Why That Study Of Teenagers In Hawaii Does Not Show Vaping Causes Smoking

Smoking among American teenagers has continued to decline, reaching the lowest rate on record last year, as more and more of them experiment with vaping. These opposite trends seem inconsistent with warnings that the rising popularity of e-cigarettes will encourage consumption of the real thing. Still, it’s possible that the [...]

Crimp Wasteful Federal Spending With This Constitutional Amendment

An amendment to limit bills in Congress to just one subject wouldn't be a panacea for our ills, but it would help curtail covert legislative deals that inflate the cost of government.

Berkman Center releases tool to combat ‘link rot’

This week, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University announced the release of Amber, a free software tool for websites and blogs that preserves content and prevents broken links. When installed on a blog or website, Amber can take a snapshot of the content of every linked page, ensuring that even if those pages are interfered with or blocked, the original content will be available.

“The Web’s decentralization is one of its strongest features,” said Jonathan Zittrain, Faculty Chair of the Berkman Center and George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. “But it also means that attempting to follow a link might not work for any number of reasons. Amber harnesses the distributed resources of the Web to safeguard it. By allowing a form of mutual assistance among Web sites, we can together ensure that information placed online can remain there, even amidst denial of service attacks or broad-based attempts at censorship.”

The release of Amber builds on an earlier proposal from Zittrain and Sir Tim Berners-Lee for a “mutual aid treaty for the Internet” that would enable operators of websites to easily bolster the robustness of the entire web. It also aims to mitigate risks associated with increasing centralization of online content. Increasingly fewer entities host information online, creating choke points that can restrict access to web content. Amber addresses this by enabling the storage of snapshots via multiple archiving services, such as the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine and Perma.cc.

Amber is useful for any organization or individual that has an interest in preserving the content to which their website links. In addition to news outlets, fact-checking organizations, journalists, researchers, and independent bloggers, human rights curators and political activists could also benefit from using Amber to preserve web links. The launch is the result of a multi-year research effort funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of State.

“We hope supporters of free expression may use Amber to rebroadcast web content in a manner that aids against targeted censorship of the original web source,” said Geneve Campbell, Amber’s technical project manager. “The more routes we provide to information, the more all people can freely share that information, even in the face of filtering or blockages.”

Amber is one of a suite of initiatives of the Berkman Center focused on preserving access to information. Other projects include Internet Monitor, which aims to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world; Lumen, an independent research project collecting and analyzing requests for removal of online content; and Herdict, a tool that collects and disseminates real-­time, crowdsourced information about Internet filtering, denial of service attacks, and other blockages. It also extends the mission of Perma.cc, a project of the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School Library. Perma.cc is a service that helps scholars, courts and others create web citation links that will never break.

Amber is now available for sites that run on WordPress.org or Drupal. Find out more and download the plugin at amberlink.org.

Could A 'Single-Subject' Amendment Put An End To 'Christmas Tree' Bills?

An amendment to limit bills in Congress to just one subject wouldn't be a panacea for our ills, but it would help curtail covert legislative deals that inflate the cost of government.

Ted Cruz Abandons Criminal Justice Reform On His Way To The White House

A year ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley condemned a sentencing reform bill backed by Ted Cruz as “lenient” and “dangerous.” Eight months later, it was Cruz’s turn. Explaining his opposition to a sentencing reform bill backed by Grassley, Cruz described it as dangerously lenient. When the Senate Judiciary Committee [...]

What The Teachers' Union Doesn't Want You To Know About Charter Schools

When it comes to an educational innovation that helps students, there is no justification to limit its growth for the sake of protecting politically-powerful unions.

Law School students help struggling small-time entrepreneurs flourish

Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff PhotographerAmanda Kool (red jacket) directs the Community Enterprise Project at Harvard Law School, where students like Matthew Diaz (from left), Carolyn Ruiz, and Steven Salcedo help small business owners, entrepreneurs, and community groups.

Hailing from Buffalo, a once-prosperous city in upstate New York, Steven Salcedo knew how a lack of continued economic development can hinder families and mire people in poverty and hopelessness.

But it was only after he took a course at Harvard Law School that Salcedo realized that lawyers could help foster better times for communities.

“Lawyers can’t make economic development happen by themselves,” said Salcedo. “But we can contribute to help solve poverty by enabling people to do what they want to do. We’re like a bridge; we take them from where they are to where they want to be.”

The class Salcedo took, “Community Enterprise Project of the Transactional Law Clinics,” allows HLS students to help small business owners, entrepreneurs, and community groups create businesses, obtain permits and licenses, and negotiate contracts and other transactional (non-litigation) services.

Other transactional law clinics offered at HLS deal with business and nonprofits, entertainment law, and real estate.

Amanda Kool, an HLS lecturer on law and clinical instructor, directs the Community Enterprise Project. Under her supervision, students work out of HLS’s Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain, dividing their time between assisting clients and partnering with community organizations on projects that address broader legal barriers to economic development in the community.

