World's Biggest 25 Oil & Gas Companies In 2016

World's Biggest 25 Oil & Gas Companies In 2016

Without Matching Bone Marrow Donors, 3,000 Americans Die Each Year -- This Movie Wants To Change That

Although the movie is a work of fiction, it's inspired by true events. Only 2% of the population is actually on the national donor registry, causing frequent shortages.

Dean Minow named to advisory council for ABA's new Center for Innovation

Credit: Justin Ide/Harvard University News Office

The American Bar Association has announced that Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor of Law, will serve on the advisory council for its newly formed Center for Innovation in Chicago. The ABA has also announced the names of the governing council for the center, which will also have three special advisors, including two former ABA presidents.

“At a time when access to and trust in traditional justice institutions are strikingly inadequate, new technologies and institutional reforms offer real promise,” said Minow. “I'm honored to take part as the ABA's Center for Innovation contributes to these efforts.”

Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where her courses include civil procedure, constitutional law, family law, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.

The Center for Innovation was designed to position the ABA as a leader and architect of the legal profession's efforts to increase access to justice and improve the delivery of services to the public through innovative programs and initiatives. It will serve as a resource for ABA members, maintaining an inventory of the ABA's innovation efforts as well as the efforts of the domestic and international legal services community. The center will also operate a program of innovative fellowships to work with other professionals, such as technologists, entrepreneurs and design professionals, to create models that improve the justice system.

“Extraordinary talent has been recruited from the tech and design worlds to join forces with respected leaders of the bar to govern the Center,” said Linda A. Klein, president of the ABA. “This unprecedented collaboration will assure that out of the Center will come a surge in legal services delivery innovations that will benefit the public for decades to come.”

The Center was created based on a recommendation from the ABA's Commission on the Future of Legal Services. Andrew Perlman, dean of Suffolk University Law School, will chair the governing council. Janet Jackson, formerly the director of the ABA's Office of the President, will serve as managing director of the Center.

The governing and advisory council members include leaders from the legal profession and business community, the judiciary, and legal education, as well as young lawyers, technology experts and other legal service innovators, including non-lawyers.

The governing council members are:

• Ramon A. Abadin, partner at Sedgwick in Miami

• Nathan D. Alder, attorney with Christensen & Jensen in Salt Lake City


• Chad Burton, CEO of CuroLegal in Dayton, Ohio


• Karl Camillucci, attorney at Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP in Chicago


• Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Cisco in San Jose, Calif.


• Margaret Hagan, fellow at Stanford Law School Center on the Legal Profession


• Dana M. Hrelic partner at Horton, Shield & Knox in Hartford, Ct.


• Mary McQueen, president of the National Center for State Courts in Williamsburg, Va.


• Camille Nelson, dean of the Washington College of Law American University in Washington, D.C.


• Rebecca L. Sandefur, faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago


• Marty Smith, founding director of Metalure, Inc. in Bainbridge Island, Wash.


• Hon. Eric Washington, chief judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals

Members of the advisory council are:

• Hon. Ann Aiken, district judge of the U.S. District Court of Oregon in Eugene


• Lisa Foster, director of the Access to Justice in Washington, D.C.


• Jordan Furlong, principal with Law21 in Ottawa


• Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass.


• Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York


• Alex “Sandy” Pentland, director at the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamic Labs in Cambridge, Mass.


• Daniel Rodriguez, dean of Northwestern Pritzker Law School


• James J. Sandman, president of the Legal Services Corporation in Washington, D.C.


• Ed Walters, CEO of FastCase in Washington, D.C.


• Denis Weil, innovation executive in Chicago

The center also will have three special advisors:

• William C. Hubbard, partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough and former ABA president


• Judy Perry Martinez, attorney in New Orleans and chair, of the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal services


• William H. Neukom, chairman of the World Justice Project and former ABA president

Minow serves as vice chair of the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation. She was recently honored by the Sargent Shriver Center on Poverty Law with the Sargent Shriver Equal Justice Award for her significant contributions to the movement for equal justice for low-income individuals.

Green Activists Seek Influence Over Pensioner Retirement Assets

BY BERNIE MCGINN AND MCCOY PENNINGER -- Denying our most dedicated civil servants access to oil and gas equities denies them an important investment opportunity.

The makings of Merrick Garland

Supreme Court nominee tells new law students it doesn't take wizardry to thrive, just 'good choices'

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Addressing the incoming class at Harvard Law School on Friday, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland '77, recalled how, as a federal prosecutor, he helped convict the Oklahoma City bombers and the Unabomber, in cases that garnered him national attention and acclaim.

He also shared plenty of not-so-famous details about his life, such as his addiction to his iPad, his passion for volunteerism, and his adoration of J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series.

As a member of Harvard's Board of Overseers, Garland, 63, was even a force behind Rowling's selection as the University's 2008 Commencement speaker.

He related that when one of his daughters was young, she was having trouble reading.

“The thing that got her over the hump was being read the 'Harry Potter' books. And then having her read the 'Harry Potter' books to us,” he said. “I recommended that J.K. Rowling get an honorary degree, which she did - thus paying her back.”

Rowling's resulting speech remains one of the most popular of the past decade, accruing nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube.

