Toby’s blog

As the saying goes, “Rise above the storm and you will find sunshine.” Boston weather jokes aside, the end of 1L year is definitely cause for celebration. Over the course of this past academic year, I checked in periodically with 1L (now, 2L) Laura Kleinman to see how she was adjusting to life at HLS. Here’s a look back to then and now.

Now that your first year at HLS is over, what were your expectations going in last fall? How did those expectations compare with reality?

Last fall, I knew that this would be the most rigorous and rewarding experience of my academic life. But I never expected that HLS would provide me with such a solid community of invested teachers, dedicated staff, supportive classmates, and inspiring friends. HLS exceeded all my expectations and opened my eyes to what it means to provide a truly unparalleled legal education.

What activities did you get involved in this year and how did they figure into your 1L experience?

First semester, I joined the Harvard Human Rights Journal, to which I only devoted several days over the course of the year. I actually had trouble finding extra-curricular activities in which I wanted to invest in a meaningful way. But when the application for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau came out, I spent my spring break pouring over every word of it, in the hopes that I would be able to spend the next two years devoting my time and energy to providing free legal services to low- or no-income individuals in the Boston community.
Now a member of the Bureau, I am eager to return to HLS as a 2L and begin my career in public interest law.

What was the most rewarding thing about 1L year? What was hardest?

The most rewarding and hardest aspect of this year was the learning in a Socratic environment—feeling intellectually exposed while simultaneously gaining newfound confidence to ask questions or share my opinion a room of 80 of the smartest kids I have ever met.

What do you know now about law school that you wish you had known last August?

Everyone has a different learning style, but for some reason, being in law school makes all of us feel like we have to learn the same way—briefing cases, outlining classes, participating in study groups—for fear of being left behind. Inevitably, these methods are unhelpful for some people.

What advice would you give to new1Ls?

Every 1L experiences moments in which law school feels unmanageable. And with so much going on every day, it is easy to get overwhelmed by that feeling if you don’t make time to reflect on your experience at HLS. In retrospect, my advice would be to take a time out when law school feels unmanageable. Reflect critically on what exactly makes it feel that way for you—the workload, the social dynamics, the student lifestyle, the hours, the external pressure—and do all you can to address and modify your approach to that element based on what’s good for you, not everyone else. Big, sweeping changes are hard to make during 1L, but tackling problems individually makes everything else seem more manageable.

Having just celebrated its tenth anniversary in April, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society kicked off its eleventh year by bringing together academics across disciplines, activists, and educators to discuss the potential of digital tools for civic engagement among young people. In a recent event held by the Digital Natives Forum, Professor John Palfrey prompted the panel with the question of how digital media tools can enable youths to motivate one another to create meaningful change.

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!

A professor who perhaps needs no introduction, Philip Heymann leads efforts at HLS to encourage national and international public service by lawyers. He was appointed by President Carter to lead the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, and by President Clinton to serve as Deputy Attorney General of the United States. Heymann authored numerous books and articles. His most recent book Terrorism, Freedom and Security was described in the New York Times as a persuasive argument for just the kind of multilateral approach to fighting terrorism for which the Bush administration has shown utter disdain. His earlier book, Terrorism and America, was described by Ariel Merari, the founder and former commander of Israel’s Hostage Negotiation and Crisis Management Team, as by far the best treatise on coping with terrorism. He has appeared frequently on national television and radio.

Admissions staffer Julia Foresman recently sat down with Professor Heymann to talk about teaching law and terrorism and to get his thoughts on the national security issues we stand to face in the coming years. Take a listen: Professor Phil Heymann

Chayes Fellow 2L Joy Wang recently filled us in on her summer interning with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in Thailand. At HLS, she is involved in the Tenant Advocacy Project, the Human Rights Journal, and is co-captain of the tennis team.

