Committee exploring whether Harvard Law School shield should be changed

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has announced the creation of a committee to research if the school should continue to use its current shield.

The shield is the coat of arms of the family of Isaac Royall, whose bequest endowed the first professorship of law at Harvard. Royall was the son of an Antiguan slaveholder known to have treated his slaves with extreme cruelty, including burning 77 people to death. In 1936, the Harvard Corporation and Radcliff Trustees adopted seals for 27 Harvard academic units, naming the Royall crest, with its three sheaths of wheat, as the Law School shield.

Because of its ties to slave labor, the shield has come under fire. In October, a group of law school students formed an organization called “Royall Must Fall” to demand that the law school discontinue using the Royall family crest as its symbol. In November, the committee wrote an open letter to Dean Minow, demanding the end of the use of the sheild at HLS.

“As Harvard Law School prepares to observe its bicentennial in 2017, it is important that we mark not only our accomplishments but also the difficult aspects of our history,” said Minow. “We have been forthright in confronting and acknowledging the legacy of Isaac Royall, a slaveholder who established the first professorship in law at Harvard. Each year, as a new class arrives, I urge students to contemplate this legacy and to use the injustice of Royall’s wealth as an example of the kind of injustice that they will have the power and the tools to change as law students and lawyers. Symbols are important. They become even more important when people care about them and focus on them. I have asked distinguished historians of our faculty to lead a process for soliciting the views and perspectives of all within our community—students, alumni, faculty, and staff —on whether the Royall crest should be discarded from our shield. Through that process, we will gain a better sense of what course of action should be recommended and pursued, and we will discuss and understand important aspects of our history and what defines us today and tomorrow as a community dedicated to justice, diversity, equality, and inclusion. We will also have an opportunity to do what all lawyers must do if they are to be effective, which is to truly listen to the perspectives and experiences related by others.”

Bruce Mann, Carl F. Schipper, Jr. Professor of Law, will chair the committee of faculty, students, and an alumnus. A legal historian, Mann will be joined on the committee by legal historians Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Annette Gordon-Reed and Sam Moyn, as well as Janet Halley, who holds the Royall Professorship of Law at HLS. She has written about the legacy of the Royall family. Alumnus Jim Bowers ’70, senior counsel at Day Pitney and a member of the Senior Advisory Council of the Harvard Law School Association, will also serve on the committee. The HLS student government will appoint two representatives to the committee, as well. Visiting Professor Dan Coquillette, coauthor of “On the Battlefield of Merit”, a history of Harvard Law School, will consult to the committee.

The committee is seeking comment from members of the law school community. It has created an email address to receive remarks, royall@law.harvard.edu, and it will be holding community discussions.

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The plight of Roma

Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff PhotographerAdriana Zimova, (standing) Harvard Law graduate, activist for Roma rights speaks as Margareta Matache, Harvard School of Public Health, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights looks on next to her inside Wasserstein Hall at Harvard University. Alicia Bello, Joint Degree Candidate at Harvard Law School & Harvard Kennedy School of Government looks on (glasses, crimson shirt).

Taking a leaf out of the American Civil Rights Movement’s book, Roma rights activists undertook a legal battle in European courts to challenge the pervasive discrimination that has kept them living on the fringes of society.

Roma right activists filed a complaint in 1999 before the European Court of Human Rights saying that Roma students were 27 times likelier than non-Roma children to be placed in substandard schools. Eight years later, the court found that the Czech government indeed placed a disproportionate number of Roma children in special schools for children with learning disabilities, which was deemed an act of segregation that violated fundamental human rights.

Known as Brown v. Board of Education of Europe, the ruling highlighted the plight of the Roma, who are often denied access to basic rights and face a life of poverty, discrimination, and exclusion. The ruling was momentous.

“It shook the system,” said Adriana Zimova ’11, a human rights attorney from Slovakia and a Roma rights activist.

“It came at a time when putting Roma children in special schools for children with mental disabilities was accepted as the norm,” she added. “And all of a sudden, the court came and said, ‘Actually, that’s no longer permissible.’”

Zimova spoke last week at Harvard Law School about the challenges of fighting human rights abuses against the Roma. Zimova was accompanied by Margareta Matache, a Roma rights activist.

Matache, who grew up in Romania in the 1980s and now works as an instructor at

Harvard’s FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, recalled how she escaped a dire future.

“I attended a mixed school with Romanian and Roma children,” said Matache. “My best friend was Romanian, and the teachers wanted us to be together in the same classroom. That’s the only reason why I was placed in a Romanian school.”

There are between 10 to 12 million Roma across Europe, but although they are the continent’s largest minority, they are often invisible and forgotten. The Roma, also called Romani, shun the term Gypsies, which they find derogatory.

Descendants of Indians who settled in Europe about 1,000 years ago, the Roma have suffered discrimination throughout their history. A quarter of their population were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust.

But despite their victory in the court, which helped draw attention to their situation, little has changed. Ninety percent of the Roman live below the poverty line and struggle to have access to good education, housing, and employment. Only 1 percent go to college.

“The ruling led to a greater recognition of the segregation that Roma suffer,” said Zimova. But the legal battle continues for many Roma rights activists, and more efforts to fight prejudice against Roma are necessary, said Zimova and Matache.

The Roma live in segregated neighborhoods, which are surrounded by walls built by non-Romas to keep them separated, said Zimova. Other signs of racism prevail: employment ads with “No Roma Need Apply” signs, and restaurants’ refusal to serve Roma customers.

Incidents of violence against Roma are common. Houses occupied by Roma have been set on fire, and families have been expelled from the communities. Segregation in schools often still continues, said Matache, but the battle for equal access to education for Roma children goes on as well.

“Litigation was not enough because we continue to segregate Romani children in Romania,” she said. “We need a more holistic approach. On one hand, we need to work on the legal case, but we also need to have a strategy that continues after the ruling form the court and keeps working with the communities.”

“The plight of the Roma,” by Liz Mineo, Harvard staff writer, was published in the Harvard Gazette, on Nov. 24, 2015

HLS teams compete in the showdown round of the Ames Moot Court Competition

Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan helps judge 2015 Ames Moot Court competition finals at HLS in November.

The final round of Harvard Law School’s 2015 Ames Moot Court Competition took place on Nov. 16, in Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall.