Garland, who is currently chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia - often called the second-most important court in the country - was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama '91, in March following the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, LL.B. '60.

But with Obama in his lame-duck year, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sets the Senate's agenda, has declined to begin Garland's confirmation process, saying it should be up to the next elected president to fill Scalia's seat.

Garland, who chatted onstage with Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow in front of hundreds of students, most in just their second day of orientation, said nothing about his nomination to the top court, or about the partisan national debates over the court vacancy.

But in his talk with the dean, who described her guest as “one of my heroes,” Garland showed self-deprecating humor, a sharp memory, and a sense of compassion.

Appropriately, Minow started their 50-minute question-and-answer session by asking Garland what he remembered about being a student at the Law School.

“Unfortunately, my recollect is that 'The Paper Chase' had just come out the year before, so all of the prospective One L's [first-year students] en masse went to the theater in Harvard Square and were scared out of our minds,” he said, referring to the 1973 movie that starred John Houseman as a demanding Harvard Law professor. “That's pretty much how I remember Harvard Law School.”

During his career, as Minow noted, Garland has been a prosecutor, a private litigator, a negotiator, a teacher (including briefly at the Law School, which he described as “the hardest job I've ever had”), and a mentor, holding three high posts in the U.S. Department of Justice before being nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1997 by President Bill Clinton.

As a federal prosecutor, Garland handled everything from white-collar fraud and espionage cases to helping prepare security for the Olympics to prosecuting Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

“My first case involved a housing project that had been taken over by a violent gang from New York. Mothers and grandmothers, terrorized,” he said. “We had to earn their trust, their belief that we would succeed and get these people arrested and convicted and they wouldn't come back and kill them. It's enormously different than what you do in a law firm.”

As a prosecutor in the Oklahoma City domestic terrorist attack, Garland recounted vivid details of the trail of clues that investigators followed, then paused to compose himself before describing what it was like to stand before the twisted and pancaked remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where 168 people were killed.

Because Oklahoma City's courthouse had also been damaged in the blast, the principal defendant's initial hearing was held at a nearby Air Force base. Reporters were gathered outside, but were being refused entrance, Garland remembered.

“I told them, 'We're not going to have the first investigation of domestic terrorism and conspiracy in secret.' So they went out and let the press in,” he said.

Asked how he would advise the Class of 2019 as it studies and looks to the future, Garland focused on the practical.

He said that while it's important to plan - and only take on a mortgage you can afford - one never knows what will happen in a career, so don't be too set on personal goals. Garland himself originally set out to be an antitrust lawyer.

There will be times when work will be overwhelming, Garland said, and times when it will not.

“You have to think of your life not as flex time, but as a flex life,” he said. “No one's promising you it's going to be a vacation. This week, maybe!”

And he urged students to step beyond law school and volunteer, as he has done, tutoring elementary students in reading in the D.C. area, and helping “the Xerox guy” at his former law firm get through college. “He's now a lawyer,” Garland said proudly.

“Some parts will come easy, and some parts will come hard. Don't get too down on yourself about this: It's just the way it is,” he said in closing. “One of my favorite lines from 'Harry Potter' is Dumbledore saying to Harry, 'It's not what your abilities are that make you what you are, it's your choices.' So make good choices.”

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This article was originally published in the Harvard Gazette on August 27, 2016.

The S.E.C. Shoves The U.S.A. Further Into The P.C. Swamp

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White advocates a rule to compel corporations to publicize "diversity" information about the members of their boards of directors, but such a rule would be harmful to business, substituting the will of bureaucrats for the judgment of the stockholders.

ABA names Harvard Law Record best law school newspaper

Every year, the American Bar Association presents the Law School Newspaper Award to the best student-run newspaper organization at an ABA-approved law school. This year, The Harvard Law Record was honored to receive this coveted award.

Since 1946, The Harvard Law Record has been an independent and nonpartisan paper, whose contributors have included President Barack Obama '91; Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist; consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader '58; and writers who have gone on to win Pulitzer, O. Henry, and PEN Prizes.

The Record serves as a forum for students, professors, and alumni to debate opinions spanning the political and ideological spectrum. During the past academic year, the Record covered a number of campus developments, including student activism addressing issues of race and diversity, and the debate over the proposed retirement of the Harvard Law Shield because of its historical ties to a family of slaveholders.

“I'm especially proud that during such a controversial year, our team maintained an ethos of objectivity, fairness, and professionalism,” said Michael Shammas '16, Harvard Law Record 2015-2016 editor-in-chief.  “Serving as editor-in-chief was, simultaneously, my most rewarding and demanding experience at Harvard Law School. Were it not for my duties on the Record, I wouldn't have met so many fascinating students with such immensely divergent views on politics and law. By serving as a forum for students of all ideologies, I hope the Record continues to enrich our campus debate and to foster attempts not merely to listen, but also to understand.”

