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Christina Greenberg’s client was labeled disruptive and was sent home from elementary school every single day last spring. The 8-year-old—who is mentally disabled, has hydrocephalus, seizures and is in a wheelchair—then lost summer services because his school district failed to submit the necessary paperwork. His mother—struggling to care for her son and his disabled twin on $1,000 a month—was desperate when she reached Greenberg, a summer intern with Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
While in Guatemala this winter, Therese Rohrbeck touched what remains of The Dream of Pope Gregory IX.
Few lawyers ever get the chance to write something that will be studied closely by a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
Stephen G. Breyer '64 has served as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court since 1994.
Recently, he welcomed Robb London '86, editor of the Bulletin, and Michael Armini, HLS director of communications, into his chambers. After serving tea and throwing logs into a fireplace near Felix Frankfurter's chair, Breyer discussed a range of issues, and also his new book, "Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution," in which he argues that judges should pay more attention to the framers' purpose of maximizing citizen participation in the democratic process, and criticizes the "originalist" view of constitutional interpretation.
Four HLS students in the Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program have just finished an ambitious, semester-long project with Kenneth R. Feinberg, Special Master of the 9/11 Fund and a leading expert in alternative dispute resolution, to help staunch the widespread mortgage foreclosure crisis by bringing banks and homeowners together to refashion mortgage agreements.
Joey Diamond was born in 1994 with cocaine in his system. Two years later, he was found wandering alone in a city park late at night, wearing only a diaper. Custody of the boy was awarded to the same family who had adopted his six older siblings, and for a while he did fine, but in elementary school he began struggling academically and behaviorally, especially after his adoptive father died suddenly of a heart attack.
Six HLS students in the Title IX clinical course of Diane L. Rosenfeld spent two days recently at the University of Richmond conducting a training session for more than 50 undergraduate student leaders on issues of sexual respect, rape, consent, and related matters.
Joey Diamond was born in 1994 with cocaine in his system. Two years later, he was found wandering alone in a city park late at night, wearing only a diaper.
On June 3 and 4, the Harvard Law School Class of 2009 celebrated the end of one adventure and the beginning of many news ones. View a slideshow of HLS Class Day and Commencement 2009. View slideshow.
Fellow LL.M. students Sayed Mohammad Saeeq Shajjan, Rebecca Gang, and Andru Wall have worked to stabilize and strengthen Afghanistan, a country racked by war over three decades. Here, they recall their work and share their hopes for the nation’s future.
This summer, HLS students traveled to distant locations – in Burma, Sierra Leone, Budapest, The Netherlands, Bolivia, South Africa, Ireland and Argentina – to do human rights advocacy work. Fifteen students were awarded Human Rights Program internships, working at Legal Aid in South Africa, Human Rights Education Institute in Burma and Irish Centre for Human Rights, among other places. In the following story, three students describe their summer experiences.
The final round of the annual Ames Moot Court Competition took place on November 16 at Harvard Law School. In this year’s case — McBride v. United States, written by Tejinder Singh '08 — Petitioner Kermit McBride was a blogger convicted of hacking into the Ames City Exchange to display the message “The Taxpayers Demand a Refund. Or else…” on the trading floor’s screens and ticker.
On Friday, March 25, 2011, Harvard Law School’s Committee on Sports and Entertainment Law hosted the 2011 Sports Law Symposium, focusing on the legal and business issues surrounding intercollegiate athletics and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The keynote speaker for the symposium was Sonny Vaccaro, a former sports marketing executive with Nike, Adidas, and Reebok, who discussed his current role as an advocate for NCAA student-athletes, including his role as a consultant in O’Bannon v. NCAA. HLS Lecturer on Law Peter Carfagna and 2L Dave Zucker were part of panel discussion on the Sports Legacy Institute’s research and community outreach efforts and address the concussion crisis as it relates to intercollegiate athletes. SLI, co-founded by former Harvard College football player Chris Nowinski, seeks to advance the study, treatment and prevention of the effects of brain trauma in athletes and other at-risk groups. A number of other HLS alumni also participated in several of the sports law panels.
After spending a semester investigating how Citizen Schools, an organization that partners with middle schools across the country to expand the learning day, could save on program costs and best serve students with disabilities, a group of six HLS students presented their findings to their professor and fellow students—and to representatives from Citizen Schools itself. The group of students, part of Lecturer on Law Suzanne McKechnie Klahr’s Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship class, had to talk fast to get a semester’s worth of research into a 20-minute presentation.
Among this year’s entering class at Harvard Law School are 10 U.S. Marines and Army soldiers, all of whom served in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan – or both. Of the 10 members of this year’s class, one is an LLM candidate; the others are in the J.D. program. Five are part of HLS’s Yellow Ribbon Program, through which the U.S. Veteran’s Administration matches the amount a law school offers to pay for a veteran’s tuition and expenses. Four of these veterans share their experiences in the military and at HLS.
While most of his classmates were busy searching for jobs during their third year at HLS, James O'Neal '82 was searching his soul. "I saw myself as a community activist who could use my skills to serve poor, urban communities, but I had no idea what form that would take," said O'Neal, who didn't see an easy fit in the legal services work he'd tried during law school. "I started thinking creatively about what I could do to really change outcomes in people's lives and how I could use the law as a mechanism for helping especially young people improve the quality of their life opportunities." O'Neal, who grew up in Atlanta during the civil rights struggle, took his cue from a book he'd read as a teen, Claude Brown's "Manchild in the Promised Land," about an African-American boy growing up in Harlem. "I started to think about going to a community like Harlem to serve people who did want more for their lives but didn't know how to get where they wanted to go," he said.