The Ames Moot Court Competition is one of the most prestigious competitions for appellate brief writing and advocacy in the country. In the competition’s final round, held in the fall of the 3L year, two teams argue a case before a panel that usually consists of one U.S. Supreme Court justice and two judges from the United States courts of appeal.

This year, the Hon. Elena Kagan ’86, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Hon. Debra Ann Livingston ’84, U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit, and the Hon. Robert L. Wilkins ’89, U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, presided over the competition. This is the first time Kagan has presided over Ames since leaving Harvard Law School to serve on the Supreme Court.

Two teams of 3L students presented arguments in the fictional case of Abrams v. Vita, Inc. This year’s teams were:

The Hon. Robert Smith Vance Memorial Team (Petitioner)

November 16, 2015. Cambridge, MA. Harvard Law School. Ames Final Moot Court Competition.

L-R: ; Charlotte Lawson, oralist; Gabriel Kohan;  Amanda-Claire Grayson, Brian Phelps; Allison Schultz, oralist,and Kevin Crandall.

The Jimmie Lee Jackson Memorial Team (Respondent)

Back row, L-R: Sam Block; Chen-Chen Jiang; Patrick Knoth; Zoe Bedell. Front row: L-R: Meghan Cleary, oralist, and Kavya Naini, oralist.

The judges ruled that ruled the petitioner, the Hon. Robert Smith Vance Memorial Team, won Best Overall.  The Best Brief award went to the respondent, The Jimmie Lee Jackson Memorial Team. Charlotte Lawson, of the petitioner’s team, was awarded Best Oralist.

This was the first year in the history of Ames that all four oralists in the final round were women.

The Women’s Law Association hosted an Ames viewing event during the competition. The Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review provided a live blog of the competition, which included judges’ questions, oralists’ arguments and bloggers’ predictions. The CRCL archive is available here.

Kagan complimented the oralists’ ability to respond to judges’ questions. She also praised both teams’ briefs: “In the end, it’s the briefs that win arguments, much more so than the [oral] argument,” she said.

The 2015 Ames Moot Court Case Abrams v. Vita, Inc, involved an employee, impaired as a result of an accident, who sought workplace accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Specifically, he asked to be reassigned from his “Picker” position, gathering items to fulfill online customer orders, to a position as an “Inventory Associate,” which is a clerical job that he could do. One of the issues in the case involved whether the ADA requires that a physically disabled worker be reassigned to a similar position within his organization for which he is qualified, when there is someone else in the organization who is more qualified according to employer specifications.

The second issue in the case involved the worker’s use of medicinal marijuana and whether the ADA protects an individual with a disability who uses marijuana for medical purposes under the supervision of a physician and in accordance with state law when the individual’s employer takes adverse employment action on the basis of such use.

The hypothetical case was written by Tejinder Singh ’08, an instructor in the Harvard Supreme Court Litigation Clinic and a partner at Goldstein and Russell, and Elizabeth Prelogar ’08. Both Singh and Prelogar are former Ames oralists, and Prelogar served as a clerk for Justice Kagan. A brief description is available on the Board of Student Advisers website.

The Final Round Record and Briefs are below:

Abrams v. Vita, Inc. – Record

Vance – Brief for Petitioner

Jackson – Brief for Respondent

Vance – Reply Brief for Petitioner

The students participating in the Final Round started the competition in fall of their 2L year. Two teams progressed to the Final Round through their strong research abilities and excellent written and oral advocacy.  The Ames Moot Court competition is administered by the HLS Board of Student Advisers (BSA).

Past Ames participants include Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, former Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan ’81, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick ’82, and the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun ’32. Click here for a list of past winners of the Competition.

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Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow responds to the defacement of African American faculty portraits

This morning, Harvard Law School discovered that portraits of some African American faculty had been defaced with black tape. The Harvard University Police Department is investigating the incident as a hate crime. The HLS community gathered at noon to listen to one another, to share our concerns, experiences and perspectives, and to address ways to move forward. Expressions of hatred are abhorrent, whether they be directed at race, sex, sexual preference, gender identity, religion, or any other targets of bigotry. Here at HLS, we are focused on efforts to improve our community, examining structures that may contribute to negative experiences of any members of our community, and pursuing opportunities where the School can both change and support change. 

Dean Martha Minow
Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law
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HLS students participate in Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration competition

A team of Harvard Law School students traveled to London in early October to participate in the Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot, hosted by the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London.

The 2015 Harvard FDI Moot Team, which consisted of Matthew Weybrecht ’16, Zain Jinnah ’16, Paige von Mehren ’17, Danielle Young ’17, and the two team co-captains, Amanda Tuninetti ’16 and Anusha Pamula ’16, advanced to the quarterfinals of the oral competition rounds, finishing in fifth place overall.

The 2015 Harvard Law School Foreign Direct Investment International Arbitration Moot team, from L to R: Zain Jinnah ’16, Paige von Mehren ’17, Danielle Young ’17, Anusha Pamula ’16, and Amanda Tuninetti ’16. Not pictured: Matthew Weybrecht ’16.

For the second year in a row, the HLS team won the Oxford University Press Prize for the Best Respondent Memorial, which will be published in the Oxford University Press “Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy.”

In total, 51 teams took part in the oral argument rounds in London, after qualifying in the competition’s various regional rounds. This is the fourth year that Harvard Law School has participated in the competition.

The team was coached by Jessica Beess und Chrostin ’13, who founded the team in 2012 and practices international arbitration at King & Spalding, and Ana Vohryzek, a former international arbitration associate at King & Spalding.

The FDI International Arbitration Moot Competition spans approximately six months over two phases: written memorials for the claimant company and the respondent state, followed by hearing of oral arguments before panels of judges, who are leading practitioners and academics in the field.

This year’s problem raised complex jurisdictional questions relating to the validity of bilateral investment treaties between EU member states, and issues involving the long-term security of feed-in tariffs designed to encourage renewable energy investments.

“Investor-state dispute settlement has been getting a lot of media attention recently, due to its inclusion in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the possibility of its inclusion in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership,” said Amanda Tuninetti ’16. “It’s a growing and exciting area of practice, and we would love to see more international arbitration in the HLS curriculum.”

The competition provides students an opportunity to experience briefing and mooting a hypothetical investor-state arbitration, developing legal strategy and even calculating damages.