Lindsay Church '16, who served as The Record's co-editor-in-chief during the 2015-2016 academic year, said: “Throughout the past year, The Record has fostered a community that encourages viewpoints from across the political spectrum. Our staff recognizes the importance in meaningful debate over pressing issues both within and beyond the HLS community. Despite a range of ideological stances, our underlying goal remains the same: to maintain an unwavering commitment to open discussion and to invite students, faculty, and staff to have essential dialogue that goes beyond conversations in the classroom. We are honored to be recognized by the ABA and hope The Record's role in these important conversations continues for years to come.”

The Record's staff, officers, and directors are currently-enrolled students at Harvard Law School and volunteers who do not receive academic credit for their work. The print edition of The Record is published bi-monthly and distributed to the HLS community of 1,800 students, faculty, and staff. The Record's online articles and opinion pieces and opinion pieces frequently reach tens of thousands of readers, inside and outside of the HLS community. 

During the 2015-16 academic year, The Record's stories were referenced in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Above the Law, the American Lawyer, NPR, and Fox News, among others.

 Its current editors-in-chief are Jim An '18 and Brianna Rennix '18. 

The GMO Labeling Fight Is Not Industry Versus Consumers

BY STEVE ANSOLABAHERE AND JACOB E. GERSEN -- To the extent that there is scientific consensus on anything these days, there is a pretty good one that there is nothing about foods containing GE materials that renders them more risky or unhealthy than their non-GE counterparts.

LIVE WEBCAST: The Honorable Merrick Garland '77 addresses HLS Class of 2019

Credit: Martha Stewart U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland '77.

Chief Judge Merrick Garland '77-President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court-has been very much involved in the life of Harvard Law School since receiving his degree from HLS nearly four decades ago.

On Friday, August 26, at 5:00 p.m., Garland will speak to the incoming class of first-year Harvard Law students as part of their orientation program. Garland, who currently serves as chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, will participate in a conversation with Dean Martha Minow, to discuss his legal career, reflect on his own experiences at HLS, and offer advice to the class of 2019. 

Watch live here: http://media.video.harvard.edu/core/live/hls-live.html

Big Labor Tries To Eliminate Right-To-Work By Lawsuit

Unions have launched a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of state Right-to-Work statues on the absurd ground that they amount to an uncompensated "taking" of union property. Despite its weak argument, there is a distressingly good chance that the case will succeed since it's in the notoriously leftist Ninth Circuit.

The Federal Government Is Trying To Grab 140 Square Miles Of Private Land In Texas

The federal government is trying to take as much as 140 square miles of deeded land in Texas from ranchers who've owned and have paid taxes on the property for generations.

This Election Could Be Hacked, And We Need To Plan For It

BY DAVID DAMATO -- The federal government also has a responsibility to start treating election security as national security, and to share national threat intelligence and countermeasures with states and local governments.

Goodbye Illegal Indiana Vaping Law

Some much-needed sanity was just injected into the debate over Indiana's nonsensical, anti-competitive vaping law . This is a major win for vapers everywhere and a blow to state-enforced monopolies. In a preliminary injunction ruling issued on August 19 by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Judge [...]

How The Next President Can Use Executive Power To Jumpstart Economic Growth On Day One (Part 2)

The Federal Register contained over 7,700 rules and regulationsamong an all-time-record 73,000 pages the yearPresident Reagan was elected. One response was his Executive Order 12291 calling for enhanced cost-benefit analysis, and central review of agency's regulations by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). As the prior essay noted, [...]

Tomiko Brown-Nagin on Constance Baker Motley and the 'American experience'

This spring, on the occasion of her appointment as the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law, Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin delivered a lecture titled, “On Being First: Judge Constance Baker Motley and Social Activism in the American Century.” Brown-Nagin's talk focused on 20th century social reform through the life of Constance Baker Motley, an African-American civil rights activist, lawyer, judge, state senator, borough president - and protégé of Thurgood Marshall - who was called the “civil rights queen” for her litigation work during the 1940s and 1950s.

“Over seven decades of public life, she was a part of the waves of citizen-led activism that truly changed this country, changed our law and changed our policy,” said Brown-Nagin. “It's because her life was so entwined with the century's changes, that Motley can be understood to represent the American experience.”

Credit: Phil FarnsworthTomiko Brown-Nagin is currently at work on a biography of Constance Baker Motley, “The Only Woman in the Courtroom: Constance Baker Motley and Twentieth-Century Struggles for Equality.”

Also a history professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, Brown-Nagin is an award-winning legal historian and expert in constitutional law and education law and policy. Her 2011 book, “Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement,” won the Bancroft Prize in U.S. History, the highest honor awarded annually to a work in the field of history. It also won the John Phillip Reid Book Award, American Society Legal History and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award, Non-fiction.

A sought-after teacher, she leads classes in American Legal History: Law and Social Reform, Constitutional Law, a Legal History Workshop, and a class on Topics in Education Law and Policy. She is also co-director of the recently established Law and History Program of Study at HLS.

Along with HLS Professor Gerald Neuman, she is co-editor of “Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of the American Empire,” published in 2015. It originated in a Harvard Law School conference, and grew into a powerful volume in which leading legal authorities examine the history and legacy of the insular cases, which are tinged with outdated notions of race and empire, and explore possible solutions for the dilemmas they created.

The endowed chair was named in honor of the late Daniel Perkins Smith Paul '48, a leading First Amendment and environmental lawyer who successfully argued Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, a major press-freedom case before the Supreme Court.