“The term ‘Human trafficking’ – often used synonymously with modern day slavery – deals with individuals who are fraudulently or coercively taken into situations of labor exploitation, most often a factory or a brothel. I spent my 1L summer interning at the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (UNIAP), an organization founded in 2000 in order to foster a regional, inter-agency response to human trafficking in Southeast Asia. I first became interested in the issue of human trafficking while working for a London barrister on human rights and asylum applications. One of our clients was a young woman who been sold into prostitution in the UK by a family member from central Africa. While working on this case, it became clear to me that human trafficking is a pervasive and barbaric phenomenon that has yet to find a systematic form of redress. Every year, an estimated 800-900,000 people are bought, sold and forced across borders; the trafficking of human beings is the third-largest criminal industry in the world, exceeded only by the sale of drugs and small arms. Yet to this day, trafficking victims confound the most common migratory categories: it is unclear whether we should think of them as normal immigrants, illegal entry persons, smuggling victims, economic migrants, refugees or asylum seekers. The complexity of human trafficking is particularly condensed in a country like Thailand. As the relatively modern, cosmopolitan hub of Southeast Asia, Thailand is both a prime destination for other migrants from neighboring countries (particularly Myanmar and Cambodia), and a transit and source country for the rest of the world.’

“During the summer, I was based at the regional headquarters of the UNIAP in Bangkok, an office that coordinates the counter-trafficking efforts of governments and related task forces in China, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. As a legal intern, I analyzed three anti-trafficking laws in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Thailand, all of which had been enacted within the last two years. My legal analysis focused in particular on victim protection, i.e. how individuals are treated after they have been rescued by police and / or NGOs. At present, the routine treatment of victims raises serious concerns. Once formally identified, most trafficking victims are placed in a shelter for ‘rehabilitation’ – often for 1-3 years – during which time they are unable to leave or look for work elsewhere; the majority are compelled to testify against their traffickers without any witness protection measures in place; they are then sent back to their home countries, many without identity cards. Researchers estimate that 80% of repatriated victims will again attempt to leave home, making them vulnerable to repeat cycles of trafficking. Unsurprisingly, studies have shown that trafficking victims frequently refuse assistance and resist being identified since acquiring victim status is tantamount to prolonged detention. In recent years, new laws in the Mekong countries have attempted to improve victim protection by inscribing into law provisions on conditions of the shelter, duration of stay, and legal counseling. However, as it stands, attempts to help these individuals often do them more harm than good.’

“In addition to writing a legal memo on the new anti-trafficking laws, I also spent time interviewing Thai officials on legal prosecutions and facilities for victims. I had the opportunity to meet and learn from key partners at the International Rescue Committee, the International Organisation on Migration, and the Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons Project. Although it was sobering to work daily on the issue of human trafficking, it was also inspiring to collaborate with a community of people devoted to the same cause. My summer in Bangkok concluded with the recognition that while human trafficking demands immediate intervention, finding a sustainable remedy faces several hard challenges. As long as the root causes of migration endure – i.e. uneven development and the natural desire for upward mobility – the criminal abuse of people in search of a better life is inevitable. Poverty will always provoke dire and precarious forms of movement and the attendant problems of exploitation. Rather than trying to harden border controls, we might instead focus on creating safer migration routes, implementing fairer labor standards in prime destination countries, and guaranteeing better victim services and legal protection for the millions of people who find themselves in conditions of modern slavery. Achieving these aims requires not only better laws but greater awareness and collective political will. Working with the United Nations in Bangkok was a humbling experience that gave me concentrated exposure to the problem of human trafficking, and tentative, germinal ideas about how I might contribute to better solutions. Back at Harvard Law School, I am taking classes on development, local government and labor law that I hope will offer a broader context of related themes and further my understanding of how best to help.”

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.

Alison Welcher, a rising 2L and Chayes Fellow focusing on international humanitarian and human rights law, caught up with us recently about her summer working in Africa working for the Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme in Freetown.