The course benefits both students who are interested in pursuing social-justice work and community members who need their services, said Kool. Since 2013, students have produced legal toolkits compiling laws and regulations that govern worker cooperatives, condominium associations, and food trucks, and staged legal workshops for military veterans who are starting small businesses and for entrepreneurs in the creative economy. Last October, they published a first-of-its-kind legal guidebook for immigrant entrepreneurs.

“A lot of the social ills that result in crimes tied to poverty could be cured through economic development,” said Kool. “Our work has a strong public purpose.”

By helping people who want to start small enterprises but lack the moneys to hire an attorney, students promote business development and job growth, said Kool. For many students, the fact that lawyers can help people overcome barriers to economic development comes as a something of a surprise.

That was the case for Matt Diaz, who registered in the course with a desire to do transactional law but without knowing what to expect. He worked with clients who wanted to start a landscape worker cooperative and as a result, helped write a worker coop guide and the guidebook for immigrant entrepreneurs.

“I’m a nerd for tackling new and unresolved legal issues,” said Diaz. “The course was like a rabbit hole for legal research. I had tons of fun.”

For Carolyn Ruiz, the course offered an opportunity to plunge into a neighborhood far from campus and interact with community organizations.

“In law school, everything is hypothetical,” she said. “This gave me the chance to work with real people in the real world.”

The course also helped her practice her Spanish skills with Salvador Esteban, a client who comes from Mexico.

“We wouldn’t have been able to help him” otherwise, said Ruiz, a Texan of Mexican descent. “He only spoke Spanish.”

A father of two, Esteban, 45, runs a hot-dog cart near the Boston Common, and needed help with licensing and permitting.

“I didn’t know how to pay taxes or how to apply for permits with City Hall or the health department,” he said.

Students relish the opportunity to be immersed in a workaday community. Because their clients work during the week, students sometimes spend weekends and evenings meeting with them at their homes or businesses near Jamaica Plain.

Salcedo took the course three times because he found his calling. It changed more than his career path, he said.

“It did change the course of my life,” he said. “I entered law school because I wanted to help underrepresented people. I was unsure of how I wanted to do so, though. I learned that law can empower low-income entrepreneurs who are working to revitalize their neighborhoods and provide for their families.”

Salcedo was awarded a prestigious Skadden Foundation Fellowship to create a program like the Community Enterprise Project to help small entrepreneurs in his hometown. After graduation, he plans to go back to Buffalo to work at the Western New York Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal services in civil matters to low-income residents.

“I can’t imagine a more fulfilling way to use my legal education,” he said.

This article appeared in the Harvard Gazette on January 22, 2016.

Some Serious Pushback Against Obama's Imperial Presidency

Obama has again and again acted in ways that mock the Constitution's limits on the power of the presidency, but a spate of recent cases shows that there is still fight left in the concept of the rule of law.

The International Criminal Court: What lies ahead?

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, founding Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Tim McCormack, the James Barr Ames Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Special Adviser on International Humanitarian Law to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, discussed challenges that lie ahead for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the first permanent court established to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The event, which took place at Harvard Law School on Jan. 13, was sponsored by the Harvard Law School Office of the Dean and Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program.

Credit: Phil FarnsworthLuis Moreno-Ocampo, founding prosecutor of the International Criminal Court

Moreno-Ocampo, who is co-teaching a January-term class at Harvard Kennedy School, was the subject of a recent book of essays by HLS Dean Martha Minow, HLS Professor Alex Whiting and Syracuse University College of Law Assistant Professor Cora True-Frost that examine his role and his legacy as the ICC's first prosecutor. 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 20 of the most serious crises of the 21st century including Iraq, Korea, Afghanistan, and Palestine.

Read More

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Leading the Way

Last November, as part of its ongoing Faculty Book Talk series, the Harvard Law School Library hosted Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, HLS Professor of Practice Alex Whiting and Syracuse University College of Law Assistant Professor Cora True-Frost for a discussion of "The First Global Prosecutor: Promise and Constraints," a volume of essays that examine the role and the legacy of the first prosecutor for the ICC, Luis Moreno Ocampo.

HLS Visiting Professor Tim McCormack

A scholar of International Humanitarian and International Criminal Law, Tim McCormack is a professor at Melbourne Law School. He has also served as an international observer (with Lord David Trimble of Northern Ireland) of the Turkel Commission Enquiry into Israel's Mechanisms and Processes for Investigating Allegations of War Crimes in Jerusalem (2011-2013); Expert Law of War Adviser to Major  Michael D. Mori for the defense of David Hicks before the US Military Commission in Guantanamo Bay (2003-2007); and Amicus Curiae on International Law Issues for the trial for the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague (2002-2006).

***

Related Reading

International Justice Year-in-Review: Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

Credit: Asia Kepka

In a post for the national security law and policy blog Just Security, Harvard Law School Professor of Practice Alex Whiting highlighted the top international criminal justice stories from 2015 and pointed to the top stories for 2016. Read more at https://www.justsecurity.org/28869/international-criminal-justice-2015-part-1#independence

'The Establishment': Washington's Dirty Word Of The Day

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What Gun Owners Think Of Obama's Gun Politics

The vibe at the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show (SHOT Show) this week doesn’t fit the political narrative President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spin about guns in America. And I’m not talking about political differences concerning the Second Amendment, but about something so fundamental it is missed in [...]