“For me, the most fascinating part of oral argument was responding to questions from judges from different jurisdictions,” said Danielle Young ’17. “Some wanted textual arguments from the treaty. Some wanted arguments rooted in EU law. Others wanted arguments about broader policy implications. It was great to start learning how to be a persuasive advocate for a real range of judges.”

Young and von Mehren will lead the team next year. The 2016 competition will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, hosted by the University of Buenos Aires.

Yochai Benkler on whistleblowers, the news ecosystem and self-organizing in the commons

Credit: Jessica Scranton

The Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Yochai Benkler ’94 has written extensively on the “networked public sphere,” including his influential book, “The Wealth of Networks.” He spoke about his proposal for a defense of whistleblowers, his testimony in a trial of a well-known leaker of military documents, and a problem he calls a growing crisis in the country.

You’ve argued that Edward Snowden should be granted immunity. Why should we offer this protection to someone who revealed classified information related to national security?

One of the things that needs to be understood is that whistleblowers provide a critical checking function on the organizational dynamics of the national security system, which systematically and repeatedly makes mistakes. The basic point is not about free speech, not about public exchange, it’s about the fact that we have seen a significant spike in the number of national security prosecutions after 9/11 whose only equivalent was the period of the early ’70s at the height of the Vietnam War. What becomes very clear is that the two periods that really show spikes are periods where the panic response within the national security system led to actions that in hindsight seemed deeply wrong. The warrantless wiretapping program is a very clear example. The national security system, because of its secrecy, because of the extremity of circumstances and the potential consequences of failures, is more susceptible to these self-reinforcing error dynamics. What national security leakers do is to provide a moral compass that is sufficiently different from that of the organization. Under extreme conditions, when the organization goes really wrong, they’re like a pressure valve.

How would a public accountability defense, which you’ve proposed for national security leakers and whistleblowers, work?

It doesn’t mean a get out of jail free card, no matter what. It doesn’t mean that you don’t want to assure that there’s some significant level of risk associated with becoming a whistleblower, because obviously many times there is a legitimate reason for secrecy. The purpose of the defense is if in retrospect you look back at the revelations and you say, “You know what, the system really did go off-kilter, we really need to reform fundamentally,” then the whistle-blower can appeal to that defense and say, “I was right. Enough people in the world believe that the system has gone wrong. I shouldn’t be made to suffer the consequences when the real problem was the system not me.” In Snowden’s case, there are so many public sources of affirmation that the error was in the way the national security establishment interpreted its powers and extended its reach that the man who risked so much to correct that error should receive the benefit of such a defense. It would be a general defense in criminal law with sufficiently constrained requirements for assuring the reasonableness of the disclosure and the unreasonableness of the practice disclosed.

What did you learn from your experience testifying at Chelsea Manning’s trial as an expert witness on the issue of WikiLeaks?

I think Chelsea Manning got a very raw deal. I have no question based on the materials I saw in the trial that Manning’s motivation was very much to expose some unacceptable practices, most importantly cooperation with Iraqi authorities that killed and tortured opponents. But I also think it was clear how overwhelmingly difficult it is for a defendant in one of the cases to operate, because the prosecution through selective declassification and classification held all the cards about what evidence is or isn’t available for the defense, showing just enough to incriminate but not enough alternative materials. It was extremely difficult and time-consuming for the defense. The core problem in the case was the breathtaking overreach of the prosecution, to charge Manning with aiding the enemy. The theory of aiding the enemy would have essentially said that anyone who gives a news outlet secret information is aiding the enemy because the enemy can read the news outlet. That was the fundamental theory of the case. It basically means that any disclosure of national security materials to the press with the intent of being published is a death penalty offense. That was an overreach intended to terrorize whistleblowers.

How did growing up in Israel shape your personal perspective on these issues of national security?

Certainly as someone who was a soldier, I think those of us who have actually experienced the inside of one of these national security organizations understand that they’re all too human. This is not about evil people who want to take over the republic. This is about well-intentioned people living in a system that by its design, by its practice, by the complexity of the problems it has to deal with, makes mistakes all the time. And if you want to talk about the personal sense of it, it’s the sense of having been a soldier and seeing smart people and stupid people, brave people and cowardly people, successful people and unsuccessful people, just like there are in any other organization. It’s not fundamentally different from a university or a company or any other government agency. It’s a human system like any other, deeply imperfect and with the best of intentions needing consistent correction.

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Credit: Jessica Scranton

Technology has not determined and will not determine the level of inequality in society. What has always mattered, what will continue to matter, are the political choices we make about the institutions we live with, about the organizational strategies we use. We need to push harder on the political choices, the institutional choices, the social and cultural and personal choices people make to make sure that we don’t spend the next 40 years with an equally continuous line of the top 0.1 percent capturing more and more of the total share of income, and the majority of people stagnating and hoping for a better day.

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You’re involved with the Media Cloud Project, which examines the emerging news ecosystem. What do you hope to accomplish with the project?

What we’ve trying to do with Media Cloud is to build instruments that allow us to study empirically what’s going on on the Net. There is a real possibility of decentralized network mobilization, even in the teeth of highly concentrated well-funded interests on the other side. Certainly one of the biggest threats to my mind to American democracy is the outsized and continuously strengthening power of money to shape our country. So to find that there is a mechanism for people to come together and overcome major moneyed interests on areas of significant strategic importance like intellectual property regulation or net neutrality regulation is very optimistic. At the same time I think our findings suggest that this success is far from assured. There’s no perfect technology of democracy where we suddenly see people of good intentions coming together and winning against some evil other side. It does not replace on-the-ground social organization. It’s neither utopia not dystopia. But what I’m very happy about with what our research is doing is that we are building a platform that is already available to researchers to give an evidenced-based handle on how these debates unfold, who is influencing them, with what sort of tactics, in a way that allows for quantitative and qualitative research.

Your book “The Wealth of Networks” talked about how the Internet changed society. What developments are most notable since the publication of the book in 2006?

