Friday, April 29, 2016
The Dr. Jekyll To Mr. Hyde Transformation Of Title IX
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Royal College Of Physicians Says E-Cigarettes Can 'Prevent Almost All The Harm From Smoking'
Two Harvard Law students chosen for international ethics fellowship program
Harvard Law School students Phil Caruso '18 and Pamela Nwaoko '16 are among 12 law students selected by FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) to participate in a two-week program in Europe this summer, which uses the conduct of lawyers and judges in Nazi Germany as a launching point for an intensive course of study on ethics in the legal profession today.
Phil Caruso '18
Caruso is a first-year JD/MBA candidate at Harvard Law and Harvard Business School. He received a bachelor's degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. He served for seven years on active duty with the United States military and was twice deployed to Afghanistan.
“Although contemporary ethical concerns consistently evolve, they are always rooted in the past,” he said. “History offers important lessons about success and failure in ethics, and FASPE harnesses the power of history to help the world's future leaders build upon a foundation that reflects the best of humanity.”
Pamela Nwaoko '16
Nwaoko is president of the Harvard African Law Association. Born in New Jersey to Nigerian parents, she earned a bachelor's degree in government from Georgetown University and a master's in African Studies from Oxford University. Following FASPE, she will work as a summer associate at Skadden's Washington D.C. office.
“Participating in FASPE is a step toward my goal of deploying the law as a tool for justice,” said Nwaoko. “An opportunity to travel to the very sights where the law was used as a mechanism for murder will enable me to confront this legal legacy and to take seriously the accompanying charge to be purposefully and deliberately compassionate in how I use my talents as a lawyer.”
Caruso and Nwaoko will begin the program with 63 other FASPE fellows in Berlin, Germany, on May 22, 2016, where they will meet with Holocaust survivors and attend educational workshops.
Now in its seventh year of operation, FASPE is an innovative international program for students in five professional disciplines (business, journalism, law, medicine, and religion) designed to address contemporary ethical issues in their chosen fields through a unique historical lens. FASPE examines the roles played by professionals in business, journalism, law, medicine, and the clergy in Nazi Germany, underscoring that the moral codes governing these essential professions can break down or be distorted with devastating consequences.
Monday, April 25, 2016
A Political Attack On Free Speech And Privacy Thwarted -- For Now
Advancing social justice through law: 2016 Gary Bellow award winners
L-R: Lindsey Whyte '16, Faye Maison '16, Melody Webb '93, Ana María Mondragon Duque LL.M. '16
Four members of the Harvard Law School community-Ana María Mondragon Duque LL.M. '16, Lindsey Whyte '16, Faye Maison '16, and Melody Webb '93-received the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 in memory of the late Professor Gary Bellow '60, a pioneering public interest lawyer who founded and directed Harvard Law School's clinical programs.
Each year, the student body selects a student and an alumnus/a who best exemplify Bellow's commitment to advancing social justice through law. The award committee expanded the award this year to recognize the work of an LL.M./S.J.D. graduate and two graduating students. Also this year, the Bellow Award committee hosted a TED-style talk event prior to online student voting for award finalists to share their public service vision and experience.
This year's award winners were honored at an HLS reception on April 11. Event organizers Olivia Warren '17 and Colin Doyle '17 opened the ceremony by reading a 1993 quotation from Bellow: “One of the things that Harvard Law School clearly teaches our students is that good or bad, it's important to be important. That's not the message that I want to communicate. I want them to be learners. Thoughtful analyzers of the world, intelligent changers of their own behavior, respectful of the complexity of the world that they're going to live in, fascinated with what a life of learning in law will involve over an entire lifetime.”
In introductory remarks, Dean Martha Minow recalled how, before she went to law school, she had heard about Bellow's work representing the Black Panthers and farm workers in California and thought, “Wow, you can do that as a lawyer?”
Minow shared three lessons she learned from Bellow: “One, that chaos is actually a productive work environment. Two, that it is possible to find ways to have fun while you're doing social justice work. Three, that relationships of trust where you actually criticize each other and push each other are central to the work.”
This year's honorees have worked in a wide variety of areas-including civil rights, human rights, domestic violence and education-to educate, advocate and organize to promote social justice.
Ana María Mondragon Duque LL.M. '16
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff PhotographerAna María Mondragon Duque LL.M. '16
Prior to attending Harvard on a Fulbright scholarship, student award recipient Ana María Mondragon Duque LLM '16 founded an NGO called “Spirit of the Constitution of 1991 (E-91)” in response to the political and social crisis of her home country, Colombia. At organizations such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) in San José, Costa Rica, and the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) in Mexico City, San Francisco and Bogota, Mondragon has worked on cases involving the rights of indigenous peoples, human rights defense, LGBTIQ rights, and environmental and social issues caused by the implementation of development projects and corporate activities.
In her acceptance speech, Mondragon encouraged audience members to ask themselves about Harvard Law School's role in promoting social justice through legal education. “What's Harvard Law School doing to preserve those values that Gary Bellow was advocating for, and which are going to be the next steps of this school to promote a faculty and to promote students that believe this path is legitimate, that are denouncing systemic injustices right now, and that are demanding a legal education that equips them to respond to these injustices?”
“I came here to do my masters because I believe that Harvard can be an element of change in the world,” she said.
Lindsey Whyte '16
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer Lindsey Whyte '16
Lindsey Whyte '16 has served on the board of the Harvard Defenders for two years. Through the Tenant Advocacy Project, she has also assisted clients facing denial of subsidized housing as a result of alleged criminal activity. As a student attorney and board member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, Whyte argued a housing case before the Massachusetts Court of Appeals in the fall of 2015.
“Clinical education represents a tremendous opportunity, but also a tremendous privilege,” Whyte said. “A heavy and sometimes overwhelming responsibility-because you're a student, but you're also entrusted with matters that have a significant impact on your clients' lives. You're a student, and your clients are in some sense asked to take on the role of your teacher, on top of the many other roles that their lives demand of them. You're a student, and sometimes you will make mistakes.”
Prior to law school, Whyte helped create a pro se legal advocacy program for survivors of domestic violence in rural Montana. She also advocated for individuals facing denial and termination from public assistance programs and helped administer an emergency eviction defense legal clinic in Seattle. She had thought she was good at listening already, Whyte said, but clinical work at Harvard taught her to pay even closer attention to her clients' individual experiences of their circumstances.
“Law school trains us to do a lot of thinking, a lot of talking, and a lot of leading. But truly to attack the system that enmeshes consequences and penalties for our clients and retains injustice and exclusion in our institutions, in which we function as lawyers, we must also learn to adopt a stance of listening, curiosity, and following,” she said.