Brown-Nagin is currently at work on a forthcoming biography of Constance Baker Motley, to be titled “The Only Woman in the Courtroom: Constance Baker Motley and Twentieth- Century Struggles for Equality.”

How The Next President Can Use Executive Power To Jumpstart Economic Growth On Day One (Part 1)

After what will have been eight years of debate over executive overreach and Barack Obama's “pen and phone,”and it will be time for "liberty's meataxe" when it comes to government programs. Regulatory liberalization, when it ever happened, has been bipartisan and popular. There was transportation and financial liberalization in the late [...]

Investigating injustice: Michael Jung on his work with UNICEF in Bangkok, Thailand

Photo courtesy of Michael Jung

The Chayes International Public Service Fellowships provide Harvard Law School students with the opportunity to spend eight weeks engaged in international public service within the governments of developing nations and those making difficult transitions to peace, stability, and democracy, as well as the inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations that support them. This year, nineteen students were awarded 2016 Chayes International Public Service Fellowships for work in 13 countries.

In a recent post on the HLS International Legal Studies blog, Michael Jung '18 wrote about his experience working with UNICEF in Bangkok, Thailand, researching and gaining an overview of the current and future landscape of juvenile justice in the region.

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Working at the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office (EAPRO) in Bangkok has been a phenomenal learning experience. My work primarily deals with violence against children and justice for children in the 28 countries that are overseen by EAPRO.

I've been writing and conducting extensive legal research and legislative and policy analyses. It's been fascinating to observe the incredibly diverse legal frameworks on children and juvenile justice, and particularly exciting to see the legislative reforms and initiatives in recent and upcoming months.

On top of the respectable mandate of UNICEF, every person in our office is inspirational, and my supervisor is simply fantastic with profound expertise and experience in this field. I already feel as though I have been with UNICEF for years.

I recently returned from a UNICEF mission to Timor-Leste that was aimed at better understanding the landscape of juvenile justice and better strategizing the efforts of UNICEF in the country. It was an extraordinary opportunity to visit a prison facility and engage with the incarcerated young persons, meet with the legal drafter of the forthcoming laws on children, and speak with various actors in the system including ministry officials, prosecutors, and legal aid organizations.

In Bangkok, I was able to visit a juvenile vocational training center for boys and assist with a juvenile justice meeting attended by representatives of the 10 ASEAN countries and other entities in the region. I also had the occasion of visiting the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok with my three HLS colleagues here and had some interesting discussions with two political officers, one dealing with human rights and another dealing with security, cybersecurity, and issues in the deep south of Thailand.

Bangkok is a wonderful place to be, especially given the number of organizations and regional bodies in the city, and my collaboration with various individuals has led to some thrilling opportunities in the months to come. The weather is hot, but that is exactly the way I like it, and I love the district I live in (the older part of the city).

I couldn't have asked for a better summer, and I look forward to seeing the types of work I will be conducting going forward!

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This post was originally published on the Harvard Law School International Legal Studies blog on July 20, 2016.

Legal Ethics, Laurence Tribe And Donald Trump

Has a famous law professor just wallowed in ethical mire because of his dislike of Donald Trump?

FDA Makes It Harder To Quit Smoking

Good luck smokers who are trying to quit cigarettes-you are going to need it . Parts of the Food and Drug Administration's so-called “deeming regulations,” which placed vaping products under its tobacco control authority, have just gone into effect. As Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, wrote [...]

Berkman Klein Center announces 2016-2017 community

A number of new fellows, faculty associates, and affiliates will join the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University for the 2016-2017 academic year.

“What better way to embark on our new beginning as the Berkman Klein Center than to welcome this incredible group of colleagues from different parts of the world, renewing our commitment to collaboration and mutual learning across boundaries,” said the Center's Executive Director Urs Gasser LL.M. '03.

This cohort brings a focus on the human stakes and values within dynamic technologies and systems. “Our fellows bring unprecedentedly diverse backgrounds, along so many dimensions,” Jonathan Zittrain '95, the co-founder of the Berkman Klein Center. “And each shares a commitment to seeing modern technology developed and applied in the public interest - whose definition is itself thoughtfully debated.”

The class of fellows will primarily work in Cambridge, Massachusetts, alongside Berkman Klein faculty, students, and staff, as a vibrant community of research and practice. Honoring the networked ethos at the heart of the Center, faculty associates and affiliates from institutions the world over will actively participate as well. These relationships, as well as the countless fruitful engagements with alumni, partners, interns, and other colleagues, are fundamental to the Berkman Klein Center's work and identity, and serve to increase the capacity of the field and generate opportunities for lasting impact.

The Berkman Klein Center's Manager of Community Programs Rebecca Tabasky said, “As they spend time together and become invested in each others' development and successes, our fellows make magic at the intersections of their broad range of expertise, perspectives, methods, and pursuits.”

As written in last year's report on our fellowship program, the Center endeavors to “create a protocol, a culture, a spirit that puts the emphasis on being open, being kind, being good listeners, being engaged, being willing to learn from one another.”