The core claim I made there was that the openness of the Internet enabled a series of commons-based social and economic practices that diffused power in society and allowed a much larger number and more diverse set of people to participate in the production of culture, in the production of economic and information goods, and in the participation in democracy. The question remained open whether we would see the Internet open or whether it would close up. There are three primary challenges that are new since 2006. One has to do with the adoption of the hand-held—essentially the smart phone and the tablet. We’ve seen a series of technical and market-adoption patterns that make the core information infrastructure more controllable by someone. These are making network communications more centralized, more readily available for control and less decentralized. It’s a new set of battles that’s different from the set of battles we had to fight 10, 15 years ago, which were more about copyright and telcos and 20^th century companies trying to tame the Internet, and this is really more about 21^st century companies trying to take control. The second major change is the catch-up of the state. The state used to be slow, bumbling and coming from behind. I’d say the state, the U.S. particularly in national security, Russia, China, to some extent some of the European countries, is now playing at a level of insight, control and understanding of the way power is at stake in a way that wasn’t there 15 years ago. So there’s a much bigger sense of state control over what was before a much more common-based decentralized platform. Essentially the state took 15 years to get wise to this Internet thing but is now a major player with its own interests, and these are not always aligned with open democracy. And the last of the three is the integration of the data algorithms and the surveillance by companies to create evermore refined platforms that are able to observe people’s behavior and then roll these observations back into the platform. Essentially we see platforms capable of shaping people’s knowledge and choices more than was ever feasible before. With the risk of exactly the inverse of what I was hoping for 10 years ago when I talked about the increasing possibility of autonomy. In fact, now we’re seeing the increasing undermining of autonomy.

You spoke about the “commons,” this idea of communities of people sharing resources, including digital resources. What’s the status of the commons today?

The idea of people self-organizing in the commons is enormously powerful and in many senses has shaped practices for millions of people, trying to build for themselves communities that are free of the pressures of the market, free of the pressures of the state, self-governing, creating the potential for a mode of production in which people engage and cooperate and build things like newspapers, software, video, you name it. The challenge that commons-based peer production faces today is how to move from a stable, growing but still peripheral part of much of the economy into a genuinely alternative model of sustained living for ideally many millions of people. The idea of the commons has offered both a framework for thinking about how a well-governed shared resource like the Earth we live on can be managed in a sustainable way without being caught in the continuous growth model that necessarily puts pressure on the global system as a whole, and on the other hand it has provided a framework for thinking about how people can self-organize under conditions of fair sharing, of burdens and benefits, in a way that is not utopia but actually describes the lives of people actually producing stuff like software or an encyclopedia. But there are limits. We haven’t seen in a substantial way a translation to people also being able to make a living. I think that’s one of the most interesting challenges to look at today.

Understanding the relationship between the technological transformation of the last 40 years and the massive uptick in economic inequality. I think it’s a real crisis, the inequality problem. A lot of my emphasis now is trying to parse the arguments about how technology either has been a cause of inequality or that robots in the future will cause the elimination of work for most people except the most highly educated. Technology has not determined and will not determine the level of inequality in society. What has always mattered, what will continue to matter, are the political choices we make about the institutions we live with, about the organizational strategies we use. We need to push harder on the political choices, the institutional choices, the social and cultural and personal choices people make to make sure that we don’t spend the next 40 years with an equally continuous line of the top 0.1 percent capturing more and more of the total share of income, and the majority of people stagnating and hoping for a better day.

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Agreeing to disagree: Supreme Court Justice Breyer says rulings are strong but discourse thoughtful

Credit: Jon Chase/Harvard Staff PhotographerAssociate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer makes a point while discussing law and policy, as Harvard Law School Senior Lecturer on Law Nancy Gertner looks on.

From the outside, it can look like life on the U.S. Supreme Court is little more than a succession of sour exchanges between ideological gladiators, a grind that’s more intellectual food fight than dispassionate debate.

But for all of the tough talk and purple prose that can find its way into the court’s most closely watched 5-4 decisions, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer ’64, says don’t mistake the rhetoric of political disagreement with personal animosity. This is not an angry bunch who can’t see straight enough to understand the arguments on both sides of an issue.

“I’ve never heard one judge in that room say something really mean, even in a joking way, about another. It doesn’t happen. It’s professional,” Breyer told students during a talk at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) last Friday where he touched on landmark cases like Citizens United, the death penalty, and judicial sentencing reform. It’s only natural, he said, given the court’s complicated task interpreting the “borders” of important but frequently opaque areas of the Constitution like the First or 14th Amendments. “Of course, there are disagreements. Why shouldn’t there be disagreements?”

Where court observers like to point to the dramatic, felicitous language of a Justice Antonin Scalia opinion, for example, as proof of smoldering hostilities on the bench, Breyer waved away that notion, saying Scalia just has a writer’s irresistible love for a good turn of phrase. “We all know that. We don’t mind. … That’s not a good reason to get angry at somebody personally if you’re sitting in my seat,” he said.

A former professor at both HKS and Harvard Law School between 1967 and 1994 before his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Breyer was at Harvard to discuss his new book, “The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities,” with David Gergen, public service professor of public leadership and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at HKS, and Nancy Gertner, a former U.S. District Court judge in Massachusetts and now a senior lecturer at HLS.

Breyer’s book examines how U.S. courts should respond to the new reality of interdependence that globalization has ushered into areas previously thought to be immune, like the law. He encourages judges to become more attuned to legal thinking outside the country and to be more considerate both of the implications of American legal decisions on foreign nations in areas like national security and trade, and of how such international experiences might inform better American legal decisions.

Discussing his disagreement with Justice Clarence Thomas over whether it is appropriate for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider and cite decisions made by courts outside this country, Breyer said he understands Thomas’ view that measuring the United States against the standards of other nations ultimately undermines our sovereignty. “He sees this as protecting certain American values.”

But unlike Europe, which has much more homogenous roots that can withstand a more narrowly tailored legal view, this “experiment” known as American democracy is best protected by drawing from a far wider scope of ideas, Breyer argued.

“We are a very motley group of people, everybody under the sun,” he said. “The whole point of this thing is to say, ‘Please go look at what concretely this interdependence has meant for our institution and now make a decision: Tell me, isn’t it true, and I hope the answer would be yes, that … we are more likely to succeed and to continue to succeed with our experiment by paying a lot of attention — not just a little — to what goes on beyond our shores.’”

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Harvard Law Review releases Supreme Court issue

Credit: Brooks Kraft

The Harvard Law Review today published its annual Supreme Court issue, featuring discussion and analysis of the Court’s 2014–15 Term. Following a tradition dating back over a half century, the issue provides a definitive look at the state of constitutional law.

