Toby’s blog

Archbishop Jaime Pedro Gonçalves

The Program on Negotiation hosted Archbishop Jaime Pedro Gonçalves who spoke about his experience as part of the peace process in Mozambique following a bloody struggle for independence and of the common call for all Christians to be peacemakers. PON staffer Sarah Whitman filled us in.

“Recently, the Program on Negotiation hosted Jaime Pedro Gonçalves, the Archbishop of Beira and Apostolic Administrator of Quelimane for an informal brown bag lunch. Archbishop Jaime Gonçalves is well known for his participation as a mediator in the 16 year long civil war in Mozambique after their long struggle for independence from Portugal. With the assistance of the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international Catholic lay movement that played the role of mediator. After 27 months of negotiations he successfully brokered peace, a peace that has endured for over 15 years.

“During the informal lunch the Archbishop discussed how his role as an observer of the conflict transformed into one of the key roles in resolving this protracted war. He addressed how he created a novel mediation framework between the two parties and how his unique relationships with individuals on both sides allowed him to successfully work away from the table to broker peace. The Archbishop closed the discussion with powerful advice: In conflict be ready to resist what is wrong and speak the truth to power gently but firmly.”

…Stephanie Robinson. You probably thought I was going to say Barack Obama. But there’s a more imminent election to replace Tavis Smiley as commentator on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Stephanie is a lecturer here at Harvard Law School as well as an HLS alumna and the CEO of the Jamestown Project.

Thanks to Professor Ron Sullivan for the heads up on this!

Greta Gao, 3L and Program Chair of the American Constitution Society, wrote to us on a panel she recently helped organize entitled “The Shifting Borders of Immigration Regulation.”

“Recently, three of Harvard’s immigration law experts, including Professors Ayelet Shachar, Gerald Neuman, and Debbie Anker, gathered on a panel to discuss the shifting borders in immigration regulation based on a recent paper by Visiting Professor Shachar. In her paper, she argued that governments of high-volume immigration countries have often redefined the point at which ‘entry’ into the country is recognized by law, in order to make inspection and possible removal of the new visitors easier. Essentially, these governments are redrawing the ‘legal border’ of the country.

“Professor Shachar spoke about the traditional significance of border-crossing for non-citizens. Within the border, she said, noncitizens are entitled to more processes and rights than people who were never admitted into the country. Therefore, by redefining the legal ‘border’ not at the territorial border but sometimes far outside or far within, governments are able to restrict the set of rights traditionally available for noncitizens within the boundaries of a country. In the United States, for example, noncitizens are traditionally subjected to expedited removal without judicial review before they entered the country. New legislation, however, has extended the zone of expedited removal to within 100 miles of the border, effectively shrinking the border to 100 miles within the United States.

“While Professor Neuman largely agreed with Professor Shachar’s characterization of ‘boundary-redrawing,’ he looked at the issue from a historical angle and argued that governments, especially the U.S. government, have always manipulated the definition of a legal ‘border’ in immigration law. Thus, even though methods such as expedited removal procedures are new ‘tools’ in the government’s ‘toolbox’ for controlling immigration, the ‘toolbox’ itself is a very old one. For example, ‘parole status’ essentially allows noncitizens to enter the country but still be legally recognized as ‘standing at the border,’ thus without the protection or rights of those deemed to have entered the country. Professor Neuman cited a case from the 1920s, where a girl from Poland was refused entry to the U.S. but then ‘paroled’ into the country because World War I had broken out and she could not return to her country safely. She spent 10 years in the U.S., and her parents naturalized. She argued that she, too, should have been considered naturalized based on immigration law that existed at the time. Justice Holmes rejected her arguments, saying that as a parolee, she was deemed to have never entered the country, and the statutes in question therefore did not apply to her. This was a rather extreme example of the legal fiction of ‘the border’ being radically redrawn and then rigidly applied.

“Professor Anker, the director of the Harvard immigration and refugee clinic, drew on her work at the clinic and talked about a concrete example of the reshaping of the legal borders-the hardening of borders between the U.S. and Canada with respect to refugees. The U.S. was long considered a ‘safe third country’ for Canada to send its refugees, but recently, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that the U.S. should no longer be considered as such because refugees sent here face an unacceptable risk of being deported back to their home countries. The finding of the Court was based in part on the work done by Professor Anker and the Harvard Immigration Law Clinic.”

During her Winter Term, 2L Lauren Birchfield traveled to Delhi, India to work with the Human Rights Law Network on the Right to Food Campaign. Upon her return, she shared her story and photos with us.

“I spent January 2008 interning at the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) in Delhi, India, working on the Right to Food. The Human Rights Law Network provides pro bono legal services, conducts public interest litigation, participates in advocacy, and collaborates with social movements and human rights organizations. Maintaining both litigation and publishing departments, HRLN works on issues such as Right to Food, Women’s Justice, Dalit Rights, Disability Rights, and rights for persons living with HIV/AIDS.

“Along with my colleague Jessica Corsi, I investigated and documented the history of the Right to Food Campaign, its accompanying case, PUCL v. India & Others, and the post-litigation implementation of India’s constitutional right to food. Our time in India was spent largely traveling around Delhi and other parts of the country conducting interviews with activists involved with the Right to Food Campaign. The fact-finding, research, and interviews conducted are currently being incorporated into a final document, which will be completed by June 2008. In our forthcoming paper, we intend to address not only the campaign and litigation, but also larger questions about the right to food, as well. These larger issues include food sovereignty, the effects of neoliberal economic policy and trade liberalization on the rural poor, and the relationship between food security, agricultural production, and employment rights.

