The Harvard Law Record: 2016-2017, Issue 4

The Harvard Law Record hlrecord.org

Independent at Harvard Law School since 1946

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Meet the Candidates: Student Government Elections 2016 Anika Khan & Tyra Walker, President & Vice President

By Jim An ’18 Record: Why are you guys running?

Anika Khan: Tyra and I are looking to redefine student government and give students the chance to redefine student government for themselves. Tyra and I know what it’s like to be a part of the existing government, and we know how to change it to help create real community here at HLS. Tyra Walker: After thinking about how much impact we’d be able to make at this institution in the areas we care about, we really thought our experience and our skills would make us a great team for this role.

Record: What are some of the changes you want to make?

AK: One of the things is the relationship, or lack thereof, between students and Student Government.

There’s this disconnect between people and Student Government. Students don’t know who their reps are, they don’t know where they meet, and they don’t know what Student Government has done. That’s something we’d want to change.

Part of that is cultural.

If you have meetings in the Lounge, that’d [make] Student Government more visible and accessible. Part of it is getting away from the parliamentary procedure that can stifle the conversation that get to the interests and needs of the student body.

In terms of additional Anika & Tyra continued on Page 6

By Jim An ’18 Record: In a few words, how would you sum up your platform?

Joe Sullivan: We are demanding that the administration release the budget data so we can take a hard look at that budget so we can see what we can cut back and where we can move funding into.

Record: It seems like you guys are running as a one-issue ticket. Would you say that’s accurate?

JS: I would say generally, yes, although that one issue encompasses a lot of the issues at Harvard Law School. When we think about a lot of the issues at Harvard Law School, it’s often about how much does that cost? I think if we don’t know that it’s hard to tackle

WLA to President Faust: Choose an Inclusive Dean The Women’s Law Association wants to make sure the new Dean is transparent and social justice minded.

By the Women’s Law Association Dear President Faust, Thank you for welcoming the opinions of the law school community in your search for the next Dean of Harvard Law School. As a part of the law school community, the Harvard Women’s Law Association (WLA) is one of the largest and most active student organizations on campus. We are a diverse group dedicated to supporting women at the law school and beyond, and we wanted to share our collective vision for the future of our institution.

The selection of the next Dean will send a message about Harvard Law School’s mission and values that extends far beyond Cambridge. The next Dean needs to work to promote diversity and gender equality, social justice, innovation in legal education, student inclusiveness and community building, and transparency, and the message we send with this selection should emphasize a commitment to this work. We need a Dean who is committed to building upon the public interest work advanced by Dean Minow. We need an active leader who will lead the law school through a challenging political, social, and economic climate, and who will accelerate the mission “to educate leaders who contribute to the advancement of justice and the well-being of society.”

Commitment to Diversity and Gender Equality

The next Dean of Harvard Law School should advance the school’s commitment to diversity. Harvard continues to lag behind many of its peer institutions in terms of faculty diversity: the corporate law faculty is comprised exclusively of men, there are no Latinos or Latinas among the tenured faculty, there

The selection of the next Dean will send a message about Harvard Law School’s mission and values. are no Native Americans among the tenured faculty, and only one of the seven Section Leaders is a woman.

The Harvard Law School faculty should mirror the diversity of the student body, both to continue to attract the best students to the law school and to ensure students have supportive mentors and role models when they arrive.

Furthermore, while we applaud the successes Harvard Law School has had under the leadership of Justice Elena Kagan and Dean Martha Minow, we are disheartened that it took 186 years for a woman to stand at the helm of the law school—and that, after 200 years, no person of color has yet stood at that helm.

With the selection of the next Dean, you have the power to make history, not just for Harvard Law, but for legal institutions and the entire legal profession.