In the annual Supreme Court Foreword, Does the Constitution Mean What it Says?, University of Chicago Law Professor David Strauss ’78 demonstrates how constitutional law develops in a common law manner largely removed from the constitutional text. The issue also features faculty commentary on three major cases from the past Term: Yale Law School Professor Abbe Gluck demonstrates how the latest Obamacare case might mark a new era in statutory interpretation, Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith shows how the Court provided the executive branch with powerful arguments to deploy in future standoffs with Congress, and New York University Law Professor Kenji Yoshino situates the historic gay marriage decision in the context of the Court’s earlier jurisprudence.

The issue also contains student-authored analysis of twenty cases from the past Term and statistical analysis of the Court’s docket.

“The Harvard Law Review’s thorough and well-informed treatment of the recent term of the U.S. Supreme Court is especially welcome and important given the significance and complexity of the recent Court decisions,” said Martha Minow, Harvard Law School’s Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law.

“The Supreme Court issue engages with some of the most pressing issues in American law,” said Law Review President Jonathan Gould ’16.  “This was a banner year at the Court, and we are proud to feature analysis of its work.  In tackling the topics of statutory interpretation, executive power, and fundamental rights, the issue is one example of the relevance of legal scholarship in the modern era.”

The Law Review, founded in 1887 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, LL.B. 1887, is an entirely student-edited journal with the largest circulation of any law journal in the world.  It is published monthly from November through June.

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HLS faculty submit friends of court briefs to U.S. Supreme Court

As the U.S. Supreme Court term has gotten underway, several Harvard Law School faculty have submitted amicus briefs in upcoming cases involving the criminal sentencing of juveniles, congressional redistricting, and affirmative action in college admissions.

Credit: Martha Stewart Professor Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. ’78.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr. ’78, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, submitted a brief in Montgomery v. State of Louisiana. That case examines whether a 2012 ban on mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles can be retroactive.

In the amicus brief, which supported neither side, Ogletree, urged that the high court to use the case to ban all juvenile sentences of life without parole. “There is now a robust consensus against the use of juvenile life without parole. Most states have abandoned the sanction in law or practice, and the jurisdictions that continue to use it appear to be doing so less frequently,” the brief argues.

Credit: Ethan Thomas Clinical Professor Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr. ’94

Ogletree was joined in the brief by Ronald Sullivan Jr. ’94, clinical professor of law and director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School.

Charles Fried, Beneficial Professor of Law and former U.S. Solicitor General, co-authored an amicus brief with Mark Posner, a former DOJ official, in the case Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Credit: John Rich Professor Charles Fried

In conjunction with the Campaign Legal Center, they wrote on behalf of former Justice Department attorneys in support of the Commission and its redistricting plan, arguing that the state commission was fully justified in drawing districts, with minor population deviations, that complied with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. They argue that “if this Court were to hold that compliance with Section 5 was not a rational or legitimate consideration, over a thousand redistricting plans would be open to legal challenges, creating massive instability in the political process in states throughout the nation.”

An amicus brief has been filed on behalf of Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Yale Law School Dean Robert Post in Fisher v. University of Texas, the affirmative action case. At issue in Fisher is whether the University of Texas can lawfully consider an applicant’s race in its admissions process. (The views of Minow and Post are offered as friends of the court, in their personal capacities, and not as the views of their respective law schools.)

Credit: Justin IdeDean Martha Minow

Minow and Post argue: “Were this Court altogether to preclude considerations of race from the admissions process, each school would also be disadvantaged in its efforts to select individuals who will produce the most effective classroom experience for all admitted students. A diverse educational experience is essential to training students to succeed in the opportunities and challenges that lawyers must now inevitably confront.”

They further argue, “race cannot be excluded as relevant to the effort to obtain a full appreciation of an applicant’s perspectives, accomplishments, and leadership potential. It is neither feasible nor desirable to ignore race in the evaluation of an applicant’s file. To do so would be inconsistent with the aspiration to have a holistic, individualized assessment. It would be as arbitrary and misleading as ignoring an applicant’s college major or the quality of an applicant’s undergraduate training or whether English is an applicant’s first language. Careful, respectful, individualized consideration is therefore necessary to select the best students who together will create the most effective educational environment.”

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Harvard Gazette: An inside view from Powell, complete with regrets

Former secretary of state recalls details of diplomacy in talk at HLS

Credit: Martha Stewart

In a visit to Harvard Law School, retired four-star general and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell shared lessons from his service as a close adviser to three presidents, tips on negotiating with difficult foreign leaders, and his thoughts on strengthening support for families and children in the United States.

Powell on Friday took part in the American Secretaries of State Program developed jointly by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School. Law School Dean Martha Minow introduced the afternoon session, which was moderated by HLS Professor Robert H. Mnookin, HBS Professor James Sebenius, and HKS Professor Nicholas Burns.

Powell served as national security adviser to Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989. From 1989 through 1993 he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, first for President George H.W. Bush, and then for President Bill Clinton. He was President George W. Bush’s secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.

Credit: Martha Stewart

During the two-hour discussion Powell expanded on some of his 13 rules for great leadership, maxims such as “It can be done” and “It ain’t as bad as it looks, it will look better in the morning.” Sometimes, he confessed, it actually doesn’t look better in the morning. But the point is to stay positive. “You have to keep your team up.”

Among the most personal of his rules: “Be kind, be calm.”

“I have a horrible temper,” said Powell, who was born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrants, and grew up in the South Bronx.

A cool head is crucial when negotiating, which Powell called an “intensely human experience.” Careful listening and respecting the views of others are equally important.

“I found in negotiations, always get yourself partially on the side of the other person, understand what they need. Always show respect. … No country is unimportant, no person is unimportant, and I think that’s the way you go into a negotiation.”

The moderators didn’t shy away from Powell’s most difficult chapter as secretary of state, pressing him about his role in making the case for the invasion of Iraq. On Feb. 5, 2003, Powell appeared before the United Nations Security Council with a clear message: Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and the potential to produce more. The United States had to act.

Powell recalled that President Bush asked him on a Thursday to address the U.N. the following Tuesday. After reviewing an early draft of the intelligence-based presentation, he knew he needed more time.

Credit: Martha Stewart

“It was awful,” Powell said. “It was badly done, and it was only years later that I discovered that it was not done by the National Security Council, it was done by the vice president’s office.”

But the date was set, and Powell spent the next several days with his team and officials from the Central Intelligence Agency verifying the information. He told them: “Nothing goes in there that you can’t verify with multiple sources, nothing that’s wild that you can’t verify.”