Joining the community in 2016-2017 as Berkman Klein fellows:

Ifeoma Ajunwa recently received her Ph.D. at Columbia University and is a law professor at the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. While at the Berkman Klein Center, she will work on her forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press, “The Quantified Worker,” among other projects related to privacy and antidiscrimination.   website   twitter

Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist, author of “Calm Technology,” and is the former co-founder of Geoloqi and CyborgCamp. Case will focus her research on how the shape of the web can create spaces of depression or creation.   website   twitter

Yasodara Córdova is an industrial designer, developer, co-founder of the Calango Hackerspace, member of the Coding Rights Collaborative Council, and member of the Open Knowledge Brazil Advisory Council. She will explore the preservation of online non-regulated spaces as windowless rooms for freedom of expression.   website   twitter

Kate Coyer is the director of the Civil Society and Technology Project at Central European University's Center for Media, Data and Society in the School of Public Policy. She will research the role of Internet companies in responding to violent extremism online and the impacts on privacy and freedom of expression, and continue her work supporting access to communication for refugees.   website   twitter

John DeLong will focus on cybersecurity research from a technology compliance & oversight perspective and will specifically support the Berklett Cybersecurity initiative.   website

Mailyn Fidler is a scholar and advocate studying the exercise of power in the Internet society. She focuses on Internet legislation in developing countries, grassroots protests against government surveillance, and international politics and law relating to surveillance technologies and practices. She was a Marshall Scholar and studied international relations at Oxford University.   twitter

Sue Gardner is executive-in-residence at Pierre Omidyar's First Look, and is the former longtime executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. Sue's work with the Berkman Klein Center will focus on sustainability in the nonprofit tech sector, with a particular emphasis on Internet freedom tools and anti-surveillance work.   website   twitter

Kishonna L. Gray is a visiting assistant professor in Women & Gender Studies and Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT, and is the founder of the Critical Gaming Lab housed in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. She will focus on the punishment of Blackness in digital gaming culture, exploring it as a part of a hybrid state racialization that goes beyond mere visual symbols.  website   twitter

Natalie Gyenes works at the intersection of health and human rights, and will conduct research with the Berkman Klein Center and the MIT Media Lab Center for Civic Media. She will focus on how digital media portrays and influences issues of global health equity and access, human rights and social norms, and will explore how Media Cloud can be more useful for non-profits and intergovernmental organizations.

Elizabeth Hansen is a Ph.D. candidate in Organizational Behavior and Sociology at Harvard Business School and a senior research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She will explore the re-emergence of podcasting as an open format and growing media industry.   website  twitter

Nani Jansen is a human rights lawyer specialized in strategic litigation and freedom of expression. She will focus on how multidisciplinary teams can better work together in internet-related litigation efforts.  website   twitter

Dean Jansen is the co-founder of Amara, a project focused on accessibility, inclusion, and modeling a different kind of on-demand economy. Dean will explore, and possibly integrate, shared decision-making models and other practices, from the world of cooperative businesses, into Amara's crowd-work based business.   website

Jonas Kaiser is an associated researcher at the Chair of Political Communication at Zeppelin University and at Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, and is interested in the networked public sphere, digital methods and political communication. At the Berkman Klein Center he will focus on right-wing populist movements online from a trans-national perspective.   website   twitter

Rachel Kalmar is a data scientist at the intersection of health and hardware, and holds the world record for number of wearable sensors worn continuously. She will research barriers and enablers to data sharing within and across organizations.   website   twitter

Simin Kargar is a human rights lawyer with specific focus on media and communication laws and policies in Iran. She will continue her examination of the legal and sociological aspects of new technologies, as well as politics and mechanisms of counteracting online tools and communities.   twitter

Yarden Katz, a fellow in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, will explore the politics and culture of sharing in biomedical science, and ways of rethinking the biomedical commons.   website   twitter

Chun-Hao Kuo is a prosecutor in New Taipei District Prosecutors Office of the Ministry of Justice in Taiwan. He will research the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and how international law and Taiwan's domestic law interact, especially in the field of cybercrime.

David F. Lindsay, an associate professor at Monash Law School, Australia, will focus his research on building better understanding of public rights in copyright law and on the legitimacy of copyright and privacy law regimes that restrict access to offshore content.   website

An Xiao Mina is director of product at Meedan and an independent researcher and writer. She will study the impact of language barriers in our technology stack as the internet extends into diverse communities around the world, and will continue her work on a book about internet memes and global social movements.   website   twitter

Crystal Nwaneri, a J.D. Candidate at Harvard Law School, will study how applying existing laws online impacts access to content, and gender and minority dynamics, as individuals interact in online environments.   twitter

Grif Peterson, the learning lead for Peer 2 Peer University, will continue his work developing Learning Circles: in-person study groups for people who want to take online courses together, in-person, at libraries and other community centers.   website   twitter

Karin Pettersson, the political editor-in-chief at Aftonbladet, Scandinavia's biggest daily newspaper, will study how extreme right-wing and racist movements use digital platforms to reach audiences and how this affects the work of traditional media. Karin is the 2016-2017 Nieman-Berkman Klein Fellow in Journalism Innovation.   twitter

Jonathan Sun, a comedian, architect, engineer, playwright, and doctoral student in the Department of Urban Studies at MIT, will study how online communities use humor and language to influence the spread of ideas, and how social media is changing the way we use the city.   website   twitter

Jamie Susskind is a British barrister and writer. He will research and write about the future of political ideas.   website   twitter

Erica Tennyson is a Cambridge-based attorney representing technology startups. She will explore the interplay of ethics and the early stage investment process.

