Electric Department’s telecom division competes with Comcast and Charter and serves 300 business customers and numerous public buildings. It has shown steady growth in revenues, and $500,000 in net earnings over the past decade. HG&E’s telecom division is also now providing a variety of services to three other municipalities. Finally, the utility is considering a residential high-speed Internet access offering, something the muni in neighboring Westfield is piloting later this year. HG&E’s success in a competitive environment was achieved without any debt issuance, tax, or subsidy from electricity or gas ratepayers.

Key Findings:

• HG&E Telecom saves city offices and HG&E itself more than $300,000 a year by providing Internet access and networking and telephone services to public agencies.
• The utility provides approximately 300 businesses and large institutions with telecom services and creates competition, which tends to improve service offerings from all market participants, aiding the local economy.
• HG&E Telecom forged inter-municipal agreements that extend services and accompanying benefits to the neighboring city of Chicopee and to the city of Greenfield, 30 miles north.
• While HG&E Telecom has focused on selling services to businesses, the utility is now considering a residential fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) offering, given the declining market pressure to provide television content.
• Demonstrating that a municipal light plant can diversify into the consultancy business, HG&E Telecom also recently became project and network manager for a FTTH project in the town of Leverett.
• HG&E Telecom has shown steady growth in the face of competition, never incurred debt, and has reaped a 10 percent profit in both 2013 and 2014.

Crony Capitalism And The Growth Of Federal Regulation

The 2014 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) finally appeared. The Draft 2015 edition is overdue compared to most earlier years. In it, OMB pegs the cumulative costs of 116 selected major regulations during the decade at between [...]

Undisguised Value: Daniel Halperin has shaped U.S. tax policy and practitioners for more than a half-century

Credit: Kathleen Dooher

On July 1, Harvard Law School Professor Daniel I. Halperin retired after nearly 40 years as a law professor, including two decades as the Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law at HLS. Below, reprinted from the Spring 2015 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin, is a tribute to Halperin written by his colleague Alvin C. Warren, who is the Ropes & Gray Professor of Law at HLS.

Daniel I. Halperin ’61 retired at the end of this academic year after more than a half-century as a tax lawyer, professor and government official. Unlike most law professors starting out today, Dan worked as a lawyer for a decade—at the firm Kaye Scholer and in the government—before entering law teaching. Serendipitously, he became Kaye Scholer’s expert in the new field of pension law in his second year, after the sudden departure of the only lawyer at the firm with any experience in the field.

In 1967, Dan moved to Washington to join the staff of the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, which is the executive branch office responsible for tax regulations and legislative proposals. At the time, the assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy was Stanley S. Surrey, a legendary Harvard Law School professor who served as the principal tax policy officer for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. (He had also been Dan’s teacher in a course on the taxation of international income.)

Although tax law is frequently contested and often political, Surrey’s rule was that his staff was to consider only the criteria of good tax policy in developing regulations and legislative proposals. Political issues were to be left to him, the Treasury secretary and the White House.

Dan flourished in this environment. Thanks to his practice experience, he played a key role in the development of the Johnson administration’s initial bill for pension security, which would evolve into the historic Employee Retirement Income Security Act, enacted by Congress in 1974.

Surrey further believed that the Treasury should not only focus on current regulatory and legislative issues, but also analyze and produce proposals for long-term reform. Dan played an important role in the evolution of these proposals, which eventually led to the Tax Reform Act of 1969. Although a lifelong Democrat, he remained at the Treasury as deputy tax legislative counsel after the election of President Nixon in order to see the proposals through to enactment.

Stimulated by his work at Treasury, Dan joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1970. His first major article as a professor, “Business Deduction for Personal Living Expenses: A Uniform Approach to an Unsolved Problem,” 122 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 859 (1974), remains a classic 40 years later.

In the presidential campaign of 1976, Jimmy Carter famously called the U.S. income tax system a “disgrace to the human race.” After the election of President Carter, Dan returned to the Treasury, first as tax legislative counsel and then as deputy assistant secretary. In those positions, he was instrumental in the formulation of the president’s 1978 tax reform proposals, some of which were enacted in the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986.

In 1981, Dan returned to law teaching, this time at Georgetown, where he would remain for 15 years. He also returned to practice as a consultant for Ropes & Gray. It was during this period that Dan’s most famous article, “Interest in Disguise: Taxing the Time Value of Money,” 95 Yale Law Journal 506 (1986), appeared. Stemming from problems he had dealt with at Treasury, this article remains the seminal analysis of a series of issues that are still not fully resolved.

In 1996, Dan was appointed the first Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Over the past 19 years, he has continued to write about tax law and policy, and has taught a variety of tax-related courses, covering income taxation, tax policy, pension law, and nonprofit organizations.

