On June 3, as her classmates celebrated Class Day and prepared for graduation ceremonies, Kristina Matic ’09 stood in Roxbury District Court cross-examining a police officer who claimed her client had driven recklessly on his motorcycle and resisted arrest.
Benjamin Ferencz ’43, known for his role as chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials and for his work promoting an international rule of law and the creation of an International Criminal Court, has been awarded the prestigious Erasmus Prize. The prize is given to individuals who have made “especially important contributions to culture, society, or social science in Europe.”
President Barack Obama ’91 nominated Ketanji Jackson ’96 to fill a spot on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. If confirmed by the Senate, Jackson would be one of seven voting members of the commission, which oversees the sentencing guidelines used by federal judges and advises Congress on criminal law.
When Ariel Rothstein ’10 and Andrew Freedman ’10 spotted the whirling blue lights of a patrol car behind them as they drove through rural Texas in January, they assumed they had been driving too fast.
Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree ’78 testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs in June on the proposed National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009, telling the subcommittee the bill would address “severe inequities in the criminal justice system.”
“The Whistleblower’s Lawyer,” a profile of Gaytri Kachroo S.J.D. ’02, appeared in the Summer 2009 Harvard Law Bulletin.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August of 2005, the criminal justice infrastructure was among the many casualties; courtrooms were destroyed, personnel scattered and prisoners evacuated all over the state and beyond. But it brought attention to a system that was already so badly in need of repair it routinely violated constitutional norms.
William Stuntz, the Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is an expert on criminal law and procedure and crime policy. He has co-written a casebook on criminal procedure and published numerous articles on all aspects of the criminal justice system, in law reviews, journals, and periodicals.
We live in strange times. The federal budget deficit is higher than at any time since World War II as a percentage of GDP, yet the president and Congress are not in budget-cutting mode. Sadly, in the face of record-breaking federal spending, one uncommonly good spending idea has gotten short shrift: Use federal budget dollars to pay for more cops on high-crime city streets
Lieutenant Colonel Gregory E. Maggs ’88 is a reserve officer in the Army JAG Corps. He is senior associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, specializing in commercial law, constitutional law, contracts, and counter-terrorism law.