Micky Tripathi is the CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, a non-profit organization specializing in solving policy, technical, business, and legal issues related to digitizing health care delivery. He will focus on developing models for nationwide interoperability of electronic medical record systems.  website   twitter

Paola Villarreal is a self taught systems programmer/data scientist that works with the ACLU of Massachusetts on social justice projects that heavily rely on open technology and data. She will focus on The Data for Justice project which aims to strengthen access to justice and reduce inequality by developing data tools that inform the work of advocates, activists, community organizers, lawyers, and journalists and their communities.   website   twitter

Meng Weng Wong is a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and computer scientist currently working on Legalese.com, a LegalTech startup building client-facing legal applications based on a formal language for computational law. Recently a visiting fellow at the University of Venice, Meng has lived in Philadelphia, Palo Alto, and Singapore.   website   twitter

New faculty associates in 2016-2017 include:

Lionel Brossi, David Cox, Christian Fieseler, Tarleton Gillespie, Christoph Graber, Joshua Greene, Sharon Harper, David Malan, Thomas Margoni, James Mickens, Colin Rhinesmith, Benjamin Sachs, and Jessica Silbey

New affiliates in 2016-2017 include:

Gameli Adzaho, Scott Bradner, Ivo da Motta Azevedo Correa, Nighat Dad, Mariel Garcia Montes, Stephanie Hankey, Adi Kamdar, Michael Kende, Cheryl McGrath, Matt Olsen, Jessica Polka, Noopur Raval, Lauren Scholz, Ryan Shapiro, James Shulman, Gosia Stergios, Anke Sterzing, and Don Tapscott

The Berkman Klein Center remains proud of and grateful to the following returning community members who will retain affiliations in the coming year.

Returning as fellows:

Ellery Biddle, Ken Carson, Sandra Cortesi, Jack Cushman, Kate Darling, Mary Gray, Ben Green, Samer Hassan, Felipe Heusser, Rosemary Leith, Andres Lombana, Patrick Murck, Sarah Newman, John Palfrey, Leah Plunkett, Hal Roberts, Bruce Schneier, Ben Sobel, Dave Talbot, Zach Tumin, and Alexandra Wood

Returning as faculty associates:

Virgilio Almeida, Meryl Alper, Chinmayi Arun, Geanne Rosenberg Belton, Susan Benesch, Fernando Bermejo, Herbert Burkert, Sasha Costanza-Chock, Rebecca Richman Cohen, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Primavera De Filippi, Juan Carlos de Martin, Jens Drolshammer, Niva Elkin-Koren, Mayo Fuster Morell, Eric Gordon, Shane Greenstein, Eldar Haber, Benjamin Mako Hill, Joichi Ito, Malavika Jayaram, Dariusz Jemielniak, Rey Junco, Leyla Keser, Dorothea Kleine, Beth Kolko, Harry Lewis, Catharina Maracke, Claire McCarthy, Nagla Rizk, Ricarose Roque, Cynthia Rudin, Brittany Seymour, Aaron Shaw, Clay Shirky, Alexander Trechsel, Lokman Tsui, Zeynep Tufekci, Effy Vayena, Josephine Wolff, and Dorothy Zinberg

Returning as affiliates:

Olivier Alais, Kendra Albert, Gerrit Beger, Doreen Bogdan, Griffin Boyce, Catherine Bracy, Amy Brand, Maria Paz Canales Loebel, Tim Davies, Shannon Dosemagen, Andy Ellis, Bruce Etling, Camille Francois, Nathan Freitas, Nicola Greco, Jason Griffey, Paulina Haduong, Jerome Hergueux, Amy Johnson, John Kelly, Danil Kerimi, SJ Klein, Kate Krontiris, Damon Krukowski, Amanda Lenhart, Greg Leppert, William Li, Mary Madden, J. Nathan Matias, Gabriel Mugar, Helmi Noman, Paulo Rogerio Nunes, Amanda Palmer, Matthew Pearl, Dalia Topelson Ritvo, Mayte Schomburg, Andy Sellars, Ivan Sigal, John Stubbs, Shailin Thomas, Emy Tseng, Tyler Vigen, Kevin Wallen, Waide Warner, Sara Marie Watson, Rebecca Weiss, Yana Welinder, and Sarah West

Returning as the Fellows Advisory Board:

Judith Donath, Eszter Hargittai, Colin Maclay, Wendy Seltzer, Jake Shapiro, David Weinberger, and Ethan Zuckerman

 

 

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Diplomacy in action: Malik Ladhani '18 on working with the UNHCR in Jordan

Photo courtesy of Malik LadhaniMalik Ladhani at the UNHCR offices in Amman

The Chayes International Public Service Fellowships provide Harvard Law School students with the opportunity to spend eight weeks engaged in international public service within the governments of developing nations and those making difficult transitions to peace, stability, and democracy, as well as the inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations that support them. This year, nineteen students were awarded 2016 Chayes International Public Service Fellowships for work in 13 countries.

