Independent at Harvard Law School since 1946
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Opinion
However devastating its consequences, how this Court arrived at its myopic ruling in Citizens United v. FEC may be even more disturbing.The conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court defers neither to its own precedents nor to decisions by other branches of government. In fact, when stare decisis and our constitutional system of checks and balances interferes with their personal policy preferences, they shrug and legislate from the bench.
News
Reeling from the fallout of the Madoff scandal, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been searching for a new strategy and new leadership in its mission to protect the investing public from fraud. As part of this effort, the S.E.C. recently unveiled six new organizational departments that will lead units aimed at supervising particular domains of finance: asset management, market abuse, structured and new products, foreign corrupt practices, and municipal securities and public pensions. But while the Commission seeks new and innovative strategies to fulfill its policy objectives, its core mission of overseeing financial markets continues to depend on its ability to directly probe into the activities of market players, and starting at the end of January, the front-lines inspectors in America's financial capital will have a new chief, private fund industry expert Norman Champ '89, who will take on the role of Regional Associate Director for the S.E.C.'s New York Regional Office.
News
The question on the morning after Brown's come-behind win – which made him the first Republican Senator elected from the state in nearly four decades – was why voters in the traditional Democratic bastion of Massachusetts turned to a member of the GOP. Multiple theories were offered in the aftermath. But new data indicate that an energized Republican base – and a dispirited Democratic one that largely stayed away from the polls – contributed significantly to the election's outcome.
News
A warm smile and easy laugh reveal Hebah Ismail's unthreatening, gentle personality. An American citizen, this 3L of Egyptian descent works with the International Human Rights Clinic on projects related to Bedouin land rights. Hebah wears a hijab. She still does not know which of one, or combination, of these characteristics prompted the immigration personnel at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport to deny her entry to Israel.
News
Though it goes without saying that Harvard Law School students and alumni are smart, it's not every day that they get to show off their often considerable non-legal knowledge. But the chance came for both Sarah Boyette '10 and Andrea Saenz '08 over the last few weeks, when both starred as contestants on the quiz show "Jeopardy!"
News
The weight of an indictment by a federal grand jury can crush even the most promising career. And while the gravity of an accusation would seem to counsel restraint in the pursuit of those who violate federal law, a new book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, by prominent Boston defense attorney Harvey Silverglate '67, argues that the truth is the exact opposite. According to Silverglate, federal prosecutors have increasingly come to rely on vague criminal laws to investigate and indict professionals in the fields of medicine, politics, law, business, journalism, and non-profit service for a range of practices that have not historically been criminalized.
News
The ubiquity of violent images in our society can lead to the impression that we live in an unusually violent era. Movies and video games depicting homicidal gangsters, news reports of wars and genocides, scandals regarding torture, and debates regarding legal executions all seem to convey a world in which death is tolerated if not glorified. But according to psychologist and Johnstone Family Professor Steven Pinker, these outward signs of violence obscure the real historical trend toward ever greater peaceful coexistence which has made the present day the safest time in human history.
Opinion
Fenno stood on a long, narrow dock flanked by the tranquil, turquoise waters of the Gulf of Thailand. How could it be, he thought, that he was leaving behind serene Ko Samui for the snows of Cambridge? He took a whiff of the Gulf's sweet, salty air, trying to forget the images of sooty slush that kept returning to him as he recalled what had led to this moment: the end of his semester in paradise, and his return to the spiritually moribund corridors of America's runner-up law school.
News
When it comes to the Treasury Department's proposals for new financial regulations, Judge Richard Posner '62 would "be perfectly content to have them never adopted."
News
The Harvard Law Review is usually the leading predictor of the actions of the Supreme Court, but this time John Grisham beat it to the punch. Grisham's latest legal thriller, The Appeal, borrowed its story of a judge captured by a wealthy local businessman from the facts of the case of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., which recently made its way from the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States. So when the Law Review held its forum on December 7th, it could only hope that the legal experts it had assembled would provide a scholarly addendum to the recent Supreme Court decision.
Opinion
Never in my life had I taken a bus into my mother's home town on Christmas Eve, and she had already managed to "lose me" in a town so small she doesn't even get mail delivered directly to her house. Yet now there were bright lights and a TV camera trained on a tiny little box of a small town church. What could possibly be going on? The church's Christmas pageant was usually good, but not that good."Jessica, you do the talking," my great aunt joked, nodding toward the camera and elbowing me."Why are they here?" I asked her."This is the last Mass of this church. It's closing." I could have used a little advance warning."Last Mass?" I asked.
Opinion
Nearly 2,600 bodies have been discovered in single, unmarked graves and in mass graves throughout mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir. The International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice (IPTHJ), an Indian Kashmir-based human rights organization, claimed that they found the graves in 55 villages during a three-year survey that concluded in November. Out of the 2,600 graves discovered by IPTHJ, they claim that 177 graves held more than one body. This report is one of the most damning pieces of evidence of the ‘crime against humanity' perpetrated by the Indian armed forces in their occupation of the disputed territory of Kashmir.