Throughout his long career, Dan has always been known in the tax law community for two attributes: his analytical sophistication and his generosity. No matter how difficult the problem, Dan is usually the first to see a solution (or why a solution may be impossible). This sophistication has always been coupled with remarkable generosity. When congressional staffers, young law professors or law students have asked for his help in understanding some difficult question, Dan has never been too busy to provide the requested assistance.

What are his plans for retirement? Dan has already begun work on a book on some unresolved issues in tax law and policy. Stanley Surrey would be proud.

Alvin Warren is Ropes & Gray Professor of Law at HLS, where he has taught tax law and policy since 1979.

Undisguised Value: Daniel Halperin has shaped U.S. tax policy and tax practitioners for more than a half-century

Credit: Kathleen Dooher

On July 1, Harvard Law School Professor Daniel I. Halperin retired after nearly 40 years as a law professor, including two decades as the Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law at HLS. Below, reprinted from the Spring 2015 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin, is a tribute to Halperin written by his colleague Alvin C. Warren, who is the Ropes & Gray Professor of Law at HLS.

Daniel I. Halperin ’61 retired at the end of this academic year after more than a half-century as a tax lawyer, professor and government official. Unlike most law professors starting out today, Dan worked as a lawyer for a decade—at the firm Kaye Scholer and in the government—before entering law teaching. Serendipitously, he became Kaye Scholer’s expert in the new field of pension law in his second year, after the sudden departure of the only lawyer at the firm with any experience in the field.

In 1967, Dan moved to Washington to join the staff of the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, which is the executive branch office responsible for tax regulations and legislative proposals. At the time, the assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy was Stanley S. Surrey, a legendary Harvard Law School professor who served as the principal tax policy officer for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. (He had also been Dan’s teacher in a course on the taxation of international income.)

Although tax law is frequently contested and often political, Surrey’s rule was that his staff was to consider only the criteria of good tax policy in developing regulations and legislative proposals. Political issues were to be left to him, the Treasury secretary and the White House.

Dan flourished in this environment. Thanks to his practice experience, he played a key role in the development of the Johnson administration’s initial bill for pension security, which would evolve into the historic Employee Retirement Income Security Act, enacted by Congress in 1974.

Surrey further believed that the Treasury should not only focus on current regulatory and legislative issues, but also analyze and produce proposals for long-term reform. Dan played an important role in the evolution of these proposals, which eventually led to the Tax Reform Act of 1969. Although a lifelong Democrat, he remained at the Treasury as deputy tax legislative counsel after the election of President Nixon in order to see the proposals through to enactment.

Stimulated by his work at Treasury, Dan joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1970. His first major article as a professor, “Business Deduction for Personal Living Expenses: A Uniform Approach to an Unsolved Problem,” 122 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 859 (1974), remains a classic 40 years later.

In the presidential campaign of 1976, Jimmy Carter famously called the U.S. income tax system a “disgrace to the human race.” After the election of President Carter, Dan returned to the Treasury, first as tax legislative counsel and then as deputy assistant secretary. In those positions, he was instrumental in the formulation of the president’s 1978 tax reform proposals, some of which were enacted in the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986.

In 1981, Dan returned to law teaching, this time at Georgetown, where he would remain for 15 years. He also returned to practice as a consultant for Ropes & Gray. It was during this period that Dan’s most famous article, “Interest in Disguise: Taxing the Time Value of Money,” 95 Yale Law Journal 506 (1986), appeared. Stemming from problems he had dealt with at Treasury, this article remains the seminal analysis of a series of issues that are still not fully resolved.

In 1996, Dan was appointed the first Stanley S. Surrey Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Over the past 19 years, he has continued to write about tax law and policy, and has taught a variety of tax-related courses, covering income taxation, tax policy, pension law, and nonprofit organizations.

Throughout his long career, Dan has always been known in the tax law community for two attributes: his analytical sophistication and his generosity. No matter how difficult the problem, Dan is usually the first to see a solution (or why a solution may be impossible). This sophistication has always been coupled with remarkable generosity. When congressional staffers, young law professors or law students have asked for his help in understanding some difficult question, Dan has never been too busy to provide the requested assistance.

What are his plans for retirement? Dan has already begun work on a book on some unresolved issues in tax law and policy. Stanley Surrey would be proud.

Alvin Warren is Ropes & Gray Professor of Law at HLS, where he has taught tax law and policy since 1979.

Bill Cosby's Testimony Released: Why That Could Be Bad For Businesses

BY RANDAL JOHN MEYER - If you know a valuable secret, one that could even hurt other people by keeping it, should you be able to sell your silence on the matter?