In a recent post on the HLS International Legal Studies Program blog, Malik Ladhani, a rising 2L at HLS with an interest in refugee protection and asylum advocacy, recounted his summer working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman, Jordan, assisting in UNHCR's response to the Syrian refugee crisis.

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I spent most of my time with the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) unit, specifically on the Iraq sub-team. On this team, I drafted various case re-assessments for Iraqi asylum-seekers, applying international refugee law to determine whether these applicants should be considered refugees under international conventions. Due to the severity of the crisis in Iraq, almost all applicants had a “well-founded fear of persecution.” What was difficult (and the most interesting from a learning perspective), was the analysis needed to determine whether they were involved in any acts that would then exclude them from international protection (ex. crimes against humanity, war crimes). This meant I had the opportunity to engage in a little bit of international criminal law, which I didn't realize I was interested in prior to the summer.

Working with the RSD team was a valuable opportunity to really dig deep and work directly with applicant files. I would read interview transcripts, look at identification documentation, research the situation in specific areas of Iraq, understand different profiles and claims, and assess credibility. This was a very individual, case-level view of refugee law.

In contrast, I was also able to view refugee law from an overhead, structural/policy perspective. I worked with the operations coordinator (OC) for approximately two weeks. The OC's role was primarily to coordinate the inter-agency response to a crisis at the Syria-Jordan border, where there are approximately 100,000 Syrian refugees stranded in the desert.

I had the opportunity to sit in on high-level meetings with representatives from UN agencies and NGOs who were operational at the border, and read policy documents from the heads of these agencies. I got to see diplomacy in action, as UNHCR, along with donor countries, would advocate the Jordanian government to allow food, medical, and water delivery across the border while recognizing and balancing delicate security concerns.

I also went to the Zaatari refugee camp, which is the largest refugee camp in Jordan. In a briefing with the camp manager, I learned about the complexities involved with running a refugee camp, and some of the differences between the issues that urban and camp refugees face.

Overall, I've had a great experience here in Amman. I feel this summer was a necessary glimpse into the field of refugee law as a potential career path, and I'm grateful for the opportunity.

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This post was originally published on the Harvard Law School International Legal Studies blog on August 3, 2016.

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Harvard Law Library, fashion forward

Though law and fashion may not initially seem like overlapping domains, given the central nature of each of these fields it is no surprise that they do have an impact on one another. Over the years, fashion has been important to decisions about how jurists visually demonstrate their expertise and law has served to circumscribe how fashion is created, distributed, and consumed.

The latest exhibit from the Harvard Law School Library, “What Not to Wear: Fashion and the Law,” looks at some of these intersections of fashion and the law, from historic laws setting strict class distinctions for fashion, to modern intellectual property law's approach to protecting those who design and create fashion.

Curated by Mindy Kent, Meg Kribble, and Carli Spina, “What Not to Wear” is on view in the HLS Library's Caspersen Room daily from 9 am–5 pm through August 12, 2016.

You can also see an online addenda to the exhibit at http://exhibits.law.harvard.edu/current-exhibit (selected entries below).

You can find information about HLS Library online at https://hls.harvard.edu/library, or visit their blog, Et Seq. to learn more.

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Sumptuous Origins

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sumptuous, adj.

1. a. Of buildings, apparel, repasts, and the like: Made or produced at great cost; costly and (hence) magnificent in workmanship, construction, decoration, etc.

sumptuary, adj. (and n.)

a. Pertaining to or regulating expenditure.sumptuary law, a law regulating expenditure, esp. with a view to restraining excess in food, dress, equipage, etc.

-Oxford English Dictionary, 3^d edition

Over the millennia, sumptuary laws–those governing the consumption and display of luxury goods–have been used to reinforce social hierarchy, protect public morals, control trade, and identify those viewed as “other”-namely non-Christians and prostitutes. Sumptuary laws over the centuries, ranging from the humorous to the sinister are the focus of this section of the exhibit.

Source: 'The National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England' by David WilliamsonIn England under Edward IV came the first iterations of the sumptuary laws that we are perhaps most familiar with today: those restricting the wearing of purple silk, sable fur, and cloth of gold to those of the rank of knight or lord and above. A closer view of cloth of gold trimmed with ermine and jewels is available in this sumptuous coronation portrait of Elizabeth I, whose reign began in 1558. Elizabeth also enacted sumptuary laws, some reinforcing the laws passed by her predecessors; another specifying the allowable length of swords and daggers; and one from 1562 returning to the matter of trade and restricting the sale of foreign apparel to subjects worth at least £3000 per year.

Depending on the net worth of this woman's father or husband, she may have been breaking the law if she wore this hood and lace trimmed garments in the Massachusetts colony. The General Court of Massachusetts, the colonial legislature, didn't mince words declaring its '…utter detestation and dislike, that men or women of mean condition, should take upon them the garb of Gentlemen, by wearing Gold or Silver lace, or Buttons, or Points at their knees, or to walk in great Boots; or Women of the same rank to wear Silk or Tiffiny hoods, or Scarfes, which though allowable to persons of greater Estates, or more liberal education, yet we cannot but judge it intolerable in persons of such like condition.'

