Pitch us
The Harvard Law Record

Independent at Harvard Law School since 1946

All articles

Every story published on our website. For print editions back to 1946, see Print.

Opinion

Not up for debate: Rwanda cannot excuse Peter Erlinder’s genocide denial<br />

American law professor Peter Erlinder, who acted as a defense lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, is now being prosecuted for his controversial suggestion that the killings in Rwanda in 1994 not be termed a genocide at all. Rwanda is clearly not ready to tolerate blatant genocide denial - and should not be expected to - whether or not the speaker is merely appealing to a "balanced" assessment of the deaths.

By The Record

News

Elena Kagan chosen as successor to Stevens<br />

President Barack Obama '91 announced on Monday, May 10th that Solicitor General and former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '86 would be his selection to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court following the latter's retirement.

By The Record

News

Williston Competition winners celebrate negotiated victory<br />

The Winners of Harvard Law School's 57th annual Williston Competition, Harvard's annual contract negotiation and drafting competition for first-year law students, were announced on Monday, April 5. The Williston Competition presents participants with a complex business problem and charges them with representing a client in negotiations, trying to arrive at an agreement that they then reduce to writing. This year's problem involved a negotiation between a community group, Save Our Square, and an international fast-food chain, McMillin's, which were trying to come to an agreement over the terms of the chain's establishment of a franchise in the local community.

By The Record

Opinion

What’s in the Harvard name?<br />

I almost didn't apply to Harvard. To me it was a name and a place far away and full of vague notions of elitism, and in some sense I saw my own life as a less ambitious affair. I wanted to go to law school partly to learn a profession, but I also had a desire to get beyond the external manifestations of power and come to know the system from the inside. And so I applied, knowing that Harvard's name, network, and faculty could equip me for these goals better than others.

By The Record

Opinion

Facts and the politics of naming: Rethinking the Armenian Genocide<br />

The Armenian Genocide took place in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. It was an attempt by the Turkish government to eliminate the Armenians from present-day Turkey. From 1915 to 1923, 1.5 million Armenians were killed and many more were deported on death marches in to the Syrian Desert. Since then, Turkey has denied this history and strongly opposed recognition of these events as genocide. Popular discussions of the Armenian Genocide increasingly focus on the politics of recognition and the rhetoric of denial and overlook the substance of these tragic events and their legacy.

By The Record

Opinion

Cambridge, USA: Beginnings and ends, starts and finishes<br />

Of all the starts and finishes we've gone through and are about to go through in our lives, the difference between the beginning of the JD and the end of the JD is particularly, spectacularly, pronounced. Think back to the first few days of 1L, when you met your section mates, the people you would see day in and day out for years. You sat through the mock class and had dinner with the Dean in the "Trophy Room" at the library; you posed for your section photo and it was still sunny and warm and fall hadn't technically begun yet. Or go back even further—think back to admitted students day and the way you felt walking through the buildings for the first time as someone invited to be there—someone who was supposed to be there. I'm guessing that those on the eve of graduating with a JD are feeling very far removed from those early days.

By The Record

News

“War Don Don” probes reality of international justice<br />

Filmmaker and Harvard Law School graduate Rebecca Richman Cohen ‘07 first observed Issa Sesay in 2006, through the bullet proof glass of the gallery at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. While assigned to a different defence team for her 2L summer, Cohen felt drawn to the trial of the former Interim Leader of the Revolutionary United Front, the rebel army that had waged and lost a decade-long civil war against the government of Sierra Leone. Four years later, as the Court concludes its cases, the first major war crimes tribunal to do so since the Trials at Nuremberg over sixty years ago, Cohen presents "War Don Don", the jarring product of her legal education and three years of filmmaking.

By The Record

Opinion

Meet the man who revolutionized venture capital through blogging<br />

After graduating from Harvard Law School, David Hornik '94 went on to work at Cravath, Swaine & Moore before clerking for Judge Altimori at the Second Circuit. He returned to Cravath before eventually leaving in 1997 to join Venture Law Group, a start-up boutique in Silicon Valley. From there he helped start Perkins Coie's Bay Area practice and, a decade ago, Hornik joined August Capital to himself become a venture capitalist, financing start-ups as an investor. Hornik returned to HLS this spring to teach a course in Entrepreneurship and Company Creation, and he sat down with the Harvard Law Record to speak about his career and the tech industry.

By The Record

Opinion

Negotiating law school was fun, fulfilling<br />

What are the skills we need after we leave law school? Surely, a nuanced understanding of constitutional law isn't all there is to legal practice. Perhaps this is my own bias stemming from how I've spent my time here, but I would add team work, project development, project management and client development to that non-exhaustive list. And in Harvard Negotiators, I found all that.

By The Record