“Having just left Sierra Leone, after spending a little more than two months working for a local NGO in Freetown, it’s hard to believe that the summer is already drawing to a close. When I started the search for a summer job, I knew that I wanted to find an internship in Africa that was related to criminal justice; I also had a growing interest in post-conflict societies and their transition to peace. As a government major in undergrad, I had spent a fair amount of time studying African politics and was very familiar with the international tribunal that had been set up in Rwanda after the civil war there. I also spent my second semester of 1L year interning at the Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research in Cambridge, which led to a greater interest in the laws of war and how they are applied in actuality. After talking to a lot of older students at HLS and doing independent research on the internet, I was most interested in working with either Sierra Leone or Cambodia with the international criminal tribunals that had been set up to try war criminals.’

“Eventually I decided I’d rather have the experience of working with a grassroots organization than with the tribunals themselves and settled on the SLCMP, or Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme, an organization that HLS students had worked with in the past and loved. SLCMP was originally established to monitor the trials of those charged with violations of international law during the country’s almost decade-long civil war. However, as the Special Court for Sierra Leone’s operations are slowly drawing to a close, SLCMP has expanded its operations to monitor the activities of national courts, local courts applying customary law, the national anti-corruption commission, and other justice-related institutions.’

“My role in all this was to follow the joint trial of three of the accused at the Special Court and write up weekly reports on the happenings. I would then focus on one or two particular topics that arose and write a longer legal analysis to be published in SLCMP’s monthly newsletter. I am also in the process of putting together a much longer research paper on the legacy of the Special Court and my opinions of its operations (which have evolved tremendously from beginning of summer to the end). However, I also had a great amount of flexibility in my internship, pretty much working on my own time, free to pursue any topic that may interest me. As a result, I conducted interviews with the newly established national Human Rights Commission and wrote an analysis of its first annual report, amongst other side projects. My boss also gave me a large role in writing a new, multi-volume training manual for the organization and teaching sessions on pre-trial and trial rights at a week-long training program held in Freetown for all of the staff.’

“Sierra Leone is a chaotic and often frustrating place, but I will always treasure my experiences there. No matter what difficulties I encountered, I was struck by the friendliness and openness of the people, who were always eager to share their own views of the Special Court and their personal stories about the war. Working at a local NGO came with its own share of frustrations and has taught me a lot about what I want out of a future career, including direct access to clients and the ability to work on individual cases from the beginning to a hopefully successful outcome. All in all, I believe that I took much more away from this summer for myself than I could have ever given back to my host organization. Still, I am planning on continuing to work with SLCMP on various projects throughout the upcoming year and hope to use the opportunities and contacts I have at HLS to strengthen the program however I can.”

I noticed that Brian Leiter has had some interesting things to say on the movement of faculty to Harvard (and from other schools).  Take a look at his blog and particularly at two of his recent posts (here and here).

While we have long had a student-faculty ratio like that at some of the small, elite liberal arts colleges (like Bowdoin or Middlebury) we have made a concerted effort in recent years to try to further drive down that ratio by hiring some outstanding scholars.  Many of them have come here from other law schools.  We expect the trend to continue and believe that this is one of the things that makes Harvard Law School the most exciting place in the world to pursue a legal education.  Harvard has the most intellectually interesting and diverse faculty in the nation and it is great to see outsiders take notice, particularly those who, like Professor Leiter, watch these trends carefully.

For the last year, Congress has been considering the implementation of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that seeks to alter the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The bill has provoked hot debate across party lines (and in the current presidential campaign). Supporters generally feel that workers need heightened protection from anti-union coercion by employers; opponents believe that the elimination of secret ballots in union election could lead to union-side coercion of employees and claim that the bill fails to protect employee privacy. Such was the atmosphere in which the American Constitution Society recently invited professionals on both sides of the issue to present their perspectives.

“We’ve gone almost six decades without a change in labor relations policy,” said labor relations expert, James Brudney, a visiting professor at HLS. “In that time, labor laws have become broken… and there is too much room for unlawful employer activity such as the termination of union supporters.” In making his case, Brudney pointed to the steady decline of the number of new union members nationwide. 7% of the labor force is unionized today, compared with seven times that number 45 years ago.