Whyte has previously worked at the Bronx Defenders and the King County Department of Public Defense. After clerking on the State Supreme Court of Washington, she will pursue a career in public defense.
Faye Maison '16
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer Faye Maison '16
Faye Maison '16 will serve as a juvenile public defender in Maryland after graduation, building on her previous work in inequality and client advocacy through the Committee for Public Counsel Services through the Child Advocacy Clinic, the Criminal Justice Institute, and the Mecklenburg County Public Defender Office.
Before law school, Maison focused on education issues, serving as a director of SCHOLAR, an intensive science program for public school students in New Haven; a Woodbridge Fellow, a fellowship in higher education administration at Yale University; and as a fellow with Medic Mobile working on community education in Bangladesh. At HLS, Maison co-founded Students for Inclusion, an organization that empowers students to take ownership of their legal education.
In her acceptance speech, Maison focused on the theme of “love and different expressions of love,” and she recalled Minow's words of support after the first Harvard Law School community meeting of the past year. “I have never been in a space where so many people were sharing their emotions about themselves and America and about our justice system, and were truly showing love for each other and love for all of each other as part of a Harvard Law School community,” Maison said.
Maison's voice became emotional as she discussed how student activists in Belinda Hall are working to model a “space that they love and a type of legal education that they would love to see at this school.” She urged the audience to see, “when we look at the work that people are doing, when we see activists, when we see organizers, when we see people continuing to fight for indigenous communities in Colombia, when we see people doing public defense work, when we see people doing the hard case-that so much of that is out of love.”
“No matter what kind of work you are doing, I want you to think about the things that you love and continue to allow yourself to be compelled to do the work that you love, because it's when we think about the world that we want to love-I think it's when we can make the most change,” she said.
“When we can have a ten-year-old say, 'I love my education; I love the books I'm reading,' when we can have a law students say, 'I love my education; I love the legal education that I'm getting,' and when we can have all of us saying, 'I love my community, I love the community that we've created,' I think we've done an amazing thing,” Maison said. “And I think this is some of what Gary Bellow was advocating for, and what this award advocates for, and what I'd like to encourage all of us to leave and advocate for.”
Melody Webb '93
This year's alumni award recipient, Melody Webb '93, began her acceptance speech by honoring her guest for the night-her high school social studies teacher, Dr. Billie Day. “It's such an honor to be here with my favorite high school teacher to honor one of my favorite law school professors,” she said. Webb immersed herself in the clinical program run by Bellow during her law school years, and she described how those experiences impacted the kind of lawyer she became.
Webb has worked on a wide range of public interest issues in the Washington, D.C. area: she created a conflict resolution program for at-risk youth as an Equal Justice Works Fellow; testified before Congress on behalf of the homeless for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless; restored thousands of minority voters to voter rolls in Virginia through the Service Employees International Union; and fought against employment discrimination as Legal Director of the Employment Justice Center. She also founded Lobbyline.com to advocate for D.C. residents affected by lead in water, and also created Mother's Outreach Network to provide legal education and resources for low-income mothers.
Webb's speech focused on what it means to be a public interest lawyer. “My seventeen-year-old paid me the highest compliment when he said, in answer to one of his college essay questions, “Who do you admire and why?” He answered, “My mom. It's because she fights for the little guy.”
“Now, I don't think he was flattering me to get the keys to the Mercedes-because we don't have one,” Webb joked. “But I do think it goes to his perception of my work. With your Harvard Law degrees, like the namesake of this award, you too will fight for the little guys. That is what it is to be a public interest lawyer. It's a noble and good fight.”
Webb offered some guidelines for building a “dignity-centered practice of law,” encouraging audience members to “check and recheck” that you are representing your client's interests; start with a practice area that intersects with your own interests but do not fear branching out into related areas; and “practice social change, but practice it one client and one community at a time, lest they become nameless and faceless.”
“Go forth, you brilliant people: you champions of the little guy,” she said. “Practice deeply, advancing your clients' overall well-being. Practice at the nitty-gritty.”
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Celebrating International Mother Earth Day With A Normal Western Civilization Gas Can
Friday, April 22, 2016
Getting The Energy Regulatory Balance Right
Thursday, April 21, 2016
Presidential power in an era of polarized conflict
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer[
On April 1, Harvard Law School hosted a conference on “Presidential Power in an Era of Polarized Conflict.” Experts from both sides of the aisle debated the president's power in foreign and domestic affairs, and in issues of enforcement or non-enforcement.
In introductory remarks, Professor Mark Tushnet described the polarized nature of current discussions about presidential power.
On one hand, he said, one end of the conversation is encapsulated by the recently published book “Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law,” which features a foreword by Senator Ted Cruz '95. “You can open to a random page and find some account of asserted lawlessness” in contexts ranging from the Affordable Care Act to No Child Left Behind, Tushnet said.
On the other hand, Tushnet continued, defenders of the Obama Administration project a tone of “'move along, there's nothing to see here…all of this is just routine exercise of well-established presidential authority.”
Dorf on Law: The Default Rule of Prosecutorial Discretion
Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf '90, a panelist in the afternoon session on 'Enforcement and Non-Enforcement,' shared his post-conference thoughts on his blog 'Dorf on Law.' In the post, he focused on a question that arose throughout the day: "When, if ever, do laws governing the primary conduct of private actors include an implicit instruction to the executive branch to enforce those laws to the full extent?" Read the full post
“The hope of this conference, I think, is that we would be able to have somewhat more nuanced discussions of these issues,” Tushnet said. “It actually might be the case that some of the things the administration has done do, at the very least, push the boundaries of previously established notions…and some of them are just routine actions of a sort that have been taken before.”
“I do want to note,” Tushnet added, “that the framing of these issues in an era of polarized politics is in my view the most interesting part of it.”
The series opened with a foreign affairs panel moderated by David Barron '94, a U.S. Circuit Judge for the First Circuit and a visiting professor at the law school. The panel also featured Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, who served in the Department of Justice during the Bush administration; Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman, whose most recent books include “The Decline and Fall of the American Republic” (2010), and “The Failure of the Founding Fathers” (2005); and University of Minnesota Law Professor Heidi Kitrosser, who wrote the award-winning 2015 book “Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution.”
The foreign affairs panel revealed disagreement among the speakers about whether recent developments in presidential power have triggered a crisis. Ackerman cautioned, “We now have a mechanism for extremist presidents, and we have this deeply politicized process. This has grown without fundamental constitutional reflection, and that is what I am calling for.” He proposed creating a “supreme executive tribunal” of nine Article III judges with nine-year terms, rolling over every three years, “to shape the legal structure for the next president.”
