What is the public interest auction?
The public interest auction is a fundraiser run entirely by the 1L class that raises money to support students who do public interest work over the summer. We solicit donations from faculty, staff, alumni, parents, students, firms, and local businesses. Some donate money and some donate things to auction off. We receive all sorts of donations – things like Red Sox tickets, gift certificates to restaurants and salons, lunches and fishing trips with professors, cookies and brownies made by the librarians, and a tour of the Northwest Corner Construction project. The auction is one of the biggest social events of the year. Every year the auction has a theme, and we decorate Austin Hall accordingly. This year the theme was “Bright Lights: Bid City” and so the different rooms were decorated as different big cities – London, Paris, and New York.

What has gone into preparing for this event and what have you gotten out of the experience as a co-chair?
Almost all of the 1L class helps out with the auction. We divide the students up by committees and committees mostly help out either by asking for donations, calling alumni and asking them to donate, emailing firms, going door to door in Cambridge, or by helping process the donations and get them ready to sell, or by helping out on the night of the auction. As one of the auction co-chairs, I had the opportunity to work with a group of amazing people to try to plan and coordinate this huge event – it was definitely a  challenging experience for all of us. From coordinating hundreds of student volunteers to keeping track of hundreds of donations, to making sure everything comes together on the night of the auction, being a co-chair was a lot of work, but it was extremely rewarding. It was also a good opportunity to meet new students.

The event is always a lot of fun for students, faculty and staff. What was your favorite part of the evening? Did anything surprise you?
The event was a huge success. My favorite part of the evening was the live auction. Our auctioneers – this year Professors Elizabeth Warren and Jonathan Zittrain – were auctioning off the “right to be – or not be – in the 2010 parody.” The first bidder was the Dean of Students because they gave her a hard time this year in the parody, but then Professor Mann, who bought this item last year, got in a bidding war with Professor Warren and everyone was laughing so hard!

Why should admitted and prospective students seeking a strong public interest community choose Harvard? Why did you?
I think that students looking for a strong public interest community should choose Harvard because they can go anywhere and do anything with a degree from Harvard Law. We are a bigger law school, but as a result, we have so many more options to pick from than other law schools. Good public interest law jobs are really competitive – and since I want one, I’m glad I chose Harvard. I know that the connections and friends that I will make here, with professors and fellow students, will be of benefit for the rest of my life.

The question of whether to apply as a transfer student is the right move is up to you, but we think that a little research will show you the vast benefits of transferring to HLS. With 102 full-time professors and more than 300 courses, HLS is home to the most intellectually stimulating legal community in the world. Outside the classroom, there are 14 journals, over100 student organizations, clinical placements in approximately 30 areas of the law, and more than enough opportunities for you to experience the incredible diversity of the HLS community during your second- and third- year. For example, the Harvard Law Review encourages transfer applicants to apply for membership and several past transfer students have been successful in that endeavor.

Bottom line? Whether you are interested in constitutional law or environmental law or human rights advocacy or any number of other areas, the breadth and depth of our offerings is incredible. Whether you want to clerk at the circuit court level, follow the path to academia, or pursue a career in public service, the opportunities presented to our graduates are unsurpassed.

For more details on the transfer application process including eligibility guidelines, deadlines, and application requirements, please visit: http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/j…

Also, stay tuned in the coming days and weeks for blog entries of a few students talking about their experience transferring into Harvard Law School!

As Zittrain explained, “we’re trying to get ourselves out of a mode where the internet just happens to us and we become, rather, participants in it.” One of the issues with the net is that users by and large don’t know what’s going on. “We’re eager to help create an emergent sense of what’s going on in this network especially at a time when network blockages and filtering are on the rise,” he said. “When you can’t get somewhere the number of problems between you and the destination are legion and there’s an easy way to figure out what’s wrong… our aim is to help answer those questions in a prosaic way by trying to enlist people at large to answer them.”

So what’s with the sheep (Herdict’s icon), you ask? As the website explains, “sheep tend not to follow the herd when no natural predator is present. While considering web inaccessibility and censorship a predator might be far-fetched, when faced with it, it makes sense to join the herd.” While OpenNet Initiative seeks to identify filtering on the web and to probe public consciousness about the practice through academic means, Herdict Web shifts the power to the masses. Herdict is a toolbar that changes color based on a particular URL’s accessibility. If you find yourself unable to access a site, you can click on the ‘sheep’ and report your problem. “The act of asking this question is what helps seed the round of data in order to answer [why a site is blocked],” said Zittrain. As more people respond with errors, the Herdict team is able to interpolate the data and point to a cause. For those interested, the website includes the sort-able ‘herdometer’ that displays reports as they come in. “Once someone makes a report,” explained Zittrain, “it’s helpful to know if others are experiencing the same issue. You very quickly figure out who is also experiencing what and why.”

Stay tuned for more information on Herdict Web!

Actually, argued Sunstein, it is precisely because of this ability to customize our news sources according to where our interests lie that we have become more polarized.

“The conception of free speech emphasizes the architecture of control by which we can construct topics that serve our interests,” said Sunstein. “…but there’s a suggestion that this system of self-sorting will diminish the serendipity of knowledge that comes with exposure to thoughts from unanticipated sources.” To illustrate this point of increasing polarity, Sunstein posed three empirical cases. For the first case his research team brought together like-minded conservatives in Colorado Springs, CO and like-minded liberals in Boulder and asked them, anonymously and without deliberating with others, to give their opinions on issues ranging from climate change to affirmative action. Then, the groups were asked to deliberate about the issues in their respective groups. “On each issue, the like minded liberals and conservatives became much more extreme in their views,” said Sunstein, “almost all of the internal diversity that might have existed before deliberation evaporated.” Another case involving federal judges sought to establish how liberal and conservative appointees vote when both alone and as a group. “The splits in this case were stark… where there’s normally a 10-15% split between liberals and conservatives in any given issue, the behavior the judges exhibited when segregated mirrored the Colorado case; the split on one conservative issue was 90%.”

