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I just got an e-mail from a student, Lauren Paige Malan, who with the help of her brother David decided to do something about the fact that it’s not always easy to find out what is happening all over Harvard University. We all know that there is a lot going on, but there hasn’t been one place to look for information. Now there is:
Visit lonespot.org to see what I mean!
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Greg Scally, a 2L from the LA area, writes of his work at the Kenya National Chapter of the Berlin-based NGO Transparency International, the leading NGO in the worldwide anti-corruption fight:
“The mission of the organization is to create demand for anti-corruption efforts in Kenya, by conducting and disseminating research geared at enhancing public awareness of corruption in the country and creating solutions to systemically corrupt environments.
“I was originally given a research project entitled ‘Monitoring the Status of the Government of Kenya’s Commitment to Corruption’, requiring my review of various pieces of anti-corruption legislation in existence or under consideration, and suggestions for ways to improve and enforce such legislation. I have also been tracking the extent of the Kenyan government’s domestication of their responsibilities under the UN Convention Against Corruption, which Kenya signed in 2003.
“I found, however, that every piece of legislation and its attendant commentaries included a tacit admission that no anti-corruption efforts would succeed without a simultaneous change in ‘environment,’ a catch-all word encompassing such fuzzy things like values, professionalism, ethics, accountability, norms, and attitudes. After completing my initial review of legislation, I am now engrossed in writing an article trying to analyze and unpack the environmental change necessary for Kenya’s anti-corruption efforts to succeed.”
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So every year the Public Interest Auction packs the Ames Courtroom to the brim, standing-room only, as HLS students, faculty, and staff bid on a number of items with the proceeds going to support Summer Public Interest Funding. It is a raucous event hosted by the dean, with musical entertainment, costumes, and fierce bidding wars.
This year I found myself inadvertantly locked into a competition over a brick. Yes, that’s right: an average-looking, hard, red brick. I’ll let you read the Harvard Law Record for the complete auction story and my little part in it.
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We have had a lot of press about the new 1L curriculum, but I thought it made sense to mention the changes to the way we look at the 2nd and 3rd year.
This website, Upper-Level Programs of Study, gives the details.
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Last year I wrote the following entry…
We had a terrific class of transfer students come in last year. I’m going to see if I can get someone to write about his/her experience. In the meantime, you might want to go back and read some earlier transfer stories:
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One of the great advantages of Harvard Law School is that we are surrounded by terrific graduate schools…like the School of Public Health. I recently interviewed Professor Michelle Mello who is on the faculty there, but is teaching a course this semester at the Law School called Law & Public Health. I asked her about this course, her courses and research at the School of Public Health (hint: she does take on HLS students from time to time as research assistants), and the joint JD/MPH program that she helped put together.
Have a listen:
Podcast: Michelle Mello
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Just heard from 1L Ben Wu that he has a fun summer job lined up:
“My summer position is in Corporate Development at Marvel Studios, the Beverly Hills-based West Coast and filmmaking arm of Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (producers of Spider-Man and X-Men). I’ll be reporting to the Chairman of Marvel Studios, David Maisel, an HBS graduate, and will be working on strategy and finance projects to build their film and licensing businesses. Marvel Studios just raised a $525 million debt facility to build an in-house movie studio. This summer the studio is filming its first Marvel-produced movie, Iron Man, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey, Jr. It is exciting because I will be there to assist and witness the business evolve from a pure licensing-based model to a production-based model.”
We’ll check back with him this summer to find out how it’s going…
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1L Abbye Atkinson was very involved in putting together a recent conference. I’ll let her tell you about it:
“This past weekend, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice hosted a conference to commemorate the 150 anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling of Dred Scott v. Sandford. The name Dred Scott may evoke memories of high school U.S. History class where you might recall a brief reference to this landmark case as being one of the causes of the American Civil War. Indeed, the Dred Scott decision (in which the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, held that African Americans, slave and free, could never be citizens of the US and ‘had no rights that the white man [was] bound to respect’) was a catalyst for the conflict which engulfed this country for four long and bloody years. However, Dred Scott is much more than a blip on our historical radar. It is a case rich with issues integral to how we have defined, do define and will define ourselves as Americans.
“Accordingly, the CHHIRJ, led by Executive Director, Professor Charles J. Ogletree, summoned some of the most engaging and brilliant minds (think Stephen Breyer, Cass Sunstein, Ahkil Amar, John Payton, etc.) across a range of disciplines and over one hundred elementary and secondary school teachers to gather in Austin Hall and to discuss not only the events which led to the Scott decision, but also to consider how the decision has profoundly shaped American jurisprudence and our current understanding of citizenship with its attendant rights and privileges.
“The most engaging part of the conference was its finale, a moot court re-argument of Scott v. Sandford. Before Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and a panel of highly esteemed Federal Circuit Court judges, including Judge Harry T. Edwards of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, a group of current legal scholars and lawyers presented various points of view on Dred Scott, and from varying legal, political and social perspectives, considered whether the decision was inevitable.