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Ceremony and Significance

This well-dressed scholar models the costume of a professor of law in the late 18th/early 19th century Ottoman empire. According to the European travelers who created this image, Ottoman legal professionals were required to move up through a series of graduated ranks from student, through various judicial positions, until they could reach the highest level of Kadiaskar, superior judge of Europe and Asia. Each office holder's rank was marked by the size of his turban.

Although sumptuary laws may no longer restrict who can wear gold or lace, the law and regulations of many societies require specific uniforms and insignia to indicate position and authority. Other communities adopt ceremonial regalia to emphasize a connection with history or a sense of occasion. Uniforms demonstrate power and immediately identify role and rank, whether military or civil. Examples in this exhibit show how different governments and organizations choose to distinguish and represent their authority.

Professional and community dress codes can be just as powerful.

Judicial robes project authority; academic robes and regalia recall tradition and achievement; the right suit, tie, or string of pearls can demonstrate professionalism and belonging.

The portraits on display in this exhibit and throughout the Harvard Law School Library's Legal Portrait Collection give an overview of the evolving standards of legal and academic dress.

Under this uniformity, however, we can still see flashes of individuality.  From a lace jabot to the cut of a suit, judges, lawyers, and law students still find ways to stand out from the crowd. Read More

Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesThough basic black judicial robes may not seem to allow much room for individual expression, some United States Supreme Court Justices have found ways to personalize their attire. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (back row, left) has long been known for her collection of jabots (the ornamental neckwear or frill that she wears with her robes)–including a specific jabot that she wears when reading her dissents–while the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist (front row, center) made his robes unique by adding four gold stripes to the sleeves as an homage to a character in Iolanthe, one of Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas.

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Rules and Regulations

Over the course of history, law has been called upon to regulate fashion in a number of ways. Often this regulation pertains to issues of public health. Though we may not frequently think about it, clothing does have the potential to be toxic, a fact that was driven home in the late 1800s by the health problems that arose from the use of arsenic in certain dyes. This may have been an early and dramatic example of laws being used to protect people from the chemicals in their clothing, but it is by no means that only example. In this way, fashion can intersect with even health and safety legislation.

As a creative field, those working in the fashion world also look to the law to protect their work and livelihood. Intellectual property law has long struggled with how fashion and its related innovations fit into the realms of patent, trademark, and copyright law. Though many of these questions have not been definitively answered, this is a fascinating area of ongoing legal debate and another way in which the law intersects with fashion. Read More

By Arroser (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsIntellectual property protection is always complicated, but this is particularly true in the fashion world. Since U.S. copyright law does not protect fashion design as a rule, results arise that may at first seem surprising and fashion designers must turn to other legal theories to protect their creations. Some designers turn to trademark law, attempting to use this theory to protect design elements that are distinctive to their brand. Recently, Christian Louboutin used this theory against Yves Saint Laurent, based on the well-known (and trademarked!) red sole of Louboutin shoes.

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“What (not) to Wear: Fashion and the Law” is on display in the Harvard Law School Library's Caspersen Room daily from 9 am - 5 pm through Friday (August 12). For more information about this and other Law Library exhibits, its digital collections, its historical and special collections and much more, visit http://hls.harvard.edu/library/

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Bob Bordone encourages students to settle for nothing less than the 'Best. Job. Ever.'

This past Spring, the HLS 2016 Class Marshals hosted their annual “Last Lecture” Series, presented every year by selected Harvard Law School faculty members who are invited to impart final words of wisdom on the graduating class. The final speaker in this year's series was Bob Bordone, Thaddeus R. Beal clinical professor of law and director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, who spoke about a how a simple Facebook status update from 2013 prompted him to consider the elements of a successful career today.

Credit: Martha StewartIn speaking to students about their post-graduation aspriations, Bordone offered this reminder: “I don't think there's any job where, one hunderd percent of the time you're doing exactly what you want to be doing, but you do want your work to sing to you, and you do want the bulk of what you do to be really meaningful.”

In addition to teaching in the Harvard Negotiation Institute and the Harvard Program on Negotiation's Senior Executive Education seminars, Bordone, who founded the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program in 2006, teaches several courses at Harvard Law School, including the school's flagship Negotiation Workshop.

Over the course of his career, Bordone has received many awards, including the prestigious Albert Sacks-Paul Freund Teaching Award at Harvard Law School, presented annually to a member of the Harvard Law School faculty for teaching excellence, mentorship of students, and general contributions to the life of the Law School. In 2010, for his innovative work in creating and building the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, he received the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution's Problem Solving in the Law School Curriculum Award.

Other speakers in the 2016 series included Jeannie Suk Gersen, Annette Gordon-Reed and Robert Sitkoff .

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.”

For the past two years, Koplewicz has served 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.

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 produced 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 has been working on a documentary about the development and use of the Socratic method in legal education. She 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.”

Video lets lawyers bring clients' voices directly to policymakers, judges, and mainstream media.

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. … [I]t 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 Doc Studio projects at https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/docstudio/.

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