Ackerman said “we need an internal balance of separation of powers in the executive branch which is serious and structured, to respond to the evident pathologies,” such as “clever lawyering which justifies the ends with the means.”
“We cannot justify this deep, deep assault on the rule of law in the executive branch by pointing to some good ends and some bad ends when President Obama is-notice, note-he's a constitutional lawyer. He's genuinely a thoughtful and serious person,” Ackerman continued. “And we have no guarantee, in the words of Madison, that enlightened statesmen will always be at the helm, and we have…a powerful reason for thinking that he won't be.”
Kitrosser followed Ackerman with remarks focusing on transparency and accountability, two concepts which she described as the “common denominator” that many constitutional law thinkers fall back on “when talking about how to reconcile war powers and national security with the rule of law.”
She discussed the pros and cons of reporting requirements, which are the “go-to provision” across the political spectrum. While reports are “far from a panacea,” required reports can “at a minimum” become a “focal point for debate, for discussion, some demand for more information,” Kitrosser said.
“Politics are a very important part of why, as a practical matter, the President can often get away with presenting things as a fait accompli,” she explained.
“Congress, even when you have a partisan divide, is in a really tough political spot when it comes to national security,” Kitrosser said. “Nobody wants to be perceived as weak on national security; there are minimal political gains to be had from pushing back on presidential bellicosity even when it takes the form of objections about unilateralism.”
Goldsmith observed that “a lot of things have changed” about separation of powers regulation in the law few decades, “and a lot of the rise of what you're calling this 'executive branch politicized bureaucracy' is a response to the need to maneuver through all of this stuff.”
“I don't think that the problem is fundamentally different than it was in Jackson's day, or Lincoln's day, or frankly in 1793 when Washington on the advice of his cabinet issued the neutrality proclamation-which … was quite clearly unlawful and a bad interpretation of the treaty.”
“So this is not a new phenomenon. I think it's probably a harder phenomenon to avoid because the executive has in so many respects had to make interpretation of law before he can enforce it and before he can act,” he said.
Responding to Ackerman's tribunal proposal, Goldsmith said, “I just think your faith in having another group of lawyers with more independence inside the executive branch is largely misplaced, and indeed, what they would do is to confer further legitimacy than the Office of Legal Counsel can on these actions.”
Turning to domestic affairs, Professor Richard Lazurus '79 described environmental law as the “poster child for the polarization we're talking about as well as the pressures on the different branches of government to respond to branches.”
Georgetown Law Professor Marty Lederman spoke about his experience serving in the Office of Legal Counsel for the Obama Administration. “Everyone thinks that lawyers going to the government will tell the president 'yes' no matter what the question is,” Lederman said. “I don't think that's remotely what goes on in the executive branch, but I worry that narrative will encourage that kind of conduct going forward.”
Nolan McCarty, who teaches politics and public affairs at Princeton University, said “congressional polarization and loss of capacity are probably ultimately responsible” for the presidential administration moving forward “in creative ways,” often without congressional support, in times of crisis.
Professor Laurence Tribe '66 began his lunchtime keynote by saying, “I know people think we have an imperial Presidency and the rest is just frill, but I want to dig beneath the generalizations.”
“It's clear this President has developed rather muscular views of his statutory and sometimes inherent authority,” he said.
Tribe focused on analyzing and criticizing the famous tripartite framework set forth in Justice Jackson's Youngstown concurrence. “The surface elegance of that framework has led the Court and commentators alike to skip over” the opinion's “insufficient guidance on how to navigate Jackson's famous 'twilight zone' of congressional silence,” he said.
“The awkward truth is that despite its place on the Mount Rushmore of legal frameworks, Youngstown offers no meaningful baseline against which to assess the operative legal significance of Congress' silence,” Tribe said.
“Does such silence give the president a green light to proceed within specified constraints and under identified circumstances? Or a red light that only a clear Congressional green light in the future can flip over?” he continued. “Or a yellow light that calls on the judicial branch to perform the epistemologically and institutionally dubious role of divining and giving effect to what was in the mind of 535 elected officials when they deliberately or inadvertently left things up in the air?”
“By saying virtually nothing about the appropriate framework for evaluating presidential exercises of power along that normative constitutional axis, and instead classifying presidential power only along the descriptive axis of congressional will on the matter, the Youngstown triptych left future courts maximum wiggle room, but only by setting up occasions for unaccountable and frustratingly opaque buck-passing among the branches,” Tribe said.
“Instead of laying down a tripartite scheme for mapping exercises of presidential authority against the backdrop of what is called 'the will of Congress,' I think the Court should have at least begun the process of articulating a body of underlying principles to govern the constitutionality of various types of executive action when, apart from the dubious efforts of reading the tea leaves of the imagined congressional mind, one just cannot say that congress authorized the executive action at issue, or that it prohibited it,” he said.
An afternoon panel on non-enforcement and enforcement featured Tushnet, University of California Hastings Law Professor Zachary Price '03, and Cornell Law Professor Michael Dorf '90. In the conference's final event, Professor Charles Fried and Princeton Professor Nolan McCarty offered their reflections on the day's discussions.
“One hopes that the impossible Congress we have now-in all the nonsense and posturing and refusal to do their job-will stop, and at some point, we will have a Congress which will join the government, and we'll have a different kind of conference,” Fried said.
The New $20 Bill Is Making Gun-Rights Advocates And Conservatives Cheer
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Moving Pictures: Students explore the power of making arguments through film
“The emotional experience … was the most difficult [part],” said Sam Koplewicz '16 about shooting a documentary on children arriving alone by boat in Greece. When he first arrived on the island of Lesbos, he climbed up to a vantage point where he could make out Turkey across the water and see the boats coming in. “At some point,” he recalled, “I just put my camera down and was doing the work of the volunteers. You can't really help it.”
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer Sam Koplewicz '16
In November, Koplewicz traveled to Europe to document the conditions faced by the multitudes of refugees trying to pass through Greek registration points and refugee camps. He focused on unaccompanied minors, “these children sent to find refuge alone.”
Koplewicz is currently serving his second year as president of the Harvard Law Documentary Studio, a student organization dedicated, he said, to bringing documentaries and the issues that they raise to Harvard Law School's campus and providing an opportunity for students to tell stories that matter to them through a medium they may not have tried.
His interest in film began as a teenager, about the same time as his interest in law, and he has been exploring connections between the two ever since. “The practice of law and legal institutions tend to reduce civil rights and human rights violations into words-often arcane legal words,” he said. “I think film moves us and interacts with us in a way that writing can't.” He hopes to incorporate video storytelling into a career in advocacy, taking inspiration from media-savvy organizations such as Human Rights Watch and short-form informational videos such as those being produced by AJ+, an offshoot of Al Jazeera.