During HLS visit, Attorney General Lynch makes the case for criminal justice reform

Credit: Martha StewartDuring a visit to Harvard Law School on Wednesday, January 13, United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch '84 stressed the need for top-down reform of the criminal justice system in the United States and, in a conversation with HLS Professor Carol Steiker, further explored ways of addressing what she considers to be ‘a transformative issue of our generation.'

With the United States incarcerating people at a higher rate than any other nation on earth, a prison population that is larger than at any time in our history, and vast racial disparities in incarceration rates for African-Americans and whites, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch ’81, J.D. ’84, called criminal-justice reform “a transformative issue of our generation” in a talk Wednesday at Harvard Law School.

The system is not only about litigating cases, but “just as important, how do we prevent people from interacting with the criminal justice system? How do we stop them from making the mistakes that lead them into our system? And then, when individuals have served their debt to society, how do we make sure that they have a way to go home to their families, to their communities, to become productive citizens?” Lynch said during a conversation with Carol Steiker, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law and Special Adviser for Public Service at HLS.

Because the United States takes in and releases so many people each year — 600,000 federal inmates and another 1 million from state prisons — Lynch said the DOJ has an “obligation” to care for those in its charge.

“All of us in the administration have looked at the issue of the criminal justice system in a larger way than simply prosecutions,” she said, “because so much happens before a case file ever hits your desk.”

The granddaughter of a North Carolina sharecropper, Lynch, the first African-American woman attorney general, described how she found her way from a student who thought she would be happy limiting her career to communications law, through two appointments as head of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, N.Y., to her post as the country’s chief law enforcement officer and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

She urged students to use their time at HLS to explore different areas of law to discover what they are passionate about and consider the many ways they can participate in reform or public service without necessarily pursuing a career as a federal prosecutor.

“Sometimes it gets hard to leave the accepted path, particularly when you come from a place like Harvard Law School, because there are people who have expectations of what you should and should not do,” she said. “I remember vividly the night before I started as a federal prosecutor, my dad called me up and said, ‘You know, I bet if you called your law firm, they’d take you back!’”

Credit: Martha StewartLynch with HLS Professors Carol Steiker (left), who moderated the discussion, and Annette Gordon-Reed, who introduced the Attorney General.

Since being sworn into office in April following a politically contentious five-month delay, Lynch has been the driving force behind a number of high-profile cases involving policing and corruption, including an inquiry into the practices of the Baltimore Police Department following unrest last summer; the global bribery and money-laundering scandal within FIFA, soccer’s top body; and the federal hate-crimes prosecution of Dylann Roof, accused of murdering nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church in June. Just last month, following revelations around the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times by a white police officer, Lynch initiated a DOJ investigation into whether the Chicago Police Department routinely violates the constitutional and federal rights of citizens.

Lynch was in Boston supporting President Obama’s ongoing push to reform the criminal-justice system, an issue he highlighted during the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Before her stop at HLS, Lynch visited the South Bay House of Correction to talk with inmates and staff involved in a trio of innovative re-entry and recidivism programs that help prisoners improve their education, parenting skills, and job prospects.

Read More

from the Harvard Law Bulletin

Prosecutor with a Calling

Throughout Loretta Lynch’s life, being herself has meant being a trailblazer, from when she was an overachieving schoolgirl in newly desegregated North Carolina through her first job out of Harvard Law School at a New York law firm in the mid-1980s, when young African-American women lawyers were so rare that she was sometimes assumed to be the stenographer at depositions. Then she found her calling as a federal prosecutor who twice served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with a stint as a law firm partner sandwiched in between. Continue Reading

She said many inmates told her the programs’ effectiveness stems largely from the fact that, for the first time, someone is helping them focus on who they are and could be and what they have to offer as parents and as community members.

“And when you think about it, all of us, no matter where we’re from … whether we are at Harvard Law School or whether we’re working or whether we in fact may be behind bars, all of us need a helping hand at some time or another. All of us have gotten to where we are because someone saw something in us and gave us that hand and gave us that help,” Lynch said. “And so, to be able to use the resources of the Department of Justice to expand on that and provide support for these programs is tremendously, tremendously gratifying.”

So far, there has been “very productive” discussion on Capitol Hill around several pending bills that largely limit or further reduce mandatory minimum sentences, as well as efforts to make retroactive many of the recent changes to narcotic sentencing guidelines, Lynch said. She also cited state-run reform initiatives that appear to be reducing violent crime and cutting prison costs.

Despite the increased political rancor between Congress and the Obama administration over the past year, Lynch said strong bipartisan support for reform in Washington “still exists” and that she’s “very hopeful” Congress will move forward on some measures this spring.

This article was published in the Harvard Gazette on January 14, 2016.