Not long after his U.N. appearance, the intelligence began to unravel.

“By the summer, nothing was found, and evidence emerged that a lot of the information was incorrect.”

Though Powell reminded listeners at HLS that 376 members of Congress had voted for the war months before his briefing — “based on that same intelligence estimate” — he admitted that his presentation was a mistake and said he wished he had trusted his instincts.

“I regret it. I will always regret it. It was a terrible mistake on all our parts and on the intelligence community … I wish it had been different, I wish I had more time. Maybe if I had another week or two my instincts would have seen through this or been able to do double-checking, but I didn’t have more time. But I’m not looking for an excuse. I gave that presentation. I gave it believing that everything I had said had been double-sourced, triple-sourced, and was accurate, but it was not.”

Powell touched on U.S.-China relations, describing his efforts to secure the release of 24 servicemen after their surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet in 2001 off the coast of China.

After hammering out a deal, Powell received another missive from Chinese officials negating everything to which the United States had agreed. It was a pivotal moment, he said, and underscored an important negotiating rule: High-level talks often involve myriad stakeholders, and occasionally, you have to ignore some of them.

Powell realized a branch of the Chinese government had sent the second letter out of “bureaucratic necessity. [They] had to be on record demanding something else, and we just simply pretended we never got it, and we accepted the deal we liked.”

Those talks also led to phone calls at home. In an effort to foster better ties, Powell had offered up his home phone number and urged his Chinese counterparts to call any time. And they did.

“They tested it every now and again,” sometimes with humorous results, Powell said, such as when the Chinese foreign minister rang him on a Saturday morning only to be interrupted by Powell’s two Yorkshire terriers barking at the FedEx deliveryman.

In addressing tensions with Russia, Powell encouraged current U.S. negotiators to remember that the world’s largest nation has long been wary of foreign encroachment, and to consider a more diplomatic approach when dealing with President Vladimir Putin.

“I’ve got no illusions about this guy, trust me; I know him, KGB through and through,” said Powell. “What he is doing now is terrible. But at the same time, I know you will never be able to deal with him effectively if you try to demonize him all the time.”

Shifting from his experience as a military leader and statesman, Powell described his work with youth as “the passion of my life.” He founded America’s Promise, a foundation dedicated to providing young people with the resources they need to succeed, in 1997. The organization has built partnerships with more than 380 organizations, including businesses and nonprofits.

“I want young people to have the same kind of structure in their lives that I had in mine,” said Powell who praised the public school system for his education, and credited his mother and father with giving him a supportive home and high expectations.

“We didn’t come to this country on banana boats so you could stick something in your nose or drop out of something,” he was told by his parents, Powell recalled. “Don’t ever even think about it. Because if you ever come home and tell us you dropped out of high school, we are going to get rid of you and get some other kid.”

WCC evolves from a sustainable space into a high-performing, energy efficient facility

When you speak with John Holleran, the assistant director of Facilities Management for Harvard Law School, about what goes on behind the scenes at the Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing building (WCC) on the school’s campus, he says the goal is to run the building as efficiently as possible while improving comfort for occupants. The recent installation of 312 solar panels atop the building is just the most recent step toward that end.

Credit: Lorin GrangerThe recent installation of solar panels atop the Harvard Law’s WCC building is the latest step toward optimal operation of the structure, completed in 2011.

Built in 2011, the WCC gained LEED Gold certification for green features ranging from rainwater re-use to high-performance, operable windows. Since occupancy, Holleran and his colleagues have been hard at work installing new technologies, tweaking existing systems, and evaluating, identifying, and implementing additional energy conservation measures that are driving deeper savings in energy use and utility costs. They have diligently ensured that the building operates optimally, while pursuing upgrades that help HLS meet Harvard’s aggressive sustainability goals, including the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016.

“Our goal is to evolve what was already a sustainable space into a high-performing, energy efficient facility that saves money, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and creates a healthy and productive environment for students, faculty, and staff to excel,” said Holleran “In a way, our job was just beginning when ribbon cutting was held and the occupants moved in.”

The 97.6 kW solar installation on the roof of Wasserstein Hall is the first renewable project for the Law School. The ballasted system uses weight to hold down the hundreds of PV panels, instead of attaching them directly to the roof. This ensures that the waterproofing of the existing, original roof structure will not be compromised.

Credit: Lorin GrangerEnthalpy wheels, which are seven and a half feet in diameter, are utilized in the ventilation system of the WCC in order to capture and reuse wasted heat and cooling to condition the interior spaces.

Harvard University has installed more than one megawatt of solar capacity on campus, including projects at the Athletics complex, the Harvard Business School, the Harvard Divinity School, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The amount of electricity use that the renewable energy system will offset, 114,000 kWh, is equal to the total annual consumption of Dane Hall, a residence hall on campus. It is expected to deliver annual utility savings of $14,800 in electric cost savings, and an expected annual greenhouse gas reduction of 38 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Another important energy-saving change was to integrate the building automation system into the events scheduling software so that heating and cooling equipment runs only when rooms are occupied. After fully integrating the two systems, chilled water usage has decreased by 30 percent and overall utilities by 15 percent.

“For us, continuous commissioning is almost a daily task. We are constantly monitoring energy usage and making real-time decisions to lower our consumption and optimize efficiency,” said Holleran.

Credit: Lorin GrangerFans such as the one pictured here are used in conjunction with enthalpy wheels to take in outside air, or to exhaust air from inside the building.

Another cost-effective measure installed by the team is a Therma-Stor Heat Recovery System that recovers wasted energy from refrigeration systems across the building and uses it to heat water. This free hot water is used for a variety of purposes including, dishwashing, laundry, facilities work, and cleaning, and saves 64,184 kWh per year – equivalent to the annual electrical consumption of 1637 Massachusetts Avenue, an HLS apartment building.

Super-efficient LED lighting, low flow aerators in all restrooms and kitchens, an energy-efficient in-rack cooling system installed in the data center, and electric car charging stations in the below-grade parking area round out the list of additional improvements. The Harvard Campus Services Green Cleaning Program was implemented soon after occupancy, ensuring that only environmentally friendly, healthy non-toxic cleaning products are used throughout the building.

Credit: Lorin GrangerRooms known as “air handler sections” house the enthalpy wheels that help capture and reuse wasted heat and cooling and recirculate it throughout the building.