Sorry Folks, Independence Day Is Canceled

“Well, Doctor , what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” “A Republic, if you can keep it.” This week's Independence Day celebrations mark quite the contrast with the modern bureaucratic nanny state, with the all-powerful centralized government we actually have. We'll wave flags symbolizing commonality with our nation's founders who [...]

Why Marijuana Merchants Love Rand Paul (And What Could Make Them Love Him More)

This week about 40 people paid at least $2,700 each to hear Rand Paul talk about drug policy during the National Cannabis Industry Association’s conference at the Denver Convention Center. That “private briefing” made the Kentucky senator the first major-party presidential candidate to hold a fundraiser aimed at people in [...]

John Palfrey on the importance of libraries in the digital information age (video)

Credit: Dave WhiteJohn Palfrey ’01

In an age of eBooks, Google, and Smartphones, many have questioned the importance of libraries. John Palfrey ’01, has penned a new book, which he calls “a love letter to libraries,” that makes the case that libraries are more relevant than ever.

Palfrey, who currently serves as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, and as director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, spoke about his new book, “BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever In An Age of Google,” at HLS on June 22. Palfrey previously served as vice dean for Libraries and Information Resources at Harvard Law School and as executive director of the Berkman Center from 2002 to 2008.

During his book talk, Palfrey challenged the idea that libraries are losing their importance and argued that these institutions play a critical role in the 21st century information infrastructure. Yet, said Palfrey, libraries are threatened by the recent trend toward born-digital materials and dwindling public funding. He stressed the importance of transitioning libraries into the digital future.

“Very often people have a funny view that libraries maybe aren’t as useful as they once were,” said Palfrey, “which is wrong and is why I wrote this book.” Palfrey cited his role as founding chairman of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which began at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2010, and his current role as Head of School at Phillips Academy as partial inspiration for the book.

For Palfrey, the importance of preserving and transitioning libraries into the digital future is closely linked to the origin of public libraries. When large municipal libraries began emerging across the country in the early 20^th century, Palfrey said, it was “with an incredibly simple democratic premise: the basic idea that information should be free, knowledge should be free to anyone regardless of their ability to pay.” Yet, he worries that this will not be the case as materials move from the “publicly spirited” hands of libraries into the hands of private cloud and eBook providers.

In order to ensure equal access to information in the digital age, Palfrey believes it is incumbent on libraries to adapt to changes in how individuals access and consume information. In his talk, Palfrey recalled a particularly powerful experience in the Andover library when he witnessed a student who was sitting feet from a librarian turn to his iPhone and ask ‘Siri’ for the definition of terminal velocity.

“There is a tough love story here, which is that when we study young people and how they look for information, librarians are pretty low on that list,” he said.

The future of libraries will be a hybrid of the physical and digital spaces, according to Palfrey.

One way to achieve this is through initiatives like DPLA, which provides free public access to digitized materials from libraries, archives, and museums across the country.

While collecting information into a centralized physical space may have made sense in the analogue era, Palfrey said that by working together and seeing libraries as a connected series of platforms—as part of a network—much more can be accomplished.

This kind of collaboration can already be seen in organizations like the Digital Commonwealth in Massachusetts, which collects, digitizes, and provides free online access to materials gathered from libraries, museums, archives, and historical societies across the state. In the future, Palfrey envisions organizations like the Digital Commonwealth partnering with hubs in other states to create a well-curated national digital ‘library’ of unprecedented size.

In addition to interconnectedness, Palfrey also stressed the importance of developing next-generation libraries in a collaborative way—with open application programming interfaces (APIs)—in order to allow innovation and flexibility in the ways we store, organize, and access information. As collections are digitized, Palfrey said that some individuals may be concerned about losing certain intangibles—like the “serendipity” of browsing physical bookshelves and “coming out with ten books when you thought you were coming out with one.” However, with innovative platforms and the creative use of metadata, he believes that new kinds of serendipity can be introduced into these new hybrid libraries.

While Palfrey believes that physical libraries will continue to play an important role as community gathering places, the challenge is recognizing the new reasons that people come to libraries in the digital era and developing creative ways to serve these needs. “We should dream really, really big,” said Palfrey, “This is the moment when we are designing what public libraries, and scholarly libraries, and school libraries can and should be for the future … This should be a shared vision that we’re really excited about.”

The Supreme Court Curbs Regulatory Excesses With EPA Decision

Since his infamous declaration that “I have a pen, and I have a phone”, President Obama has been attempting to circumvent the Congress and implement his policy agenda through regulatory fiat. In a 5-4 decision, Michigan v. EPA released on Monday June 29th, the U.S. Supreme Court has sent the [...]