Koplewicz first became attuned to the issues surrounding unaccompanied minors after spending a year in Croatia on a Fulbright scholarship before entering law school. As the plight of Middle Eastern refugees grew more prominent in the media, he was compelled to explore the topic through video.
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer Andrea Clay '16 and Sam Koplewicz '16 are two of this year's Doc Studio filmmakers. Koplewicz is serving his second year as the organization's president.
Traveling by himself with a camera and a sound recorder, Koplewicz visited Moria, the primary camp on the island of Lesbos, where all incoming refugees must register. There he witnessed the detention facilities where unaccompanied minors were being held for an average of two weeks. He spoke through a barbed-wire fence with one young boy who claimed he had slept and eaten little in 13 days. “They're being kept in what looks like a prison,” said Koplewicz. “There's nobody there with the appropriate training.” He returned with footage and interviews from refugee camps and registration points in Athens and Lesbos and quickly pieced together a film in the hopes of raising awareness about the situation.
Doc Studio participants are producing six films this year. “The filmmakers come at it from a lot of different places,” said Koplewicz. “They're good storytellers. They understand policy issues. They understand how to present an argument to an audience.”
Credit: Lorin Granger/HLS Staff Photographer Andrea Clay '16
Andrea Clay '16 is working on a documentary about the development and use of the Socratic method in legal education. She has interviewed peers about their experience being cold-called during their 1L year.
“It's really hard for people to get in front of a camera and express that they felt inadequate, or confused, or stupid,” said Clay. She found herself “straddling that line” between wanting to make her peers feel comfortable speaking and reminding them that what they said would be publicly viewed.
Clay is also exploring the pedagogical value of alternative teaching methods-“a hot topic on campus,” she said. “I think it's really helpful to legal professionals, especially law professors, to see how some of their colleagues are doing things differently.”
With experience as a K-12 classroom teacher, Clay intends to use her law degree to do child advocacy work within the education system. She cited the New Media Advocacy Project-founded by Adam Stofsky '04-as an inspirational example of how film is used meaningfully for advocacy and social justice work.
Other topics addressed by this year's student filmmakers include gentrification in Boston, the role of religion in shaping individuals and the experience of an Ethiopian political refugee. The films were screened this spring at the Harvard Film Archive in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.
“Making their own films gives students the resources to learn about media advocacy in a practical, hands-on way,” said Rebecca Richman Cohen '07, a filmmaker and HLS lecturer who, along with Jeannie Suk '02, acts as an adviser and mentor to the Doc Studio participants. Cohen teaches courses in digital storytelling and documentary film at HLS, and believes that young advocates must be comfortable communicating across multiple media platforms in their legal work. “The tools are so inexpensive and powerful,” she said, referring to cameras, smartphones and other ubiquitous video technologies. “Video lets lawyers bring clients' voices directly to policymakers, judges, and mainstream media … it can expose corruption and law violations … and enhance public understanding of the law.”
In addition to helping law students make documentaries, the Doc Studio organizes events on campus, bringing guest speakers and hosting screenings and discussions with filmmakers. This spring, it launched a new program in partnership with a high school in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Ninth-grade biology students are learning the fundamentals of documentary storytelling and creating a brief video illustrating a public-health issue in their community.
View this year's films and past Doc Studio projects at https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/docstudio/.
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On Saturday April 23 from 1–4 pm, The Doc Studio will screen this year's projects at its annual film festival at the Harvard Film Archives in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. Reception to follow. The event is made possible by the Harvard Law School Dean of Students Office.
Judge Rules Wisconsin's Right To Work Statute Illegal -- Now What?
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
In Memoriam: Victor Brudney (1917 – 2016)
Victor Brudney, a giant in the field of corporate law and a major figure at Harvard Law School from the early 1970s through the 1990s, died April 14, in Cambridge, at age 98.
Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow said: “Victor Brudney was a towering and inspiring teacher and scholar and his searching inquiry into fundamental issues of fairness, equality, and freedom in the worlds of corporate law and finance benefited generations of students and colleagues. Personally, I am so grateful for his wisdom, warmth, humor, and friendship over many years. Harvard Law School will always treasure Victor Brudney for his work, as an example of a great life in the law, and as a truly remarkable human being.”
Brudney joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1970 as a visiting professor. He served as a professor of law from 1971 to 1988, and later as the Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Professor in Corporate Finance Law, Emeritus. Early in his career he taught at Rutgers Law, and later he was an emeritus law professor at Boston College (1994 to 2007). He was also a visiting law professor at Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and Fordham.
Brudney had an enormous following of former students, many of whom are now in law practice, government work, or academia.
Former Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark '72, a former student of Brudney, said: “Victor Brudney had a perfect blend of wit, wisdom, and heart. As a professor, he combined an unusually deep practical knowledge of how corporate transactions typically unfold, together with a firm grasp of evolving corporate finance theory and research. And he was an incredibly helpful mentor to many students, including me, who aspired to become legal academics. He played an essential role in my life, and I shall miss him greatly.”
Another former student, Harvard Law School Professor and Director of the Program on Corporate Goverance Lucian Bebchuk LL.M. '80 S.J.D. '84, credits Brudney with sparking his interest in corporate law and supervising his S.J.D. dissertation on corporate takeovers. “He was responsible for my interest in corporate law, provided important guidance as I entered the field, and served-and still serves-as inspiration for my work,” said Bebchuk. “I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to benefit from his mentorship, wisdom, warmth, and friendship.”
Credit: Harvard Law School“Victor Brudney had a perfect blend of wit, wisdom, and heart,” said Harvard Law School Professor Robert C. Clark '72, a former student of Brudney. “He played an essential role in my life, and I shall miss him greatly.”
Brudney was a corporate law pioneer who foresaw problems and highlighted issues that occupy the field to this date. Three decades before the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Brudney anticipated the significance of corporate law rules for regulating corporate speech. In a 1981 Yale Law Review article, “Business Corporations and Stockholders' Rights Under the First Amendment,” Brudney wrote, “law is needed―to allocate the corporation's capacity to become a speaker.”
Brudney proposed treating the question of corporate expenditures for political campaigns as a matter of corporation law, requiring shareholder approval of spending in political campaigns.
With Allen Ferrell '95, Harvard Law School's Harvey Greenfield Professor of Securities Law, Brudney co-wrote a 2002 article in the Chicago Law Review, “Corporate Charitable Giving,” that offered a comprehensive analysis of corporate governance rules that could address corporate charitable contributions.
Brudney was born in the Bronx and earned a B.A. and M.S. from the City College of New York in 1937 and an LL.B. from Columbia University in 1940, where he served on the law review.