“As a Green Living Representative, it’s great to learn about the work being done behind-the-scenes to identify new technologies and maximize energy savings in our buildings,” said Gabrielle Hodgson, J.D. ’15. “I’m also grateful that the facilities team has prioritized creating a comfortable, healthy space for the community to learn and work.”

Credit: Lorin GrangerThe Harvard Law School Facilities Management Team works hard to maintain a learning and working environment that is comfortable, safe, and enjoyable.

The WCC’s original sustainability features included a rainwater capture system that uses runoff water for landscape irrigation, a mechanical system that adjusts to outdoor air conditions and uses 30 percent more outdoor fresh air than industry standard, and lighting occupancy sensors that reduce electricity use in unoccupied offices and classrooms. Enthalpy wheels, which are seven and a half feet in diameter, are utilized in the ventilation system in order to capture and reuse wasted heat and cooling to condition the interior spaces. High performance exterior windows were also installed to minimize solar heat gain and energy use.

In addition to the WCC, the Law School has six other LEED certified buildings and spaces including Hauser Basement and the second floor of Griswold, both LEED Platinum, North Hall, Gannet House, all LEED Gold, and the second floor of 125 Mt. Auburn St, LEED Silver. The renovation of Pound Hall is on track for LEED Gold certification.

***

Gannett House: Everything old is new again

The oldest building on Harvard Law School’s campus underwent a major transformation in 2013. Gannett House, the porticoed Greek Revival structure that has housed the Harvard Law Review since the 1920s, has been brought into the 21st century. Beginning in December 2012, construction crews gutted and redesigned the building’s interior to accommodate an elevator, central air and heating systems, a reconfigured electrical system, and redesigned office space on the first and second floors. The building also now has a new roof and new windows. Read more

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Gift from Mitch and Joleen Julis and Family will establish the Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School

Mitchell R. Julis JD/MBA ’81

Investment executive and private investor Mitchell R. Julis has made a gift to Harvard Law School to establish the Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law. Julis received a joint JD/MBA degree from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, in 1981. The program is named in honor of his father and mother, Maurice Ralph Julis and Thelma Rabinowitz Julis, and their families.

Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at HLS and one of the nation’s leading public intellectuals, will serve as the program’s inaugural director.

Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor at Harvard Law School, said: “Throughout history, Jewish law has made profound contributions to legal thought and practice, and it remains vibrant and relevant around the world. Through their extraordinary generosity, the Julis Family has created significant new opportunities for our community to explore this living legal tradition as well as the laws and legal discourse of a nation, which shares the same roots and many new branches. This program will model the standards of excellence, vibrant intellectual debate, and rigorous analysis that are the hallmark of the Law School while affording terrific new opportunities for our community and beyond. We are tremendously grateful.”

In explaining the family gift, Julis said: “My parents, grandparents and relatives made sure that the rich heritage of Judaism, including its values and history, and the importance of Israel, both to the Jewish People and the world, were consistent parts of our spiritual and intellectual growth. This gift to Harvard Law School is in deep gratitude and love for the gift of heritage our families gave us and which we have strived to give to our children. In addition, my career as an investment professional benefitted greatly from my time at Harvard Law School and the wisdom and mentorship of the late Professor Vern Countryman (a specialist in commercial law, bankruptcy law and reform, secured transactions law, and civil liberties). Finally, under Dean Minow’s inspiring leadership, Joleen and I know that Harvard Law School is an ideal place for a full and open and civil discussion of the multiple views and issues in Jewish and Israeli law, and our family is privileged to support the scholars and students who will build on this knowledge going forward.”

The mission of this interdisciplinary research program will be to explore the structure and real-world effects of Jewish and Israeli law. The program will appoint visiting scholars and post-doctoral fellows; conduct courses and reading groups for students with advanced knowledge of traditional Jewish legal texts; develop opportunities to enhance communications, gatherings and information sharing on the Law School campus and beyond; host an annual conference; and organize lectures at Harvard and in the broader Boston and Cambridge communities on topics related to the impact and study of Jewish law in Israel, in the United States, and across the world.

Feldman, a scholar specializing in constitutional studies, has extensively studied

Credit: Nina Subin Professor Noah Feldman.

and written about the relationship between law and religion in Islam, Judaism, and U.S. law. He speaks Hebrew and Arabic and earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees in Near Eastern studies. Feldman joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 2006, is the author of seven books on law and policy, and writes a column for Bloomberg View. Over the past several years, he has joined other members of the Law School and University faculty and visiting scholars in offering courses on advanced Jewish legal topics, including “Custom and Legal Authority” and “The Other and the Enemy in Jewish Law.” These courses bring together students from the Law School and many other Harvard graduate programs to deepen the academic study of Jewish law.

“Jewish law and Israeli law are distinct and different, yet they also interact and make claims on each other. It makes sense to study them both in the same program, even as we study them independently,” said Feldman. “The support of Mitch and Joleen Julis and their family for this important work is a marker of foresight in encouraging deeper scholarly understanding of crucial topics in the Jewish past and present. With the resources of the program, we hope over time to make Harvard Law School into a national and international leader in the study and analysis of Jewish and Israeli law from a broad array of scholarly perspectives. The generous gift gives us a broad ambit to bring in a wide range of voices to explore these fascinating and rich topics from all sides.”

Harvard Law School Launches the Campaign for the Third Century

Credit: Martha Stewart Campaign Co-Chair James A. Attwood, Jr. JD/MBA ’84, Dean Martha Minow, Campaign Co-Chair Morgan Chu ’76, and Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust gather at the Gala to launch the Campaign for the Third Century.

With a nod to its historic past and a look ahead to its future, Harvard Law School has formally launched the Campaign for the Third Century, which seeks to raise $305 million in support of students and faculty, clinical education, new and innovative research, and the continued enhancement of the Law School campus. The Campaign, which will coincide with the Law School’s upcoming Bicentennial in 2017, is part of Harvard University’s $6.5 billion campaign, which will run until 2018.

Credit: Martha Stewart Dean Martha Minow speaking at the Gala to launch the Campaign for the Third Century: “Harvard Law School will play a vital role in changing how we teach, learn and lead, imagining and realizing solutions to the hardest problems. With your help, Harvard Law School is ready.”

On Friday, October 23, as more than 600 alumni and guests gathered on campus for the Law School’s Fall Reunion Weekend, they joined Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, Dean Martha Minow, donors, faculty members, and other distinguished guests at a Gala Celebration to mark the official launch of the Campaign.