“We need to recover the public forum of ideas,” Sunstein said. “we need to recover our sense of constitutional aspirations and the deliberative forums in which diverse people get into contact.”

Stay tuned for more Sunstein!

“Essentially, Gawker.com is the outsider’s insider,” said Coen. “How the media has come to be transformed over the last couple of years has really been the work of sites like TMZ… which is an aggressive and ingenius business model of ‘if you wait long enough, someone will come out.’”

When asked about the legal ramifications inherent in what some might say is a business of mudslinging, Coen acknowledged the risks but explained that the editorial/op-ed voice of the website gave the bloggers a long leash. “The managing editor of Gawker and the few attorneys we had didn’t want the writers to fear the repercussion of libel suits,” she said. “In going the corporate route, first at Vanity Fair and now at New York Magazine, I realize how much freedom I had at Gawker.”

On the question of ethical boundaries with regard to celebrities, Coen was, not surprisingly, unsympathetic. “With celebrities, we follow the tabloid media… when you reach a certain level of stardom, you have to be prepared to give your life to the media for better or worse.” For those who become subjects of Gawker’s caricature as a result of their affiliation with celebrities or garner attention for strange antics, Coen was more ambivalent. “It’s very easy to get sucked into the media craze… you sometimes become as bad as the person you’re writing about.”

Please visit the link to HLS Speaks off the JD Admissions home page if you’re interested in these subjects.

“‘Judge Timothy B. Dyk of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit addressed packed a lecture hall of law students recently. In an event sponsored by the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Judge Dyk discussed his experiences on the Federal Circuit, which is the appellate court charged with jurisdiction over several areas of law including patent jurisprudence.’

‘Judge Dyk explained his view of the Federal Circuit’s role in the federal system, including its unique common law function of interpreting patent laws. Following his speech, students engaged in a lively question and answer session with the accomplished jurist, whose career has included service in the Department of Justice, private practice, adjunct professorships, and clerkships for Chief Justice Warren and Justices Reed and Burton of the United States Supreme Court.’”

Since its inception in 1988, the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology (JOLT) has published writings by academics, practitioners, and policymakers on a variety of topics, including intellectual property, biotechnology, e-commerce, space law, computer law, cybercrime, the Internet, and telecommunications. JOLT is the most cited legal technology journal in the world. During the academic year, the JOLT hosts lectures, panel discussions, and an annual Symposium dedicated to promoting knowledge of technology and the law. This year, JOLT is pioneering a radical new online initiative that will bring together, in one place, all developments in the field of law and technology.

Webcast: Judge Timothy Dyk (48:53)

Dr. Sunshine Hillygus, Director of the Harvard Program on Survey Research, framed civic engagement among youths in terms of capacity to get involved, motivation, and recruitment. “The most effective recruitment to vote comes from people we know, and new opportunities have been created to get people involved in the process,” she said. However, the expansion of instantaneous modes of communication has complicated the engagement process by making it difficult for parties to foment unified support among young voters.

Yet for Nasser Weddady, the Director of Outreach at Hands Across the Mideast Support Alliance (HAMSA), it’s not motivation that’s lacking but the freedom to overcome repressive systems that don’t allow for civic engagement. “Our problem at HAMSA is identifying vocal leaders to push reforms online and then of course, how do we transfer online energy into the real world?”

Likewise, Keli Goff, a political analyst on youth and minority voters, believes the internet has succeeded in youth unification. Author of Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence, Goff pointed to the nationwide outcry for the Case of the Jena 6 last year. “Before we get too pessimistic about the power of internet activism, the Case if the Jena 6 put the young black blogosphere on the map.” For Goff, the potential of the Obama campaign is the untold story of the pockets of voters banding together in a peer-to-peer movement.

One of the ways to enlist these “pockets,” suggested recent Yale-grad Paul Selker, is to empower first time voters to do meaningful service. The Director of Outreach and Communications at Obama Works, Selker has been working to “proudsource agency” among students looking to get involved and leave their mark on the cyberworld. “We want to folks to organize and what we give them in return is the prestige of having their own webpage on our site for their local chapters.”

Be sure to check out the Berkman Center’s Tuesday Lunch Series!

“We’ve reached an age where the definition of citizen is being changing… to social citizen,” Fine said. As the number of Millennials surpasses that of Baby-Boomers, the public policy are not yet clear. In a recent study that researched Millennial relationships across a vast cyber network that included Facebook, Fine determined that Millennials have converted the tools of democracy into digitized form. “Young folks are drawn to corporations as consumers, they look for social responsibility among companies, and they are extremely drawn to causes,” she reported. “Interestingly and overwhelmingly, Millennials are not drawn to government or public policy, though the current presidential campaign has instigated an enormous amount of interest.”

Fine then posed several questions on the direction of social change. After noting the hesitation of young citizens to engage in the public policy “offline”, Fine suggested that there was a need to transport the impetus for social change from a solely online phenomenon. “It’s just fundamentally different from last century… Will Millennials engage in public policy and government beyond electoral campaigns? Can we break the ‘bubble culture’ of online social networks and create dialogue across networks?”

In response, several roundtable members questioned whether the growing lack of interest in government wasn’t arising out of a generation raised in an era in which Washington has been ignored as a means to achieve anything. “They see how little of their parents’ activism paid off in the 60s, and they’re committed to doing otherwise,” one student posited. Others feel that public schools are shying away from promoting government and policy advocacy to keep issues from “blowing up in their faces.” “It’s just easier to promote Habitat for Humanity… civic education has been replaced by volunteerism.”