He briefly served as a law clerk for Associate Justice James F. Byrnes of the U.S. Supreme Court, before accepting a clerkship with Justice Wiley B. Rutledge. Rutledge, who served less than seven years on the Court, hired a total of six law clerks, including Brudney and the future Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.
The first of Rutledge's hires, Brudney became the benchmark against whom every clerk thereafter was measured, according to John Ferren '62, senior judge, District of Columbia Court of Appeals and author of “Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge.” Ferren wrote that Rutledge valued the intellectual firepower from his assertive law clerk, and he once said: “I never had a clerk who fought with me so hard when we differed as Vic did. More than once I threw him out of my office only to have him come back and reopen the argument.”
Brudney served as a New Deal lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice. During WWII, he served as a top aide to Fred Vinson at the Office of Economic Stabilization, an executive agency charged with fighting inflation. He had a 20-year career in private practice in New York City before joining the faculty at Rutgers Law School and later Harvard Law.
He was the co-author with the late Marvin Chirelstein of “Cases and Materials on Corporate Finance” and the author of numerous articles in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals.
In 1982, Brudney was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. HLS's Program on Corporate Governance established a writing prize in his honor for the best student paper on a topic related to corporate governance.
Brudney was married for 54 years to the late Juliet Fleischl Brudney, a former director of the Boston YWCA and a columnist for nearly 20 years with the Boston Globe. He is survived by four children: James, a law professor at Fordham University; Karen, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at Columbia University and expert advisor to the Centers for Disease Control; Daniel, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago; and Thomas, an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board, in Washington DC, as well as nine grandchildren.
Monday, April 18, 2016
The Surprising Failure Of Food Labeling
Hunting polluting gases around Boston
Harvard students, faculty, and fellows are training new high-tech instruments on Boston's skies, searching for one well-known troublemaker and one escapee among the atmosphere's invisible gases.
The old troublemaker is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas released by burning fossil fuels that long has been known as the main cause of climate change. The escapee is methane, an even more powerful emission that is the main component of the natural gas burned in home furnaces and in the electricity-generating power plants that are shouldering aside coal-fired plants across the country.
Though both are fossil fuels, burning natural gas is better than burning coal when it comes to the environment, because natural gas releases half as much carbon dioxide for an equal amount of energy generated. In addition, it is far cleaner than other pollutants in its burning, including in the fine particles that can cause health problems.
Unburned natural gas, however, is another story.
Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and, if it escapes into the atmosphere unburned, can trap between 15 and 100 times more solar radiation than carbon dioxide can. Understanding how methane gets into the atmosphere from both natural and manmade sources has become an important focus of climate research.
Steven Wofsy, Harvard's Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science, said it's pretty clear that a significant amount of unburned natural gas is escaping in the Boston region. He is leading a project to find the source of the leak or leaks and, in collaboration with faculty and students from Harvard Law School, seeking to design technical, legal, or regulatory solutions to reduce the emissions.
The work, which recently received funding from the Harvard President's Climate Change Solutions Fund, builds on earlier studies by Wofsy and a former student, Boston University Associate Professor Lucy Hutyra. The pair found that some 2 percent of the natural gas shipped to the Boston area is lost before it gets burned.
While the release of a powerful greenhouse gas is a significant concern for those worried about climate change, Wofsy said it should also be a concern for anyone who pays for natural gas, since the cost of the lost gas is still reflected in their rates.
“That's a lot, and it's a mystery,” Wofsy said. “We don't really know where it's all coming from.”
The research, which began this winter with the deployment of new, portable sensors that examine the chemical composition of the skies above Boston, also uses a network of permanent sensors on a handful of rooftops on campuses at Harvard and Boston University, as well as on buildings in downtown Boston, near Boston Harbor, and west of the city in Harvard Forest.
Data from the permanent sensors will be augmented by the portable instruments, spectrometers that point at the sun and analyze how its light is altered by chemicals in the atmosphere. The spectrometers will be deployed by students, who will take daylong measurements of the sky. Adding to the data haul will be a fleet of sensor-equipped cars driving the region's streets to pinpoint where the aging infrastructure is leaking.
As for carbon dioxide, Wofsy said researchers using proxies such as fuel sales already have a good idea of how much carbon dioxide is emitted from fossil fuel burning in the area, but the new research will enable them to understand when and where.
Taken together, the work will provide a picture of how levels of methane and carbon dioxide vary by place and time around the city. It will examine high-traffic areas, natural-gas infrastructure, seepage beneath city streets, and leakage by homes and businesses.
“If users turn out to be a major source of methane, then it could turn out that the smaller, more numerous sources are more significant than the larger, fewer ones,” Wofsy said. “This is the kind of thing we're trying to answer in this program.”
The carbon dioxide work can also provide information on impact beyond climate, such as in areas involving health and environmental justice, since carbon dioxide can be used to track particulates and other pollutants, Wofsy said.
Credit: Asia Kepka Clinical Professor Wendy B. Jacobs '81.
The project is being conducted in collaboration with Hutyra and Wendy Jacobs, clinical professor of law and director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Jacobs said the interdisciplinary nature of the project is key, and the goal is not just to use science to illuminate the problem of methane and carbon dioxide emissions in the city, but to design laws and regulations to address the problem.
“Laws, regulations, and public policy will not be effective unless informed by reliable science and data. Reliable science and data can effectively be deployed to solve a problem when integrated into new technologies, laws, regulations, and public policies,” Jacobs said. “The collaboration of our distinct disciplines is more powerful than either discipline alone.”
Jacobs said the aim is to come up with solutions applicable to the Boston area that could be used elsewhere, and perhaps be scaled up for use by state and federal governments. The project also will evaluate emissions with an eye to whether they disproportionately affect the poor.
Students will be involved in both the environmental law clinic and in the field, with data-collection efforts coordinated by postdoctoral fellow Jonathan Franklin.
On a recent blue sky day in a Malden park, graduate student Taylor Jones was collecting data. Jones, together with John Budney, the Wofsy lab's research engineer, had arrived early to set up the mobile spectrometer that examined the air column moving over the park. By comparing that with similar measurements taken upwind - roughly the direction of Harvard's Cambridge campus - researchers would be able to measure the change in methane and carbon dioxide as the air moved across the neighborhoods in between. By shifting locations and taking many measurements over the next several years, a mosaic of emissions across the region will emerge.
Jones and Budney had other equipment as well. A different spectrometer measured composition of the air at ground level, while other instruments measured wind speed and barometric pressure. Some instruments were mounted on a large, blimp-shaped balloon that was raised and lowered to provide a cross-section of the atmosphere within 330 feet of the ground.
