Miriam Gohara ‘97 argued before the 11th Circuit and won on behalf of NAACP Legal Defense Fund client Herbert Williams, who was sentenced to death nearly 20 years ago in Alabama.
Read more about the case at the NAACP website here.
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President of the HLS Christian Fellowship, 3L Jennifer Kwong, submitted the following blogpost on an event last semester that explored the dichotomy between human rights and the basis for lawmaking as outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
“ ‘The [Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution] are completely at odds over the nature of human rights and the basis for law making.’
“So began a lecture on Thursday evening about the way that the conflicting assumptions underlying America’s founding documents shape—and, perhaps, distort—government and lawmaking in the U.S. today.
“The speaker, Dr. Roy Clouser, was a Professor of Philosophy (Emeritus) at The College of New Jersey. He explained to the assembled students and members of the public that our assumptions about the nature of law, rights, and society have important consequences for how we choose to order our lives together.
‘For instance, while the Declaration of Independence affirms that ‘…all men are created equal and have been endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights…,’ the Constitution does not contain a single unalienable right—every right mentioned in the Bill of Rights is an amendment that can be repealed. The Declaration, therefore, assumes a form of natural law theory in which individual rights form the basis for law and justice, while the Constitution assumes a pragmatist view of law in which rights and statutes can be whatever “We the people” want them to be.
“Dr. Clouser continued on to explain what he saw as the deficiencies of both these views, positing a ‘third view of rights and law’ based on the social principle of ’sphere sovereignty.’ According to the principle of sphere sovereignty, both individuals and collectives were brought into existence by God, who endows people and social institutions (such as families, schools, and government) with different rights and authorities to be exercised according to a universal norm of justice. Government, as one among many institutions, is responsible for preserving the sphere of public justice. It exercises its proper, limited authority when it protects the integrity of all other institutions from interference by one another, as well as from itself.
“Members of the audience responded spiritedly to Dr. Clouser’s talk, challenging his claim that sphere sovereignty is not a form of theocracy and asking him to clarify what counts as a distinct ‘sphere.’”
I noticed this give and take on recent Supreme Court cases on Slate and since two of the four participants are members of the HLS faculty, I thought you might be interested. Professor Jack Goldsmith is an expert on national security law and teaches constitutional law and other courses. Visiting Professor Walter Dellinger leads one of our Supreme Court Clinicals.
Visit this link for The Supreme Court Breakfast Table.
Graduating students vote on the best teacher at Harvard Law School. The winner of the Sacks-Freund Teaching Award this year was Professor Daryl Levinson. I was in attendance for his speech on Class Day and it brought the house down. Visit this link to read more about it and to watch the video clip.
You may remember that I mentioned student David Kessler in an earlier blog post when he published his work on the Fourth Amendment. It seems another blogger out there is also talking about David…this time in re his case comment on the Hallstreet Associates case. Well, I found him first, but I’m sure many others will follow!
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Andrea Saenz, a 3L and board member of the Harvard Immigration Project, filled us on a recent event at which Jeanne Butterfield, Executive Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, spoke on the topic of immigration and national security.
“How does a HLS student interested in immigration find out exactly what’s going on in Washington? Like in so many other issue areas, by going straight to the source. Recently, Professor Debbie Anker’s immigration policy seminar hosted Jeanne Butterfield, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Her visit was also sponsored by the Harvard Immigration Project, a student organization dedicated to immigration and asylum law. We invited Butterfield for her extensive experience working with the White House and Congress on immigration reform over the past few years, and she had plenty to say on the subject of immigration and security.
“There are several layers of national security that intersect with immigration, Butterfield explained, including visa security, the entry and inspection process, and monitoring immigrants while in the country. We definitely need good enforcement, she said, but ‘the political desire to ’secure the borders’ and the idea that we can do so before looking at our broken system is the heart of the contradiction Congress faces.’ She noted that she was part of a White House briefing in early September 2001, when President Bush was enthusiastic about immigration reform…before the terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the focus to security alone.
