HLS News December 2006

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  Op-ed by Professor Mnookin: Bye bye Belgium?

  On Wednesday night last week, Belgium's French-speaking public television network created a stir with a surprise 90-minute broadcast that began with a news flash that Flanders had declared independence and that the Belgian state was breaking apart. The broadcast was inspired by Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds," but touched upon a possibility less fanciful than an invasion from Mars.
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  HLS faculty and graduates help to enact historic UN treaty on rights of disabled

  On December 13, 2006, members of the HLS community and representatives of international disability rights organizations scored a major victory when the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the first human rights treaty of the 21st century to promote and protect the rights of the disabled.
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  Research finds directors' options were favorably timed

  The HLS Program on Corporate Governance released a new study today called Lucky Directors, by Professor Lucian Bebchuk and co-authors Yaniv Grinsten and Urs Peyer suggesting that outside directors' options, and not only executives' options, have been favorably timed to an extent that cannot be explained by mere luck.
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  Professors challenge elimination of habeas review for enemy combatants

  HLS Professor Gerald Neuman '80 has co-written an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of a new law denying courts jurisdiction to entertain petitions for writs of habeas corpus by alien detainees whom the government has deemed 'enemy combatants.'
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  An op-ed by Professor Charles Fried: Getting at the truth

  The following op-ed was published in The Boston Globe on December 13, 2006: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the egregious president of Iran, is hosting a conference this week on whether the Holocaust really happened.
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  Professor Adrian Vermeule on security, liberty and the courts

  Adrian Vermeule joined the faculty this year as a professor of law, coming from the University of Chicago Law School. Here, he talks with HLT editor Robb London.
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  Noah Feldman to join Harvard Law faculty

  Constitutional law scholar and well-known author Noah Feldman, currently a tenured professor of law at New York University, has accepted an offer to join the Harvard Law faculty beginning next fall. Feldman is a leading expert in many aspects of constitutional law, particularly law and religion, constitutional design and the history of legal theory.
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  HLS's Fisher and Shapiro honored for negotiation work

  Professor Emeritus Roger Fisher and lecturer Daniel Shapiro are this year’s recipients of the prestigious Cloke-Millen Award. The prize -- formerly called the "Peacemaker of the Year" award -- honors outstanding professionals working in mediation, negotiation or dispute resolution, and is given out by the Southern California Mediation Association.
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  Comments on President Carter's new book: An op-ed from Alan Dershowitz

  The following op-ed was published in the National Post on December 2, 2006: Sometimes, you really can tell a book by its cover. Jimmy Carter's decision to title his new anti-Israel screed Palestine: Peace Not Aparteid tells it all.