“There's a lot of holes in our understanding of emissions,” said Jones, whose passion for building scientific instruments drew him into the research. “I'm trying to fill those holes by doing innovative types of measurements.”
Over the project's first months, the challenge has been to find enough sunny days to deploy the spectrometers regularly, Jones said. Another challenge has involved understanding the wind on days in the field, since upwind and downwind measurements are key to knowing what's going on in between.
“It's all about chasing the wind,” Jones said.
Find out more about Harvard's efforts to tackle climate change here.
This story was originally published in the Harvard Gazette on April 6, 2016.
Friday, April 15, 2016
Why President Barack Obama's Executive Order On Competition Is Anti-Competitive
Lessons from a post-9/11 world: Law School instructor advocates for torture survivors
Lecturer Deborah Popowski is leading the effort to hold psychologists accountable
Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer Deborah Popowski has led the effort to hold psychologists accountable for their involvement in torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Here she is seen inside Wasserstein Hall.
When Deborah Alejandra Popowski '08, was just beginning her studies at Harvard Law School, she learned a powerful lesson about the value and import of the law.
An American attorney representing a Guantanamo detainee spoke at an HLS event. The lawyer told of her client, a Saudi citizen in his early 20s, and of the regimen of inhuman treatment that he endured at the hands of U.S. military forces. For Popowski, the lawyer's testimony brought home the human dimension of torture.
“Everybody in law school was talking about concepts and the rule of law regarding torture,” Popowski said. “That was the first time that I had ever heard somebody talking about people.”
Ever since, she has tried to follow that example and tend the people.
Since 2009, when Popowski began working as a fellow at the HLS International Human Rights Clinic, she has advocated for torture survivors as part of a movement to seek accountability for U.S. torture through both state and international courts.
Popowski, who became an HLS clinical instructor in 2011, has focused on the role that psychologists played in the U.S. torture program authorized by the Bush administration and implemented as part of its “war on terror.”
As is widely known, psychologists helped design the CIA's “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which included water-boarding, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and religious and sexual humiliation of Muslim men and boys detained by U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Psychologists also participated in interrogations as advisers.
Popowski recalled an internal military report that documented an interrogation session in which a detainee was repeatedly slammed onto the floor and ended up spitting up blood, with a loose tooth, bruises, and rib pain.
“The psychiatrist who was present didn't say, 'You shouldn't be slamming him at all.' He recommended the slamming,” said Popowski. His “protection” of the man, she said, was to tell the interrogator to move chairs out of the way before slamming him again.
Examining the controversial participation of psychologists in the U.S. torture program, Popowski will take part in a panel on Wednesday with David Luban of Georgetown University Law Center.
“The official narrative was that psychologists were there to keep interrogations safe and ethical,” Popowski said. “But they were there not to protect detainees; they were there to calibrate harm.”
Widespread public criticism of the American Psychological Association (APA) for endorsing the U.S. program led the group last summer to prohibit its members from taking part in interrogations by military or intelligence services. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of psychologists from Guantanamo Bay.
For Popowski, both decisions are reasons to celebrate because they represent a landmark in the movement for reform and prevention within the association, whose call is to heal and do no harm.
An independent report last year commissioned by the APA concluded that the association had colluded with the Department of Defense inappropriately by aligning its ethics policies with military directives to protect the role of psychologists during interrogations they had reason to know were abusive. According to Popowski, this collusion enabled torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in violation of human rights and humanitarian law.
Although the report validated Popowski's position, she still worries about what she calls the U.S. government's unwillingness to hold accountable the military and civilian officials who were responsible for the program. She represented a group of Ohio residents-including psychologists, lawyers, a minister, and a veteran-who filed a complaint with that state's licensing board against Dr. Larry James for his role in Guantanamo. Other advocates presented evidence relating to Dr. James and other psychologists, alleging their involvement in torture, to licensing boards in Texas, New York, Louisiana, and Alabama.
In no case did a state board bring formal charges. Popowski said they offered “opaque, implausible, or seemingly pretextual justifications for their decisions” and “seemed to turn a blind eye” to credible evidence. All this, she said, highlights the lack of accountability for those who designed and implemented policies condoning torture. So for Popowski, the struggle is not over.
In her HLS classes and clinic, Popowski strives to teach students the effects of the legal practice on people's lives, an aspect that she believes is somewhat overlooked in law schools across the country. As part of the International Human Rights Clinic, she took students to Geneva, where they, along with Trudy Bond, a psychologist from Toledo, Ohio, presented the UN Committee Against Torture with the 2014 shadow report that they helped write. The committee concluded that the U.S. government should investigate senior officials, lawyers and other civilians responsible for their role in the program.
Students also participated in litigation and in other advocacy work that accompanied the legal action.
“We want lawyers and advocates who are compassionate and empathetic people,” she said. “They have to be able to understand the tremendous impact their policies, rules, and actions can have on people. It's an ethical question students have to wrestle with-what responsibilities they have as lawyers.”
Popowski feels optimistic about the future.
A granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Popowski was born in Argentina during a military dictatorship. She likes to tell her students that in 1999, when she was writing her bachelor's thesis on collective memory in Argentina, prospects for justice in cases of torture and human rights violations committed by the military junta were dim. Nearly a decade later, when she came back to HLS, Argentina had become an example of accountability for crimes of torture and forced disappearance.
“That's the way I like to think about this work,” she said. “You have to be ready to challenge your concept of what's possible and have a long-term imagination.”
This story was originally published in the Harvard Gazette on April 12, 2016.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
Petrie-Flom, 10 years on: Celebrating the future of health law and policy
Credit: Martha Stewart Judi Sorenson Flom, Philanthropist and widow of the late Joseph H. Flom, shared her late husband's vision for the Center during introductory remarks.
On March 29, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School celebrated its first decade and kicked off the next with a conference that focused on the future of health law and policy.
The day-long celebration featured a series of panel discussions on major trends, developments, and open questions in the fields of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.
Credit: Martha StewartHarvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen '03 and Holly Fernandez Lynch, faculty director and executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center.
The event was directed by Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen '03 and Holly Fernandez Lynch, faculty director and executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center. Alan Weil '89, Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, delivered the keynote address. Conference panelists included many health law experts who are prominent alumni of the Petrie-Flom fellowship program.
Since its founding ten years ago, the Center has grown from a small think tank designed to respond to the need for legal scholarship at the intersection of medicine, science, and law, to a leading research program that boasts a highly regarded post-doctoral fellowship program and a variety of sponsored research projects addressing research regulation and ethics, the health of professional football players, and more. The Center also hosts a prodigious number of conferences, workshops, and lectures, and a range of independent scholarship, including an academic journal on bioethics, a series of books on health law policy, and a prominent “Bill of Health” blog.