Chipotle Vs. Costco: A Tale Of Two E. Coli Outbreaks

BY RICHARD BERMAN - While Chipotle had a well-known marketing narrative, it apparently didn’t have a good enough food safety system.

During HLS visit, Attorney General Lynch makes the case for criminal-justice reform

Credit: Martha Stewart U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch: “And when you think about it, all of us, no matter where we’re from … whether we are at Harvard Law School or whether we’re working or whether we in fact may be behind bars, all of us need a helping hand at some time or another."

With the United States incarcerating people at a higher rate than any other nation on earth, a prison population that is larger than at any time in our history, and vast racial disparities in incarceration rates for African-Americans and whites, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch ’81, J.D. ’84, called criminal-justice reform “a transformative issue of our generation” in a talk Wednesday at Harvard Law School.

The system is not only about litigating cases, but “just as important, how do we prevent people from interacting with the criminal-justice system? How do we stop them from making the mistakes that lead them into our system? And then, when individuals have served their debt to society, how do we make sure that they have a way to go home to their families, to their communities, to become productive citizens?” Lynch said during a conversation with Carol Steiker, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law and Special Adviser for Public Service at HLS.

Because the United States takes in and releases so many people each year — 600,000 federal inmates and another 1 million from state prisons — Lynch said the DOJ has an “obligation” to care for those in its charge.

“All of us in the administration have looked at the issue of the criminal justice system in a larger way than simply prosecutions,” she said, “because so much happens before a case file ever hits your desk.”

The granddaughter of a North Carolina sharecropper, Lynch, the first African-American woman attorney general, described how she found her way from a student who thought she would be happy limiting her career to communications law, through two appointments as head of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, N.Y., to her post as the country’s chief law enforcement officer and head of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

She urged students to use their time at HLS to explore different areas of law to discover what they are passionate about and consider the many ways they can participate in reform or public service without necessarily pursuing a career as a federal prosecutor.

“Sometimes it gets hard to leave the accepted path, particularly when you come from a place like Harvard Law School, because there are people who have expectations of what you should and should not do,” she said. “I remember vividly the night before I started as a federal prosecutor, my dad called me up and said, ‘You know, I bet if you called your law firm, they’d take you back!’”

Since being sworn into office in April following a politically contentious five-month delay, Lynch has been the driving force behind a number of high-profile cases involving policing and corruption, including an inquiry into the practices of the Baltimore Police Department following unrest last summer; the global bribery and money-laundering scandal within FIFA, soccer’s top body; and the federal hate-crimes prosecution of Dylann Roof, accused of murdering nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church in June. Just last month, following revelations around the 2014 death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times by a white police officer, Lynch initiated a DOJ investigation into whether the Chicago Police Department routinely violates the constitutional and federal rights of citizens.

Lynch was in Boston supporting President Obama’s ongoing push to reform the criminal-justice system, an issue he highlighted during the State of the Union address on Tuesday. Before her stop at HLS, Lynch visited the South Bay House of Correction to talk with inmates and staff involved in a trio of innovative re-entry and recidivism programs that help prisoners improve their education, parenting skills, and job prospects.

from the Harvard Law Bulletin<\/h4>

Prosecutor with a Calling<\/a><\/h2>Throughout Loretta Lynch\u2019s life, being herself has meant being a trailblazer, from when she was an overachieving schoolgirl in newly desegregated North Carolina through her first job out of Harvard Law School at a New York law firm in the mid-1980s, when young African-American women lawyers were so rare that she was sometimes assumed to be the stenographer at depositions. Then she found her calling as a federal prosecutor who twice served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with a stint as a law firm partner sandwiched in between. Continue Reading<\/a>","float":"left"}" data-id="pull-content">Read More

from the Harvard Law Bulletin

Prosecutor with a Calling

Throughout Loretta Lynch’s life, being herself has meant being a trailblazer, from when she was an overachieving schoolgirl in newly desegregated North Carolina through her first job out of Harvard Law School at a New York law firm in the mid-1980s, when young African-American women lawyers were so rare that she was sometimes assumed to be the stenographer at depositions. Then she found her calling as a federal prosecutor who twice served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with a stint as a law firm partner sandwiched in between. Continue Reading

She said many inmates told her the programs’ effectiveness stems largely from the fact that, for the first time, someone is helping them focus on who they are and could be and what they have to offer as parents and as community members.

“And when you think about it, all of us, no matter where we’re from … whether we are at Harvard Law School or whether we’re working or whether we in fact may be behind bars, all of us need a helping hand at some time or another. All of us have gotten to where we are because someone saw something in us and gave us that hand and gave us that help,” Lynch said. “And so, to be able to use the resources of the Department of Justice to expand on that and provide support for these programs is tremendously, tremendously gratifying.”

So far, there has been “very productive” discussion on Capitol Hill around several pending bills that largely limit or further reduce mandatory minimum sentences, as well as efforts to make retroactive many of the recent changes to narcotic sentencing guidelines, Lynch said. She also cited state-run reform initiatives that appear to be reducing violent crime and cutting prison costs.

