Presidential Power Surges
Particular moments in history and strategic breaks with unwritten rules have helped many U.S. presidents expand their powers incrementally, leading some to wonder how wide-ranging presidential powers can be.
Law’s Influencers
HLS faculty blogs on law-related topics are reaching thousands—sometimes millions—and have become required reading for experts.
In Their Own Words
From algorithmic price discrimination to intellectual property and human rights to Indian Nations and the Constitution
On the Bookshelf: HLS Library Book Talks, Spring 2018
The Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of book talks by HLS authors, with topics including Authoritarianism in America, the Supreme Court of India, and Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict. As part of this ongoing series, faculty authors from various disciplines shared their research and discussed their recently published books with a panel of colleagues and the Harvard Law community.
A State of Danger?
“It Can’t Happen Here,” the novel by Sinclair Lewis written in the 1930s as fascism was rising in Europe, imagines an America overtaken by an authoritarian regime. The new book edited by Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein ’78, “Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America” (Dey Street Books), does not predict the same fate. Yet the contributors—several also affiliated with Harvard Law—take seriously the possibility that it could happen here, despite the safeguards built into the American system of government.
A conversation with Jack Goldsmith: American Institutions and the Trump Presidency
Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith shares his perspective on American institutions and the Trump presidency in a recent interview with Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol.
The challenge of counseling the commander in chief
A discussion about “The Office of Legal Counsel and the Challenge of Legal Advice to the President” shed light on the often-mysterious workings of the OLC—the body discussants David Barron ’94 and Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith served on, during Barack Obama’s first term, and, in George W. Bush’s second, respectively.
Law Review launches new online platform
The Harvard Law Review has announced the launch of the Harvard Law Review Blog, a new platform created to encourage timely discussion of current legal issues, and to connect readers to today’s leading legal scholars and practitioners, providing regular expert analysis of recent legislation, the latest legal theories, and pending cases across the country.
HLS faculty size up Gorsuch on style, substance
Describing him, among other things, as “a man of enormous achievements,” HLS scholars say Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch ’91 — selected by President Donald Trump to replace the late Antonin Scalia — would alter the tone, if not the balance, of the Court, if appointed.
Endless secret war is a constitutional time bomb
By Jack L. Goldsmith
The ‘Forever War’ has posed enormous challenges to our constitutional system, which assumes that war will be exceptional, not perpetual. Continue Reading »