Credit: Martha StewartHarvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge '86 served as the Center's founding faculty director from 2005 to 2008.
In his opening remarks, Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge '86, who served as the Center's founding faculty director from 2005 to 2008, said one of the initial aims of the Center was to create more faculty interested in health law policy and bioethics. “Health law has a large entry barrier. There's a huge amount of technical knowledge you need,” he said. “When we began there was a relative shortage, not just at Harvard but elsewhere. The idea was that if we could jumpstart it by academic fellowships, we could not only get some good health law scholars here at Harvard, but seed the rest of the legal academy.”
Seventy-three academic and student fellows have participated in the program since its founding. Today, Einer noted, former Petrie-Flom fellows are teaching at top schools around the country and internationally, including MIT, UCLA, and the University of Cambridge. Both Cohen and Lynch, the Center's current leadership team, were part of the Petrie-Flom Center's inaugural fellowship class of 2006.
The late Joseph H. Flom, a successful corporate attorney and a founding partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, founded the Center in 2005, with the Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation. Petrie-Flom Benefactor Judi Sorenson Flom attended the anniversary celebration and shared her late husband's vision for the Center. “All philanthropy is personal,” she said. “Joe's desire to make things better was a product of three things: Love of the law, extraordinary talent and his personal story.” She said Flom wanted to found a center that positioned Harvard Law School at the forefront of tackling the complex issues facing health law policy and ethics. “Joe was an outsider and in this society, the law is the one instrument that can alter the status quo.”
Credit: Martha Stewart
Dean Martha Minow reflected on Flom's vision and the Center's 10 years of work in health law. She praised the bridges the Center has built within Harvard, and with policy and medical communities.
***
On the occasion of their 10th anniversary celebration and conference, the Petrie-Flom Center shared the reflections of a number of alumni from their student, academic, and senior fellowship programs who talked about the role that the Center played in shaping their careers and the role that it continues to play in their lives and research.
Panel 1: Health Care Coverage, Costs, and Fragmentation
Credit: Martha Stewart Boston University Law Professor Abigail Moncrieff and Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Robert Greenwald discuss health care costs and fragmentation.
Health care coverage, costs and fragmentation was the focus of conversation for the first panel, which featured Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge, founding director of the Petrie-Flom Center; Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Robert Greenwald, director of HLS's Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation; Allison Hoffman, a professor of law at UCLA and an academic fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center from 2008 to 2010; and Abigail Moncrieff, a professor of law at Boston University and an academic fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center from 2007 to 2009. The panel was moderated by Andrew Klaber MBA '09 JD '10, president and founder of Even Ground, an international nonprofit that annually provides support for children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS.
Credit: Martha Stewart [L-R] Andrew Klaber, president and founder of Even Ground; Allison Hoffman, a professor of law at UCLA; Harvard Law School Professor Einer Elhauge; and Harvard Law School Clinical Professor Robert Greenwald.
Panel 2: Bioethics and Law
A panel on on Bioethics and Law featured Harvard Law School Professor I. Glenn Cohen; Holly Fernandez Lynch, executive director of the Petrie-Flom Center; Michelle N. Meyer 06, assistant professor and director of Bioethics Policy at Clarkson University and Clarkson–Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and an academic fellow at Petrie Flom from 2010 to 2013; Candice Player '09, assistant professor of law at Northwestern University; Amanda C. Pustilnik, professor of law at University of Maryland and a senior fellow in law and applied neuroscience at the Petrie-Flom Center from 2014 to 2015; and Jeffrey Skopek, a lecturer in medical law, ethics and policy at the University of Cambridge and an academic fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center from 2011 to 2014. The panel was moderated by John McGoldrick '66, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and Zimmer Biomet Holdings.
Keynote: Closing the Gap Between Health Law and Health Policy
Alan Weil MPP/JD '89, editor-in-chief of “Health Affairs,” delivered the conference's keynote address. He discussed “Closing the gap between health law and health policy.” He previously served as the executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research and policy organization.
Panel 3: Health Innovation Policy and Regulating Novel Technology
Timo Minssen, an associate law professor at the University of Copenhagen and a 2014 Petrie-Flom visiting scholar; W. Nicholson Price II, an assistant professor of law University of New Hampshire School and a Petrie-Flom academic fellow from 2012 to 2014; Assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management Benjamin N. Roin '05, a Petrie-Flom academic fellow from 2006 to 2008, and a former Petrie-Flom faculty co-director; Rachel E. Sachs '13, a current academic fellow at Petrie- Flom, 2014-2016; and Melissa Wasserman, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and a Petrie-Flom academic fellow from 2009 to 2011. Neil Flanzraich '68, Cantex Pharmaceuticals, moderated.
Panel 4: Empirical Health Law
Panelists: Michael Frakes '05, an associate professor at Northwestern University School of Law and a Petrie-Flom fellow from 2009 to 2011; Rebecca Haffajee MPH/JD '06, a fellow in pharmaceutical policy research at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Institute, and a Petrie-Flom fellow from 2010 to 2011; Christopher T. Robertson '07, a professor of law at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law and a Petrie-Flom fellow from 2008 to 2010; Kathryn Zeiler, a professor at Boston University School of Law and a 2010 Petrie-Flom fellow. Moderator: Dennis Langer '83, Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Exchanging Marijuana 'Gifts' For 'Donations' Is Not, Alas, Legal In D.C.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
An Uber For Women May Work (Or Fail)
Aya Saed named a 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow
Harvard Law Student Aya Saed '17 was among 30 recipients selected to receive the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants. This year's recipients, selected from a pool of 1,443 applicants, were chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to U.S. society, culture, or their academic field.
Saed, who is pursuing a J.D. at Harvard Law School and a master's in public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Sudanese parents. Her family migrated to the United States in 1999 to escape political and economic turmoil at home. She hopes to pursue a career in litigation and community organizing in Muslim and Muslim-American communities to challenge national security policies that violate civil rights and civil liberties.
“I am grateful to be named a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. I look forward to building a community of friends and mentors who are as passionate about our new-found home as they are about our unique coming-of-age experiences as new Americans,” she said. “The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans is special in that it celebrates and nurtures the transformative journeys of people and ideas. This is especially profound given the political crisis around immigration globally, wherein millions of people are exposed to violence and drastic risks in hopes of finding opportunities elsewhere.”
Daisy M. Soros and Paul Soros, both Hungarian immigrants, founded the Fellowship program in 1997 and have contributed $75 million to the organization's charitable trust. More than 550 Fellowships have been awarded over the program's 18-year history.