Despite the increased political rancor between Congress and the Obama administration over the past year, Lynch said strong bipartisan support for reform in Washington “still exists” and that she’s “very hopeful” Congress will move forward on some measures this spring.

This article was published in the Harvard Gazette on January 14, 2016.

Uber's New York Win

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Why The Bundy Public-Land Standoff Will Happen Again, And Again

The first thing my editor—a salty, sun-beaten working alcoholic who seemed to be an editor straight out of central casting, circa 1940—told me when I started as a reporter at the Rawlins Daily Times in south-central Wyoming, 20 years ago, was that I “was nothing but a naïve New Yorker [...]

Ted Cruz's Canadian Play

Yes, the Texas senator is eligible to be President.

Food Law Clinic urges Congress to continue progress towards making nutritious meals available to all children

As Congress prepares to consider the 2016 child nutrition act, the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic released a policy brief recommending changes to the act to support healthy school meals.

The centerpiece of federal child nutrition policy, the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act (CNR), is up for review every five years and establishes the funding and policy for key programs, including the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, serving 30 million children.

Harvard Law’s Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) offers five specific recommendations for how the next CNR can strengthen key provisions for child nutrition:

• Increase participation in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs;
• Preserve the advances in nutrition standards mandated in the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HFFKA) and subsequent regulations;
• Increase reimbursement rates for meals;
• Expand funding for farm-to-school programs; and
• Provide grants for school kitchen equipment, infrastructure, and staff training programs.

While FLPC supports full and continuous funding for all programs authorized under the CNR, the policy brief focuses on school food because of FLPC’s extensive work in this area and the critical importance of the school setting. Children who participate in school meal programs consume, on average, half of their daily calories at school. School meals also serve an important educational purpose, encouraging children to cultivate healthy eating habits.

In January, the Senate Agriculture Committee announced that it would hold a meeting to mark up the Senate’s draft bill, the Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act of 2016, on Wednesday, January 20, at 10 a.m. A live webcast of the hearing will be aired on the Senate Agriculture Committee website.

Next week’s markup was originally scheduled for Sept. 17, 2015, but was postponed only days before the meeting. Without the September markup, draft bills from the Senate and the House were never put forward, and the 2010 CNR (known as The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act) expired on September 30. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 included the most extensive changes to child nutrition programs since the 1970s, including enhanced nutrition standards for school meals, an issue that has taken center stage in this year’s CNR debates.

Over the past few years, Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic has studied the impact of the USDA Foods program on school meals in Massachusetts and issued school food policy recommendations to reduce the incidence and burden of type 2 diabetes. In a forthcoming School Food Toolkit, FLPC recommends high-impact interventions that can be taken at the state and local level to improve access to quality food in schools and encourage food literacy.

***

On June 10, FLPC co-hosted the first annual Healthy Food Fuels Hungry Minds conference at Harvard University to discuss how to improve the quality of food in schools.

During the June conference, Harvard Law School Lecturer on Law Emily Broad Leib, deputy director, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, and Bettina Neuefeind, research fellow, Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, delivered a presentation on “Understanding the Policy: Federal Child Nutrition Reauthorization and the Role of State and Local Decision-makers.”

As part of the conference, Jody Adams, chef/owner, Rialto Restaurant & Trade, and Ann Cooper, founder, The Chef Ann Foundation, delivered keynote addresses.

Katie Carey, a 3L at the University of Oregon School of Law and a 2015 summer intern at the Food Law and Policy Clinic, reported on the conference for the FLPC blog.

Visit http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/hungryminds/schedule for the full conference schedule with related video.

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Wayne LaPierre Challenged President Obama To A Debate On Guns In America

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Added Penalties For Worker Safety Violations: The Other Yates Memorandum

In September 2015, Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates issued a memorandum instructing federal prosecutors to step-up individual prosecutions for corporate wrongdoing. The much-discussed “Yates Memorandum” was issued in response to criticism that federal prosecutors had been lax in prosecuting individual executives for crimes committed during the 2008 financial crisis and has garnered a lot of attention from practitioners and commentators. White-collar lawyers and their corporate clients also should be aware of the “other” Yates Memorandum quietly issued at the end of 2015, announcing that federal prosecutors will look for ways to charge a variety of felonies in routine worker safety cases to take advantage of the greater penalties available under environmental and other criminal laws

Year's First SCOTUS Conference Yields Pluses For Free-Market Advocates -- And Reason To Hope For More

The U.S. Supreme Court held its first Conference of 2016 on Friday, January 8, where it considered cert petitions in several high-profile cases impacting free enterprise. The Court issued an orders list on January 11 from that Conference, which, while it did not include anycert grants in these cases, potentially [...]

This Inventory Of Obama's Dozens Of Executive Actions Frames His Final State Of The Union Address

President Barack Obama’s final-year aspirations as outlined in an earlier-than-usualState of the Union Address will likely showcase executive action on gun control (watch for the symbolic empty chair), Syrian refugees, closing Guantanamo, global warming and addressing themes like income inequality. Since the president's final year is no time to lay out [...]