“We need the Law School and the extraordinary leaders it creates,” said Faust. “We need the clarity it brings to confusing and divisive times. We need its capacity to civilize, and lawyers wise in their calling. Tonight, we launch the Campaign for Harvard Law School because we know what it can do. We know what it must do, for a new generation. Never has the challenge felt more urgent.”

Minow reminded Campaign guests that Harvard Law School — a “start-up” in 1817 — has a long tradition of innovation, memorable teaching, public service, outstanding scholarship, and the recruitment of exceptional students, but must always continue to ask hard questions.

Credit: Martha Stewart Author and award-winning legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin ’86 served as Master of Ceremonies for the evening.

Lawyers “find ways to accommodate competing interests and to resolve conflicts,” Minow said. “We repair the boat of the law at sea, and even find ways to design a new ship while already on the voyage. That agility of mind and enterprising spirit inform the legal education we offer here,” she noted. “We recruit, educate and guide the next generation of leaders — for this country and for the world. Harvard Law School will play a vital role in changing how we teach, learn, and lead, imagining and realizing solutions to the hardest problems. With your help, Harvard Law School is ready.”

The Campaign will enable the Law School to expand student financial aid (80 percent of HLS students receive assistance) and support for graduates working in the public sector. It will provide even greater opportunities for clinical education, including new clinical professorships. It will also enhance efforts to recruit and support professors of practice with highly valued experience as practitioners, and tenured professors in a broad range of fields. Additional priorities include more support for the Law School’s innovative research programs, and continuing enhancements to the campus and the student experience.

Credit: Martha Stewart Bianca Tylek ’16 describes her path to Harvard Law School and her passionate interest in corrections reform at the Gala to launch the Campaign for the Third Century.

During the program, author and award-winning legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin ’86 introduced members of the HLS community who spoke about the Harvard Law School experience past, present and future. Bianca Tylek ’16, a current student, shared the deeply moving story of her path to the Law School, where she has been able to explore her passionate interest in corrections reform, and expressed her gratitude for the guidance she received from a dedicated advisor and the scholarship funds that made it possible for her to study at HLS. Next, Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95, whose love for all things digital “clicked” during his days as a law student, discussed how these interests have deepened in his teaching and his work with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the Law School Library.

John Jay Osborn, Jr. ’70 and his daughter Meredith Osborn ’06 captivated Campaign guests as they reflected on three very different Harvard Law Schools — his, hers, and the fictional one dominated by Professor Charles Kingsfield in Mr. Osborn’s iconic novel, The Paper Chase.  In the late 1960s, with student strikes and sit-ins, “the University as a whole was in turmoil,” John Osborn recalled. “The students in the Law School began, for the first time, to ask some basic questions.  In doing that, we started an evolution that led from my law school to yours.”  He shared fond memories of professors who influenced his own law teaching, and others who introduced new kinds of teaching for the generation that followed. Then Meredith asked her father why he set The Paper Chase, which is essentially a love story, at Harvard Law School.  “Think about it! It’s a romantic place,” he insisted. “The Treasure Room! The Red Set! The first light snowfall on the lawn in front of Langdell, at twilight. And those tall windows set between those columns and the light shining out on that snow. Harvard Law School is full of romance!”

Credit: Martha StewartJohn Jay Osborn, Jr. ’70 and his daughter Meredith Osborn ’06 reflected on three very different experiences at the Law School ­— his, hers, and the fictional one dominated by Professor Charles Kingsfield in Mr. Osborn’s iconic novel, The Paper Chase.

Meredith Osborn, currently an Assistant U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, noted that her own experiences, three decades later, were equally exciting, with a strong law firm job market and inspiring teachers who became great friends. “For students who came with a mission to change the world, it was pretty exciting too,” she added. “HLS gave us the tools to start making change while we were at the Law School, and after law school we felt that we had the support to actually begin to live our ideals.”

The evolution that John Osborn described is ongoing.  The student experience of today is marked by collaboration among students and also between students and faculty, and emphasizes team-based problem-solving, innovation, and hands-on clinical work. Today, faculty and students work together in myriad ways – for example, teaching copyright in an online course for the world, or devising practical solutions to social problems through a new  course on systemic justice, or helping local families avoid foreclosure and eviction from their homes.

Said James A. Attwood, Jr. JD/MBA ’84, who serves with Morgan Chu ’76 and Adebayo Ogunlesi JD/MBA ’79 as a co-chair of the Campaign: “Your response during the silent phase of this Campaign has been tremendous. Our goal for the Campaign for the Third Century is $305 million. To date, through your generosity and engagement, we have raised $241 million dollars, or 79% of our goal.” Attwood also reminded alumni of the ongoing importance of the HLS Annual Fund and other unrestricted giving, noting that these gifts provide Dean Minow with flexibility to meet pressing needs and seize new opportunities.

Minow offered special thanks to a number of key donors whose support enabled the Campaign to get off to a flying start: Jim Attwood and Leslie Williams ‘84; Lloyd Blankfein ’78 and Laura Blankfein; Morgan Chu and Helen Chu; William T. Coleman, Jr. ’43 and Lovida Coleman; Dan A. Emmett ’64; Steven Klinsky ’81 and Maureen Klinsky; and Sumner Redstone ’47.

The Dean then announced that Michael R. Klein LL.M. ’67 had made the largest gift to this new Campaign to date:  $15 million to support the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “This gift ensures that Harvard Law School will remain at the forefront of problem-solving as we confront and take advantage of the global and digital future,” Minow said. The Center will be known as the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Credit: Martha Stewart Jonathan Zittrain ’95, co-founder, director and faculty chair of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, reflected on his experiences as an HLS student and professor.

Earlier in the day, five HLS faculty members shared their innovative research at “HLS Thinks Big,” a panel discussion moderated by Minow. The panelists included Randall L. Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law, on “From Protest to Law: Triumphs and Defeats of the Civil Rights Revolution”; Mark J. Roe ’75, David Berg Professor of Law, on “Short-termism in Financial Markets:  How Real, How Serious?”; Annette Gordon-Reed ’84, Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and Professor of History, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, on “Defending Black Citizenship”; Susan Crawford, John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law, on “Large as Life” (musings on the post-fiber digital world); and I. Glenn Cohen ’03, Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics, on “Health Law and Medical Ethics in a Globalized World.”

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