Once Comcast’s Deal Shifted to a Focus on Broadband, Its Ambitions Were Sunk

April 24, 2015

When it was announced a little more than a year ago, it felt to many like a sure thing. After all, government regulators had approved Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011…The president may have been speaking about net neutrality, but the implications for the merger were clear. “That was just huge,” said Susan Crawford, a co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “It signaled that the cable industry was no longer calling the shots.”

The United States Needs a Drone Board

April 24, 2015

An op-ed by David Medine and Eliza Sweren-Becker [`15]. Today we learned that in January, a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan inadvertently killed an American and an Italian held as hostages by al Qaeda. The strike also killed a U.S. citizen who was a prominent member of al Qaeda. A separate operation in January killed an American-born al Qaeda spokesman. The deaths of hostages Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Portois are tragic and the Obama administration has pledged to conduct an independent review to understand how to prevent this type of grievous mistake. The apparently unintentional killings of two American al Qaeda operatives raise an additional question that President Obama did not address in his televised statement today: under what circumstances may the United States intentionally use targeted lethal force against a U.S. citizen abroad?

Roanoke College hosts sexual misconduct policy scholar

April 24, 2015

Virginia is one of many states that have proposed new legislation tackling sexual misconduct on college campuses. However, some people believe this new wave of enforcement is an overreaction to problems at hand. Harvard University law professor Janet Halley was one of more than a dozen professors who wrote an op-ed published in The Boston Globe arguing that Harvard Law School’s new policy designed to crack down on sexual assault was unfair.Halley spoke at Roanoke College on Thursday about the problems she sees with Harvard’s policy and similar policies that have been adopted at schools across the country in response to the attention that sexual assault on campus has received in recent years…Halley, a self-described feminist and progressive, said the policies at Harvard, which were designed to be tough on campus sexual assault, had several problems including giving victims more rights than the accused, a lack of due process and teaching women that they are weak and in need of protection.

Net vitality should be the cornerstone of US broadband policy

April 24, 2015

An op-ed by Stuart Brotman. The Federal Communication Commission’s recent Open Internet Order is intended to develop an enforceable regulatory scheme to ensure that net neutrality would be achieved. One of its rationales is that unless such government intervention is put in place, the United States is likely to slip into the category of Internet also-rans, hurting innovation and our economy as a whole as Internet “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” thwart competition and impede consumer demand. But how accurate is this perception? The Internet, after all, is not just a network of networks, but rather a complex ecosystem comprised of applications and content, devices and networks. The interdependency of these three pillars creates the rich experience of the Internet, not just in the United States, but all around the world.

Opponents of Gay Marriage Ponder Strategy as Issue Reaches Supreme Court

April 23, 2015

…As the Supreme Court prepares to hear arguments on same-sex marriage on Tuesday, the nation seems more ready to accept it than many imagined even a year ago. But divisions remain, and while more than half of Americans now endorse the idea, about one-third say they oppose it, according to survey data from 2014…“As more couples marry, more people will know people who are married,” said Michael J. Klarman, a legal historian at the Harvard Law School and author of a 2012 book on earlier same-sex marriage rulings. “And those who oppose it will find out that the sky doesn’t fall.”

L.A. County D.A. to create unit to review wrongful-conviction claims

April 23, 2015

Citing a rise in wrongful-conviction claims by inmates, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is launching a unit of veteran prosecutors to review the integrity of past convictions, joining a small but growing number of prosecutorial agencies around the country devoting resources to identify innocent prisoners…Forgoing an antagonistic view toward the defense has worked well for prosecutors in Brooklyn’s conviction review unit, said Ron Sullivan, a Harvard law professor who designed and implemented the unit, which has helped exonerate 13 people since it began in 2014…A big part of putting the unit in place, Sullivan said, was creating a new ethos in the office and reinforcing the “notion of prosecutors doing justice instead of trying to get convictions.”

Debate focuses on thorny facts the #Blacklivesmatter movement ignores

April 23, 2015

A frequent contributor to Fox News and the Wall Street Journal has injected an oft-missing issue in the #blacklivesmatter movement: facts. The contributor, Jason Riley, faced off with Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School professor of criminal law and the regulation of race relations, in a civil but intense debate Tuesday evening at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Most of the debate, “Liberal Policies make it harder for black Americans to succeed,” centered around affirmative action and social welfare policies, but the rhetorical combatants did address the politically thorny issue of black crime.

American Academy elects new members

April 23, 2015

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences today announced the election of 197 new members. They include some of the world’s most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, and artists, and civic, business, and philanthropic leaders. Those elected from Harvard are…Noah R. Feldman, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

As Philly police invest in devices, making the case against body cameras

April 23, 2015

Philadelphia’s Police Department, like many others around the country, is in the midst of a plans to invest in body cameras. The department will purchase 450 of the devices for officers next year with plans to outfit the city’s entire force with them by 2019. WHYY talked to Katie McCarthy, a third-year Harvard law student who works at the school’s law clinic representing low-income defendants. McCarthy recently wrote “Considering Police Body Cameras” for the Harvard Law Review, a piece on research she’s done into the implications of police departments adopting the technology.