Oregon Rancher Protest Highlights The Injustice Of Mandatory Minimums

The occupation of buildings at Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by a group of armed and disgruntled ranchers has brought national attention to a case that illustrates the injustices wrought by mandatory minimum sentences. The men who took over the buildings last Saturday, led by Nevada rancher Ammon Bundy, broke [...]

Jorge Gonzalez S.J.D ’13: A career shaped by interdisciplinary and global perspectives

Credit: Lorin Granger Jorge Gonzalez S.J.D. ’13

As a Harvard Law School student from Colombia, Jorge Gonzalez S.J.D. ’13 was inspired by the interdisciplinary approach so many at Harvard brought to studying law. “In the Global South, legal education tends to be centered on the classical areas of law — you study a specific area, such as property or constitutional law, which then becomes the focus of your career,” he said. “At HLS, it was about fields of inquiry that crossed disciplinary boundaries, and having a global perspective.”

Now, as an associate professor and head of the department of law and legal history at Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Gonzalez is deploying that interdisciplinary approach in his own teaching and curricular development, translation work, and research.

With his colleagues at Javeriana, Gonzalez is reducing rigid degree requirements and designing a new curriculum that connects social justice and human rights issues with different fields, such as transnational law. At the same time, he is transcending geographic, cultural, and linguistic boundaries by translating work by Harvard Law professors Duncan Kennedy and Samuel Moyn into Spanish. “In Latin America, it’s mainly elites who get access to these types of sources written in English, so the work of translation is about democratizing access to information,” said Gonzalez. “That is what I like about translating.”

Gonzalez’s dissertation, which was published by Javeriana and launched at the Bogotá International Book Fair last April, focuses on the historical relationship between authoritarianism and constitutional doctrines in Latin America. His current research continues that exploration. “My dissertation was a historical inquiry, and now I’m turning to the present to examine in a much more detailed way about how constitutional power has been, and is, deployed.”

In October, Gonzalez visited HLS to speak to students, faculty, and staff about authoritarianism in Latin America, the use of constitutional power, and his ongoing debate with his close friend and colleague, David Landau ’04— “a partnership that began here, on the streets of Cambridge,” Gonzalez said.

Landau was a Climenko Fellow during Gonzalez’s time at HLS and is now a professor and associate dean at Florida State University College of Law. He theorizes that would-be dictators have moved from seizing power via sheer force (coups) to more subtle means (such as constitutional amendments), which can work to undermine democracy and keep autocrats in power. This “abusive constitutionalism,” according to Landau, is particularly difficult to detect, prevent, and solve. Gonzalez, however, sees it as a more complicated phenomenon with deep roots in history and an intricate relationship with shifts in economic development. “Latin America has a long history, even tradition, of abusive constitutionalism, which we need to explore more thoroughly to really understand.” Gonzalez said.

Pointing to a photo of a Chilean Supreme Court Justice legitimizing Augusto Pinochet with a presidential sash hours after his 1973 coup, Gonzalez elaborated on those historical complexities. “Pinochet used the constitutional jargon of states of exception to justify his coup, and it was blessed by the Chilean Supreme Court. He then appointed a commission to explore the scope of emergency powers in the constitution. These were very complex discussions about the role of law and the constitution.”

Gonzalez then discussed how Hugo Chavez’s alterations to the Venezuelan constitution both bolstered his party’s power and brought about economic reforms. “Chavez challenged the Global North’s recipe for development, leading Latin America toward global competition and export-led development. He was considered an authoritarian character, but he also was a real reformer,” Gonzalez said. “Reading him is very paradoxical.”

Gonzalez urged the audience to look deeper when considering these persistent issues, and posed the question of whether we may be asking too much of constitutional law to serve as a mechanism for curbing abuse when it itself can be used toward abusive ends.

During his visit to HLS, Gonzalez also spoke with LL.M. students about his own experience as a student and how that time shaped his career. “It’s very challenging, writing in another language and the sheer volume of information one takes in—but it is also really constructive. I wanted to tell [the students] that it would all work out,” he said.

Gonzalez recalled Professor Janet Halley’s advice: “When we found ease in our writing and studying, that was when we’d know that we had found our subject area for concentration,” he said. “And somewhere in that first year, I got to a place where things were enjoyable and flowing. It was hard work. It was stressful. But at the same time it was a lot of fun and I found the congregation.”

That congregation was the graduate student community. “Throughout my studies at HLS it was about supporting each other. A small group of us would meet every morning in the library, discuss what we were going to cover that day, and then work, talking through the difficulties and challenges as they came up.”

Gonzalez continues to build his community through networking and engaging in global debates, strengthening his partnership with Landau, and deepening his HLS connections through continued translation work and dialogue with Professors Kennedy and Moyn. “My time here really pushed me to have that global perspective,” Gonzalez said. “And that’s shaped what I’ve been doing ever since.”

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Fighting for disarmament: Docherty calls for stronger regulation of incendiary weapons

Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer. Bonnie Docherty, a senior instructor at Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic, traveled to Geneva to advocate for stronger regulations on incendiary devices, which she calls “exceptionally cruel weapons.” “These are weapons that create fire or injure by burning,” she explained, showing examples of inert incendiary weapons and cluster munitions.