“She also urged students to think not only in terms of national security and terrorism, but in terms of the economic security of America and its relationship with the low-paying work that millions of undocumented immigrants to. ‘To talk just about enforcement without talking about the economic factors that come into play is misleading,’ she said. Butterfield pointed out that spending on border enforcement quintupled between 1994 and 2004, but the number of undocumented people in the country doubled during that time. ‘We will be throwing money at the border until we’re old and gray and we still won’t be solving the problem,’ she said.
“Butterfield then took student questions on everything from whether a President McCain would be good for immigrants to the demise of last summer’s immigration bill to where to get good fact sheets to counteract misconceptions about immigrants (try the Immigration Policy Center, she recommended.)
“Only minutes after the class ended, someone with a very different take than Jeanne Butterfield was also speaking at the law school: Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Armed with one point of view, a large group of us headed off to hear the other for ourselves – as always, straight from the source.”
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To anyone still hunting for a rewarding summer internship, Harvard Defenders may have your answer. As a student organization that provides free representation to low-income criminal defendants not entitled to state-provided counsel, Harvard Defenders is the only legal service organization in Massachusetts that represents these low-income defendants for free in criminal show-cause hearings. Every summer, from a pool of dozens of applicants, the organization chooses three students to intern for ten weeks and work on a docket of several cases.
During a recent informational meeting, former Defender Phil Lee ‘00 recounted his summer experience. “I was defending a woman who had stolen diapers and a ham… I explained to the magistrate that the crime was not done out of greed, but out of true need,” said Lee. “You get to be a real advocate.”
While students handle all the case intake and the work is a team effort, the casework is supervised by attorney John Salsberg, who has served as Harvard Defenders Clinical Instructor for almost 30 years. The Defenders meet with Salsburg regularly for guidance and support in developing case strategy. “Overall,” said 2L Darnell Stanislaus, “the experience gives you great exposure to criminal law and litigation…and there’s no better feeling than having a truly appreciative client.” 2L Alex Davies agreed and emphasized that the skills developed through the Defenders are transferrable. “Because no one magistrate responds the same way to the facts of your case, you’re able to practice reading an audience and publicly making case-law arguments,” she said.
The Harvard Defenders are now taking resumes for their summer internship on a rolling basis. Anyone interested should contact Program Administrator Maria Hermann at mhermann@law.harvard.edu.
I just heard from a student, David Kessler, that an article he wrote under the supervision of Professors Warren and Stuntz was just accepted for publication by the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Though students regularly publish “Notes” in law reviews and journals, it is more unusual for them to get articles published. It’s a credit to David and his advisers.
The article is titled “Free to Leave? An Empirical Look at the Fourth Amendment’s Seizure Standard.” Here is the abstract:
“Whether a person has been ’seized’ often determines if he or she receives Fourth Amendment protection. The Supreme Court has established a standard for identifying seizures: a person is seized when a reasonable person in his situation would not have felt free to leave or otherwise terminate the encounter with law enforcement. In applying that standard, today’s courts conduct crucial seizure inquiries relying only on their own beliefs about when a reasonable person would feel free to leave. But both the Court and scholars have noted that, though empirical evidence about whether people actually feel free to leave would help guide the seizure inquiry, no such evidence presently exists. This paper presents the first empirical study of whether people actually would feel free to leave in two situations in which the Court has held that people would: on public sidewalks and on buses. Drawing on a survey of 406 randomly selected Boston residents, this paper concludes that people would not feel free to end their encounters with the police. By the Court’s standard, respondents would be seized in both scenarios. The data also show that knowledge of one’s legal right to end the encounter with the police would not make people feel free to leave, and that women and people under twenty-five would feel less free to leave than would men and people over twenty-five. This initial empirical evidence suggests the need to rethink the current seizure standard.”
Keep an eye out in January 2009 for Mr. Kessler’s article!
Maybe this is a typical Tuesday for what I’m guessing is Noah Feldman’s 1L Constitution and the International Order class, but when I came back from lunch (dry cleaning in hand) I had to step over students sitting on the steps outside Austin Hall. Professor Feldman was pacing in front of them and the students appeared to be paying attention–and tanning at the same time.
Ah — spring in Boston!