Still, as Joseph Ambash, a labor attorney with Greenberg Traurig argued, the plight of unions cannot be ascribed to employers alone. “It’s not that the laws are broken, it’s that the union business is broken,” he said. “Employees can’t be persuaded it’s worth it to join a union.” He furthered his point by positing that it is blatantly undemocratic for unions to require signature cards, which are used in a union organizing campaign to show support and justify a representation election. Employees who sign cards are stating they want a union election. “This act would deprive employees of their right to hear both sides of the story.”

Mac D’Alessandro of the Service Employees International Union commented: “Joe’s right; we can’t convince workers that unions are good for them because we can’t get access to them.” D’Alessandro framed his point in the larger context of workers under siege by reminding the panel that in addition to job security concerns, many workers continue to struggle while the salaries of employers have grown exponentially over time. “The Employee Free Choice Act levels the playing field for employees in a non-coercive environment.”

Yet for labor attorney Robert Morsilli of Jackson Lewis LLP, the devil is in the details in the Act. “One of the damning features of the Employee Free Choice Act is that after 120 days, the parties in an employment contract lose control of the bargaining when the decision goes to binding arbitration, which rarely works out well.” Given the posturing of negotiators, he suggested, there is hardly ever an appropriate one-size-fits-all contract. “When you get down to it, what’s this law really about? It’s about circumventing an employer’s ability to communicate with his or her employees about union matters.”

For anyone who works regularly with students, the fault lines of social change are distinct and become slowly visible over a period of just a few years. Having been out of college now for a decade, the ways in which students engage their professors, their parents, and with each other on political issues has become almost entirely digitized. To speak to these issues, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society recently invited social entrepreneur Allison Fine to discuss Millennials, a group she defined as people aged 15-29 who practice a nascent model of civic participation that combines immersion in social causes, idealism, and digital fluency.

“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.”

For the last year, Congress has been considering the implementation of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that seeks to alter the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 to support and facilitate employee efforts to form or join labor a labor union. Though the bill has bipartisan support, it has provoked hot debate across party lines. Supporters generally feel that workers rightly demand heightened protection from anti-union coercion by employers; opponents conversely fear union-side coercion of employees and claim that the bill fails to protect employee privacy. Such was the atmosphere in which the American Constitution Society recently invited professionals on both sides of the issue to present their perspectives.

“We’ve gone almost six decades without a change in labor relations policy,” said labor relations expert, James Brudney, a visiting professor at HLS. “In that time, labor laws have become broken… and there is too much room for unlawful employer activity such as the termination of union supporters.” In making his case, Brudney pointed to the steady decline of the number of new union members nationwide. 7% of the labor force is unionized today, compared with seven times that number 45 years ago.

Still, as Joseph Ambash, a labor attorney with Greenberg Traurig argued, the plight of unions cannot be ascribed to employers alone. “It’s not that the laws are broken, it’s that the union business is broken,” he said. “Employees can’t be persuaded it’s worth it to join a union.” He furthered his point by positing that it is blatantly undemocratic for unions to require signature cards, which are used in a union organizing campaign to show support and justify a representation election. Employees who sign cards are stating they want a union election. “This act would deprive employees of their right to hear both sides of the story.”

Mac D’Alessandro of the Service Employees International Union commented: “Joe’s right; we can’t convince workers that unions are good for them because we can’t get access to them.” D’Alessandro framed his point in the larger context of workers under siege by reminding the panel that in addition to job security concerns, many workers continue to struggle while the salaries of employers have grown exponentially over time. “The Employee Free Choice Act levels the playing field for employees in a non-coercive environment.”

Yet for labor attorney Robert Morsilli of Jackson Lewis LLP, the devil is in the details in the Act. “One of the damning features of the Employee Free Choice Act is that after 120 days, the parties in an employment contract lose control of the bargaining when the decision goes to binding arbitration, which rarely works out well.” Given the posturing of negotiators, he suggested, there is hardly ever an appropriate one-size-fits-all contract. “When you get down to it, what’s this law really about? It’s about circumventing an employer’s ability to communicate with his or her employees about union matters.”