The Race Hate We All Know

February 16, 2015

An op-ed by Nimra Azmi [`15]. The slayings of Razan Abu-Salha, Yusor Abu-Salha and Deah Barakat has convulsed the Muslim-American community as no other event has since September 11, 2001. It is not simply that we see ourselves reflected back in those three beautiful young people. We see our ugliest fears about the United States reflected back—that our college educations and professional degrees cannot keep us safe, that someday, someone will hate us for our faith or our skin color and no amount of American Dream will safeguard us.

Gay-Marriage Fight in Alabama Goes One-On-One

February 13, 2015

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. A federal district judge in Alabama has struck back against state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore. The latest development in the conflict between state and federal authority over gay marriage is an order Thursday by federal Judge Callie Granade requiring one particular state probate judge not to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as he had been doing on the basis of an order from Moore. Yet the struggle may not be over. The federal judge’s order seems definitive with respect to that one probate judge, Don Davis, in Mobile County. But if the logic of Moore’s position were to be followed, that judge could appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals. And other probate judges, who aren’t named in the order, could claim that the order doesn’t bind them.

Obama’s War Spreads Ever Wider

February 13, 2015

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. Does President Barack Obama’s proposed authorization for the war against Islamic State go too far or not far enough? This should be a simple question, but it isn’t. Legally, the proposal has the effect of mildly extending presidential power to fight Islamic State, not limiting it. Politically, however, it imposes some real-world constraints that weren’t there before. The proposal therefore has something for everyone — but it also gives everyone something to criticize.

Harvard Law Professor Blames Victim in Child Trafficking Case

February 13, 2015

An op-ed by Anna Joseph [`16] and Kerry Richards [`17]. Alan Dershowitz–famed defense attorney and former professor at Harvard Law School–has been accused of being one of the individuals who were provided with an underage “sex slave” by Jeffrey Epstein, Dershowitz’s friend and client. Dershowitz has not been charged with a crime and is not a party to the lawsuit in which the accusing affidavit was filed. Though neither Dershowitz’s liberty nor his property are at stake, he has responded with public and aggressive victim-blaming.

The 13th Juror: Is this a trial or a remake of ‘Groundhog Day’?

February 13, 2015

The trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was supposed to have started three weeks ago. But now it’s anybody’s guess when this highly anticipated trial will begin. …Why is it taking so long? Is this the longest jury selection ever? Nobody seems to keep track of such things, said Teresa Saint-Amour, a researcher at the Harvard law library. She couldn’t find a single database and steered me to a study of the state courts. An analyst for the organization that conducted the study said it likely was outdated.

High civilian death toll in Gaza house strikes

February 13, 2015

The youngest to die was a 4-day-old girl, the oldest a 92-year-old man. They were among at least 844 Palestinians killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel’s summer war with the Islamic militant group, Hamas…On its own, a high civilian death toll does not constitute evidence of war crimes, and each strike has to be investigated separately, according to interna[tiona]l law experts, including Alex Whiting of Harvard. But it “certainly raises a red flag and suggests that further investigation is warranted,” said Whiting, a former top official at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.

In Memo, Law Profs Pushed for Title IX Procedural Changes

February 13, 2015

Twenty Harvard Law School professors who had publicly spoken out against Harvard’s University-wide sexual harassment policy submitted a memo last fall requesting that the Law School investigate its own sexual harassment cases, rather than go through Harvard’s central investigation office…The document, parts of which signatory and Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet shared with The Crimson this week, sheds light on the process that led to the adoption of the local procedures that, if implemented, in many respects will circumvent Harvard’s newly centralized approach to handling sexual misconduct…Law School professor John Coates, who chaired the committee that wrote the school’s new procedures, confirmed in an email that the committee considered the memo’s principles when it drafted the procedures.

Law Students Leave Torts Behind (for a Bit) and Tackle Accounting

February 13, 2015

A group of 170 Brooklyn Law School students cut short their winter break and headed back to campus in January for an intensive three-day training session. But not in the law. Instead, they spent the “boot camp” sessions learning about accounting principles, reading financial statements, valuing assets and other basics of the business world — subjects that not long ago were thought to have no place in classic law school education…Last year, Cornell University Law School started a similar business-focused workshop, called “Business Concepts for Lawyers.” The idea came from a Harvard Law School survey of employers released in February 2014, said Lynn A. Stout, a professor of corporate and business law at Cornell. The 124 firms that responded to the survey, called “What Courses Should Law Students Take? Harvard’s Largest Employers Weigh In,” listed accounting, financial statement analysis and corporate finance as the best courses to prepare lawyers to handle corporate and other business matters.

Means of exchange

February 12, 2015

Money may feel as solid as the Bank of England, but it is an ever-shifting phenomenon…But in a new book, “Making Money”, Christine Desan, a Harvard law professor, challenges the view of money’s history as a fall from grace. She is part of the “cartalist” school which argues that money did not develop spontaneously from below, but was imposed from above by the state or ruler.

A law for war

February 12, 2015

A political eternity ago, back in May 2013, President Barack Obama felt able to boast that the core of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan was on a path to defeat, allowing America to declare an end to the global war on terror that began after the September 11th 2001 attacks…Jack Goldsmith, a former Pentagon lawyer who teaches national-security law at Harvard Law School, says the draft AUMF amounts to a striking expansion of presidential authority. The 2001 AUMF is already being interpreted broadly to allow strikes on IS. But rather than supersede that old authorisation or place time limits on its validity, this new 2015 AUMF “builds on and adds to it”, he says.