After researching the devastating humanitarian effects of the deadly cluster munitions used in Afghanistan in 2002, Bonnie Docherty joined a worldwide campaign to eliminate them.

Six years after she started her probe, cluster bombs were banned. Her investigation on the use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq and Lebanon, was highly influential in a 2008 treaty signed by 117 countries banning these weapons.

For Docherty, a lecturer on law and a senior instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, the battle to protect civilians from unnecessary harm continues.

Last month, Docherty traveled to Geneva to advocate for stronger regulations on incendiary devices, which she calls “exceptionally cruel weapons” that have been used in Syria, Libya, and Ukraine.

Docherty, who is also a senior researcher in the arms division at Human Rights Watch, recently sat down for an interview to talk about these weapons, killer robots, and her guiding principle: to protect civilians from suffering caused by armed conflicts.

This Q&A originally appeared in the Harvard Gazette on January 2, 2016.

GAZETTE: Before you became a disarmament advocate, you were a reporter for a local newspaper. Can you tell us about this part of your life?

DOCHERTY: After college, I was a reporter for The Middlesex News, now the MetroWest Daily News, outside of Boston, for three years. I covered mostly local news, government meetings, environmental issues, but I had the opportunity to go to Bosnia and embed with the peacekeepers for about 10 days in 1998. There was an Army lab in my town, that’s how I got the invitation to go to Bosnia. I had been interested in armed conflicts, but that trip definitely increased my interest in that field.

GAZETTE: How did you make the jump from suburban journalism to human rights and disarmament issues?

DOCHERTY: After I left the newsroom, I went to Harvard Law School. Right after graduation, I went to Human Rights Watch, which was a perfect mix of journalism and law because you go out in the field and you apply the law to what you find. My start date was Sept. 12, 2001, by happenstance, so whatever was planned was changed. Six months later, I was in Afghanistan researching the use of cluster munitions, which was my first exposure to disarmament issues.

GAZETTE: What are cluster munitions, and why are they so dangerous?

DOCHERTY: Cluster munitions are large weapons, such as bombs or rockets that contain dozens or hundreds of small munitions called submunitions. They’re problematic because they have a broad area effect — they spread over the size of a football field — and because many of them don’t explode on impact and lie around like landmines and explode in years or decades to come.

GAZETTE: How did your involvement with cluster munitions begin?

DOCHERTY: I went to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and later Georgia to document the use of these weapons. I’ve spoken with dozens of victims of cluster munitions, but the story I remember the most is when I was in Lebanon with two students from Harvard Law’s International Human Rights Clinic in 2006. We were there doing field research after Israel used cluster munitions in Lebanon. We were at a restaurant, and someone asked us to go to the town of Halta immediately. When we arrived, we found out that two hours earlier a 12-year-old boy had been killed by a cluster submunition. He had been playing with his brother, who had been throwing pinecones at him. The boy picked up something to throw back at his brother. It turned out to be a submunition. His friend said, “Oh, no. That’s dangerous, drop it,” and when he went to throw it away, it exploded next to his head. When we were there, they were still cleaning up the pool of blood from his body. The Lebanese army found 10, 12 submunitions lying around right next to a village, waiting to kill or injure civilians, farmers, children.

GAZETTE: Your research on cluster munitions led you to become one of the world’s most widely known advocates against these weapons. How did this happen?

DOCHERTY: After years of raising awareness about the issue through field research, interviewing victims, witnesses, and military officials, I got actively involved in the campaign to ban them. This led to negotiations that lasted 15 months and ended up in a treaty that absolutely banned cluster munitions, which was adopted in 2008. That was the most rewarding professional experience of my life: to be part of the process from raising awareness to taking part in the campaign to seeing them banned. It was also great that I was able to involve students in all this work. They went on a field mission to Lebanon, saw the treaty negotiation, and helped write advocacy papers that were distributed to diplomats. To share that experience with them was really amazing.

GAZETTE: The convention banned the use of these weapons. Are these weapons still being used?

DOCHERTY: Unfortunately, they are still being used, but not by the over 100 states that have joined the treaty. Those that have used them are certain countries that have no respect for international law, most notably Syria in recent years. There has been reported use in Ukraine, Yemen, and Libya. That’s something we want to condemn and work to eradicate, but the convention has had an impact on the countries that have joined and increased the stigma against the use of cluster munitions.

GAZETTE: Has the United States ever used cluster munitions? What other countries have used them?

DOCHERTY: The United States has not joined the treaty, but it has been influenced by the stigma of the treaty, and since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it has only used cluster munitions in Yemen in 2009. After that, the United States has complied with the prohibition on the use of cluster munitions. The other major users are Israel, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The most egregious user is Syria’s Assad regime, which intentionally and recklessly has used these problematic weapons on civilians repeatedly in recent years.

GAZETTE: After cluster munitions, you turned your attention to incendiary weapons. What are those?