“While in India, we had several opportunities to travel. These photographs document the time we spent in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, as well as some of our excursions around Delhi. Our first week in Delhi, we observed and assisted on a fact-finding mission in the villages of rural Uttar Pradesh. The objective of this mission was to collect data on the status of food security in U.P.’s Banda district, and to assess how Supreme Court mandated food and employment orders were being implemented. These images depict some of the villages and the stone quarry we visited while in Uttar Pradesh.

Directly upon our return from Uttar Pradesh, we departed for Rajasthan, where we spent several days interviewing some of the key social activists involved with the Right to Food Campaign. Our first days in Rajasthan were spent in Beawar at a National Right to Information Youth Convention, where we had the opportunity to participate in a candlelight vigil commemorating the first Youth Convention that had taken place in Beawar several years earlier.

“Once we arrived back in Delhi, we spent our last ten days in India tracking down and interviewing human rights activists, economists, Supreme Court Commissioners, professors, and lawyers who had either worked directly on or were invested in food security in India. During our last few days, we also managed to squeeze in a few sight-seeing excursions. We toured the Taj Mahal, as well as some sights around Delhi, such as the Jama Masjid Mosque (Delhi’s principal mosque, which can hold up to 25,000 worshippers).

“Overall, words cannot really express how much I enjoyed both working at HRLN and my winter term experience. At HRLN I met incredibly passionate and qualified people, and was accepted into an office that recognized each of its staff members as important components in its vision for change. There was never a dull moment at HRLN - we were constantly on our feet, putting in calls to human rights activists, scheduling meetings, and traveling all over the country to interview those activists whenever and wherever they could meet with us. I greatly appreciated how much HRLN invested in us and in our project, and how much freedom is gave us regarding the project’s construction and implementation. I found HRLN a fantastic organization to work for, and I was pleased to walk away from the internship having recognized that this – this kind of work, this kind of project – is what I want to pursue as a career.”

I just got forwarded this message from the BLSA via Professor Ogletree:

“I hope everyone enjoyed their Spring Breaks! It is with great pride that I announce that, at the National BLSA 40^th Anniversary Convention in Detroit, Harvard BLSA was named the 2008 NBLSA Chapter of the Year!! The National Chapter of the Year Award was granted to Harvard BLSA for its Outstanding Performance and Exceptional Commitment to Ensuring Inseverability and Strengthening the Pipeline.”

BLSA has a terrific website and I recommend checking it out.

In a effort to shake things up a bit recently, I decided to let some students have a little fun interviewing their professors. One such individual was 1L Talhia Tuck who sat down for a chat with her professor of Race Relations Law: From the Jim Crow Era to the Present Moment, Randall Kennedy.

Professor Kennedy specializes in the intersection between racial conflict and legal institutions in American life. He currently teaches race Relations Law, Issues Involving Freedom of Expression, and Contracts.

Before coming to HLS, Talhia spent most of her professional life in television, first as a production assistant for Hardball with Chris Matthews and a researcher for The Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and then later TV-News Reporter for the WINK-TV, the CBC Affiliate in Fort Myers, Florida. She is interested in combining her interest in journalism with law by pursuing avenues such as First Amendment law, communication law, or media law.

Talhia Tuck and Randall Kennedy: (23:21)

I just got an e-mail from the Institute listing several events, including one with Rev. Jesse Jackson. Looks like a fun next couple of weeks for our students:

http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/Home.aspx

Winter term is normally a quiet time here in the Admissions office. With 1L exams underway, and with 2Ls and 3Ls engrossed in various projects or courses, campus activities by and large come to a halt. However, in light of the chaos surrounding Kenya’s December 27^th Presidential Election, the Human Rights Program invited Visiting Fellow and native Kenyan Joseph Mwaura to speak about the political situation, the contexts of the violence, and the media frenzy.

“It’s a shame,” said Mwaura, “Kenya has done well economically and socially with its cohesion. It had become the pride of Africa, the beacon of hope.” Since its independence and during the restoration of democracy after a 24-year dictatorship in 2002, Kenya maintained stability under the leadership of popular incumbent President Mwai Kibaki. Still, according to Mwaura, the economic gap between the rich and the poor has widened over time, and Kenyan communities have become wary of the credibility of government institutions that have long neglected their need for schools and hospitals.

“When the election results were questioned, Kibaki didn’t back down because he didn’t want to look like a coward… he did not follow the law, he followed his anger and has lost much respect,” said Mwaura. The aftermath of what most believe was a rigged election has only fueled the anger and tension that existed among tribes during the campaign. “The fact that the government has allowed protests is reckless,” said Mwaura. “There are of course genuine electoral protestors who feel violated of their right to vote fairly… but you also have the tribal protestors who only want to kill, displace, and seize property.”

As a way forward, Mwaura recommended pressure on the Kenyan government to own up to rigging the election and schedule fresh elections and negotiations. “Both sides are still fighting and there are accusations on both sides of genocide, the images of which are plastered by the media encouraging more violence. We need to restore peace, trust, and confidence.”

Professor Ogletree just passed along this article from the Washington Post on the subject of John Payton ‘77 ascending to the post once held by Thurgood Marshall.

Those of you who are future constitutional law scholars may have heard the term “strict scrutiny” used in cases related to race-based classifications. Professor Richard Fallon just published an article in the UCLA Law Review discussing the term and its history and uses:

Read Strict Judicial Scrutiny