“One might imagine that such a re-evaluation of the issues within a 150 year old case would offer nothing more than an opportunity for reminiscence. However, 150 years on, the Dred Scott decision remains as fresh and as relevant as ever, encompassing (among other elements) constitutional issues of citizenship, jurisdiction, congressional power, and the role of international precedent and practice in American legal matters. In one particularly interesting panel, visiting HLS Professor Sarah Cleveland posited the notion that the Dred Scott decision is relevant to the current debate as to whether detainees in Guantanamo Bay are or should be entitled to seek legal redress within the US federal court system, and to what extent any subsequent privileges and remedies are or should be made available. Do we classify them as Chief Justice Taney did Dred Scott and African Americans generally, as having no rights that the United States is bound to respect? Or are we willing to extend rights guaranteed to US citizens to those who find themselves under the authority of the US government? What of immigration? How do we decide who may become a citizen and who may not? Dred Scott has much to say about this issue as well.
“Indeed, these are among several difficult problems whose correct answers remain elusive and yet to which the Dred Scott decision may be highly informative. Maybe more important than finding concrete solutions to these issues is our willingness to engage in discussions like those that this Dred Scott conference has facilitated and will continue to foster. Hopefully, those hundred or so teachers will carry this experience with them to their home schools, and will use the Dred Scott decision as a platform for educating and encouraging the next generation to think critically and creatively about solutions which will dignify and improve our nation and our world. Alas… another day at Harvard Law School!”
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2L Franciska Coleman described her winter term experience abroad:
“This Winter Term was one of the most horizon broadening experiences of my life. I worked at the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (SAIFAC) in Johannesburg, South Africa. The South African Constitution has a positive entitlement to education in the language of one’s choice. However, responsibility for setting educational policy is divided between the Provincial (state) governments and school governing bodies (primarily groups of parents who run the schools, setting language policy, selecting teachers, instituting school fees, etc.).
“This division of power often leads to conflict, for, while the provincial governments have the responsibility of ensuring that Black students leaving overcrowded township schools have places to obtain an education, many of the school governing bodies in the “White” schools use the politics of language choice to continue to exclude Black children. They do this by the adoption of single-medium Afrikaans language policies. As very few Black children speak Afrikaans and most Black parents desire their children to be instructed in English, language has become a marker for race that enables schools to continue to segregate by offering instruction only in Afrikaans.
“The provincial governments have some authority to insist that schools offer instruction in both Afrikaans and English, but it is as yet unclear as to when this is acceptable and how far this power extends, particularly given constitutional provisions for single-medium schools.
“My project focused mainly on looking at the history and legislation that created this extensive parental control over education and the trends in recent legislation and reported and unreported cases that suggest shifts in the legal balance of power. As I have a background in education, I found this a truly fascinating opportunity.
“Even more fascinating was my environment. SAIFAC draws top SJD students from across the African continent, all engaged in doctoral research on a variety of constitutional, human rights, public, and international law issues. The conversations I had with these law students about their research interests and experiences were some of the most enlightening and informative of any I have ever had. In addition, SAIFAC is in the same complex as the South African Constitutional Court (South Africa’s highest court), and I spent several hours at the court in research and in conversation with the judicial clerks.
“Few things have ever been more educational and challenging than discussing Bentham, entitlements, and due process over lunch and tea with SJD students and judicial clerks from such a diversity of legal traditions. I was surprised that so many of the cases I had learned in con law formed a part of a global dialogue on constitutionalism, and while I occasionally felt uncomfortable at my colleagues knowing more about American constitutional law than I knew about the constitutional jurisprudence of their countries, I thank God, Harvard, and Professor Tribe, that I DID know American constitutional law. (And thanks to Professor Dershowitz, I could make very nice Benthamesque hypotheticals. : ) All in all, it was truly a wonderful experience.”
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For David Moss, it’s the problem-solving skills that make a legal education so valuable in the business world. “Law school teaches you how to dissect a problem, determine what’s most important, focus on that, and logically walk through it and come up with solutions that make sense. That’s a skill set that’s very transferable.” Moss is a 2L and the president of the Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB).
Compared to students with an MBA, says Moss, “law students may lack hard skills that they could pick up in business school like accounting or operations, but those are easy enough to [learn] on the job. The critical-thinking skills take more time to develop.” And it’s those critical thinking skills that HLS offers in spades.
HALB offers a range of opportunities for students passionate—or even just curious—about applying those skills to the business world. The goals of the organization are threefold:
1. Provide opportunities for social networking.
2. Educate students about business issues, ensuring, for instance, that corporate lawyers have the information they need to succeed in their careers.
3. Educating students about the myriad of alternative career paths at the intersection of law and business.
The events hosted by the organization include happy hours, introductions, and discussion panels, like a recent J.P. Morgan discussion entitled ‘The Anatomy of a Deal.’ Says Moss, “We have a fairly open platform, so when students find something of interest, we help them put it on.”
Moss enjoys getting to know a range of people at HLS, some of whom he met while co-chairing the Public Interest Charity Poker Tournament last year. He also feels like he’s been able to connect with professors. In a reading group with Alan Dershowitz, he says, there were 12 1Ls. “That opportunity to get to know a professor outside of the classroom is a really unique experience.”