The 2016 Fellows, who are 30 or younger, come from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. “The Fellows are from all different countries and socio-economic and religious backgrounds, and they have come to the United States in a myriad of ways – some were born here, while others are asylum seekers, refugees, and green card holders – but they all bring excellence to the table,” said Craig Harwood, who directs the Fellowship program. “They demonstrate that immigrants, regardless of their background, continue to be a critical part of our nation.”
Saed, inspired by youth-led protest movements in the U.S. and abroad, spent two summers curating technologies for activists during the Arab-Spring protests as a Google intern. She helped to launch the Speak2Tweet product in 2012, which allowed protesters across Sudan and Ethiopia to tweet using their analog phones despite sporadic Internet connectivity.
As a Quest Bridge Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, Saed conducted independent research on Islamic finance, served as chair of an umbrella organization for student groups of the African Diaspora, and was a columnist for “The Daily Pennsylvanian.” Upon graduation, she worked with the Asian Women's Leadership University Project as a Henry Luce Scholar in Malaysia.
At HLS, Saed is a student-attorney in the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. She is also president of the Muslim Law Students Association, and a research assistant to Professor Intisar Rabb.
In addition to receiving up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice, each new Fellow joins the prestigious community of recipients from past years, which includes U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti, and Oscar health insurance co-founder Kevin Nazemi.
In addition to receiving up to $90,000 in funding for the graduate program of their choice, each new Fellow joins the prestigious community of recipients from past years, which includes U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, leading Ebola researcher Pardis Sabeti, and Oscar health insurance co-founder Kevin Nazemi. Harvard Law faculty members Jeannie Suk '02 and Daphna Renan were also Soros fellows.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
The Gun Industry Says It Has Grown 158% Since Obama Took Office
Monday, April 11, 2016
The Next Load Of Free Stuff From Washington: Diapers
Saturday, April 9, 2016
The Progressive Policy Institute's Push to Cut Bureaucracy
Friday, April 8, 2016
Koen Lenaerts LL.M. '78 on leading the EU's highest court
President of the European Court of Justice Koen Lenaerts LL.M. '78 keeps a photo engraving of Austin Hall in his home office in Leuven, Belgium. The image reminds him of the course he took from then HLS Professor Stephen Breyer '64 (a 2L named John G. Roberts was also in the class), his LL.M. thesis with Duncan Kennedy, and hours spent perusing newspapers from around the world at Out of Town News in the Square. HLS is also now the alma mater of one of his six daughters.
Lenaerts is both a scholar and a jurist. Professor of European law at the University of Leuven, he has published dozens of articles across several languages. He is a “living encyclopedia of European law,” says Tamara Perišin, an HLS lecturer on law this year.
Although Lenaerts was elected president of the European Court of Justice in October, his judicial service goes back decades. As president, he coordinates judicial case management, presiding over the Grand Chamber, a 15-judge bench that takes on cases of the highest constitutional importance. He also directs the operation of the court, which works in 24 languages, and is its representative to the outside world. HLS Professor William Alford '77, vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, has known Lenaerts since the Belgian professor first returned to HLS to teach a class in 1989. “He is extremely brilliant. He is very thoughtful. He is a very calm person. He is very wise,” said Alford, adding that the court is especially lucky to have someone of Lenaerts' talents at a time when the EU is facing many challenges. During Lenaerts' three-year term, the ECJ will likely hear arguments on issues ranging from terrorism to migration to environmental protection. In a Q&A, Lenaerts spoke about his time at HLS as well as the workings of the court.
What do you see as some of the challenges that will face the court during your presidency?
KL: An ongoing challenge in the years ahead will be to deliver case law which upholds the law, including the common law of Europe, and which is cogent and persuasive and wins hearts and minds.
The EU is both a common level of governance and a legal order. Europe now-as it has been in the past-is facing significant issues. Even if member states are dealing with extremely sensitive, highly political situations, they can, nevertheless, always count on the legal discourse to release some of the pressure, and finally at the legal level have the problem settled with a level of legitimacy and acceptance on the merits of the arguments.
When a crisis occurs, there is first a political response and then a judicial response. I should note that the ECJ does not have the political question doctrine. We must decide all the cases which have been validly brought to us. We have compulsory jurisdiction on sensitive issues covered by substantive rules of European law.
Your areas of expertise include antitrust. Could you say something about the deference granted to administrative agencies regarding antitrust in the EU compared toAmerica?
Well, that's a rather complicated matter, because the procedures are very different in Europe and in the United States. In the U.S., antitrust matters are brought by the Department of Justice in federal courts. In Europe, the European Commission, as an administrative authority, fights infringements and imposes sanctions-the gravity of which can be immense. The judicial review of these sanctions is quite in-depth, given the heavy sanction.
On issues of technical assessment, European judicial review adopts a more deferential reasonableness test. Courts have particularly deferred to the Commission for decisions related to prospective assessments (e.g. merger decisions).
In crafting your opinions, do you consider how judicial officials around the world will interpret them?
Yes, I would say the members of our court do it almost naturally. You go a few hundred kilometers in whatever direction, and you see another language spoken and another tradition. The comparative law method is inherent in our way of functioning.
In the spirit of Justice Breyer [author of the book “The Court and the World”], our court strives to be aware of what's going on in the world. For example, there is very often extensive analysis of U.S. case law for issues that have already arisen there. Sometimes we reason in parallel, and sometimes we explain why we can't follow that precedent.
How has your time at HLS influenced your teaching and jurisprudence?
Europe is a project for consolidation of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, respect for fundamental rights, and mutual respect and equality between its people. Uniting in diversity means striking the proper balance between (a) one's own identity, on the one hand, and (b) unity for all those policy matters which can only meaningfully be dealt with at the level of the European Union as a whole, rather than separately by each state. Oddly enough, I learned a great deal about this in Professor Tribe's U.S. constitutional law class. He taught about a system of separate and divided powers to address ongoing issues across a diverse jurisdiction.
From Stephen Breyer, I learned the link between the work in the classroom and the work in the courtroom. What you do in the classroom is discuss cases, how the arguments were put to the judges, and evaluate the arguments based on hypothetical variations. We often do the same in the courtroom. We dialogue with the parties appearing in front of us in order to crystallize the point of the case to its inflection point, where the case becomes more clear.
Justice Breyer's “The Court and the World” emphasized that the role of the judge is to decide cases, not to put forward big theories. Starting to develop big theories beyond what is needed to solve the case at hand-that's beyond the mandate from a separation of powers perspective for the judges. As a court, we aim to come to the right outcome-the right solution in that particular case. I explain concepts like the American case or controversy requirement often to my colleagues at the court and to outside visitors.