DOCHERTY: I continue to work on the implementation of the treaty on cluster munitions, but over the past few years I’ve been researching the use of incendiary weapons. These are weapons that create fire or injure by burning. The classic incendiary weapon is napalm. In my mind, these weapons are among the cruelest that exist today. They burn people to the bone. And for those who survive, treatment is required, which is likened to being flayed alive because doctors have to slough off the dead skin. The weapons also cause long-term deformities, psychological trauma, and victims have trouble reintegrating into society. While all weapons cause awful harm, these weapons are particularly cruel, to my mind.

GAZETTE: I understand you were in Geneva recently to take part in the session on conventional weapons, which include incendiary weapons. What were you doing there?

DOCHERTY: I was in Geneva with two students to release a paper on what should be done to strengthen international law on incendiary weapons. There is a treaty that regulates these weapons and was adopted in 1980, but the treaty is rather weak. Its definition doesn’t include all weapons with incendiary effect, most notably white phosphorus, which has been used a lot in recent years. It’s not only a smoke screen. When white phosphorous comes in contact with skin, it can burn you to the bone, and when you take off the bandages, your wounds can reignite. Also, the regulations for ground-launched weapons are weaker than for airdropped ones, and from a victim’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether a weapon comes from the air or the ground. There is a reason to close these loopholes. An absolute ban would have the greatest humanitarian impact, but we’re calling on states to at least close the loopholes and amend the current treaty to make it stronger.

GAZETTE: Where are these weapons being used?

DOCHERTY: Again in Syria, which has been the most egregious user in recent years, but Human Rights Watch documented their use in Ukraine, and there have been allegations of use in Libya and Yemen. The Syria example sticks out for me. There is a report that came out recently and includes photos of children completely charred. It’s just unimaginable to comprehend the horror they must have experienced.

GAZETTE: Of the weapons you’ve researched, which one is the biggest killer of civilians?

DOCHERTY: Perhaps in terms of scale, it’s explosive weapons when they’re used in populated areas. Explosive weapons can be rockets, missiles, bombs, or mortars, anything that explodes. An effort began this year to create a new international political commitment to try to curb the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. We recognize we can’t bring an end to urban warfare. That’s not our goal, but these particularly dangerous weapons should not be used in urban areas.

GAZETTE: Your research has focused on governments’ use of these weapons. Did you find non-state armed groups that are using these weapons?

DOCHERTY: We documented the use of cluster munitions by Hezbollah. It’s frightening because it shows that these dangerous weapons are getting in the hands of non-state armed groups as well as countries. During the Lebanon-Israel war, I spent a week in Israel with a team of students researching the Hezbollah attacks on populated areas. Ten days later, I was in Lebanon doing research on Israel’s use of cluster munitions, with another team of students. And during the Gaza-Israel conflict in 2006, I researched both sides. The Palestinian rockets launched from Gaza into Israel were handmade and intentionally targeted civilians. The Israelis responded with artillery attacks in towns and villages that killed more civilians than the handmade rockets. We found international law violations on both sides.

GAZETTE: If you could compare governments and non-state armed groups, which one violates more international humanitarian law with the use of these weapons?

DOCHERTY: I’ve done more research on the use of these weapons by government forces than their use by non-state armed groups. But my research has included Hezbollah, Hamas, and various groups in Gaza. It’s a sign of the proliferation and its dangers, which is one reason why we don’t want these weapons in the wrong hands.

GAZETTE: You have said all the work you’ve done falls under humanitarian disarmament. Could you explain what that is?

DOCHERTY: Humanitarian disarmament’s goal is to end civilian suffering rather than protecting national security. It began in the 1990s with the Mine Ban Treaty. The Convention on Cluster Munitions was the next big step. Both treaties embody humanitarian disarmament because they seek to eliminate civilian harm caused by problematic weapons. My guiding principle is to try to minimize the effects of armed conflicts as much as possible and protect civilians from the suffering caused by war.

GAZETTE: Lately, you’ve begun research on killer robots. Could you tell us what those are and why we should be concerned about them?

DOCHERTY: Killer robots are also known as fully autonomous weapons. They don’t exist yet, but they’re in development. A killer robot would be able to identify a target and choose to fire on that target without any meaningful human control. They’ve been described as the third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and nuclear arms. They’re being developed in the United States, Israel, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. They’re a step beyond drones. A drone has a human making the kill decision. With fully autonomous weapons, you’d lose that human intervention. We find that deeply disturbing. And in my mind and in the minds of many others, that’s a threshold that should not be crossed.

GAZETTE: What will be the focus of your research in the next few years?

DOCHERTY: I’ll continue to work for stronger regulation of incendiary weapons, and also on killer robots, which are now at the top of the international disarmament agenda.

The field of humanitarian disarmament can be a slow process, but it can ultimately be successful. When I first went to Afghanistan to research cluster munitions in 2002, it was hard for me to imagine that six years later there’d be an absolute ban with the majority of states having joined in. I’m optimistic that in most cases determined advocacy, ongoing awareness, and research and documentation can lead to good disarmament results.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.