Additionally, women enter Harvard Law School with comparable test scores, grades, and abilities to their male classmates. Yet women are less likely than men to become an editor of the Harvard Law Review, land a federal clerkship, or graduate with Latin Honors. In an analysis of the students graduating in 2015, WLA research found a statistically significant difference between the number of men and women graduating with Latin WLA continued on Page 7

Sally Yates to be Class Day Speaker

1L Will Zhang Dies

The Class of 2017 has selected Sally Yates as their Class Day speaker. Earlier this year, President Trump fired Yates from her post as Acting Attorney General after she refused to enforce the Administration’s executive order on immigration.

1L Will Zhang, 23, died on March 23. He was a member of Section 3 and APALSA. The Board of Student Advisers collected letters to send to his loved ones. Zhang’s family requested that the cause of death not be printed.

Interviews with candidates for 2L and 3L Reps and Director of Student Orgs. p. 3

Adrian Perkins & Amanda Lee, President & Vice President

Joe Sullivan & Jin Kim, President & Vice President

those issues, so I think of this as a more encompassing platform.

Jin Kim: It is a single-issue platform in the way that we want to get access to the budget data, and look through it, identify unnecessary costs and reallocate that to benefits that students actually want. The word benefits encompasses a lot of things, such as financial aid or mental health services. I know the impediments that a lot of students and I faced when looking to get mental health services.

Record: Can you tell me about some of those impediments?

JK: For example, when you call to make an appointment, there is a huge wait Joe & Jin continued on Page 6

By Jim An ’18 Record: Why are you guys running?

Adrian Perkins: I’ve always felt like Student Government was in a unique position to change things for the better. Academic institutions come with stressors and this is an opportunity to for us relieve those stressors and to make the community better. Since joining Student Government, I’ve worked on everything from the [Student Government] constitutional working group, to changing the printing, to appointing the committee that decided to change the crest, to getting the MPRE administered at HLS. I’ve had the opportunity to see things through and make student life better here.

Amanda Lee: The HLS community matters. We

Monea Reflects on Year at Head of Student Government

By Jim An ’18 Nino Monea is the outgoing Student Government President.

The Record asked him what was on his mind.

Record: What are some of the things that student government has been able to do this year that you’re proud of?

Monea: As far as membership goes, a majority of the executive team and elected members are women, and a majority are people of color for the first time as far back as we have records on this point, and I think it’s great that we have a team that really reflects the school that we’re supposed to represent. On substantive accomplishments, we’ve been able to implement a new printing system, which historically was students’ number one complaint in polls.

We’ve been able to make progress on policies to help students be more politically engaged, such as recording classes on Election Day, and we’ve begun discussions about canceling courses on Election Day so students can more easily go out and vote or volunteer. And we’re for the first time trying to expand offerings for students trying to go into public [office], such as a reading group on how to run for office as a lawyer. And going forward we want to see if there’s resources this school can offer to help people who don’t come from politically connected families run for office.

And we can just go down the list of things we’ve gotten done such as online syllabi for classes, more wheelchair accessibility for printers, and peer housing for Admitted Students Weekend. So I’m really proud of all the stuff we’ve gotten done so far.

Record: What are some things that you wish you had been able to do?

Monea: Some issues have proven very intractable. One that was big for me when I was running was taking on issues of gender inequality. We still see women graduate on average with 40% [fewer Latin honors]. And that’s something that’s been pretty consistent over the last several years. And despite the fact that the school’s said they know about the problem and are committed to fixing it, we haven’t seen changes in [the statistics] nor have we been made privy to anything the school has done, is doing, or will do to fix it. I think it’s unfortunate because

The Harvard Law School Parody was great fun for all pp. 4, 5

My hope is that any time the school makes an important decision, students will be part of the process. the Business School had this exact same problem, but they implemented a whole host of reforms to take it on. And they eliminated the gender gap in grades only a few years after they implemented them.

Record: How might we change things here?

Monea: Well, for example, reading groups are not eligible for a DS, and women disproportionately take classes where a DS is not an option. So the way we set up those classes might disproportionally impact women. I don’t know if there’s any one change that will do it, but I think the school should explore options, try them out, and see what works.

Record: I want to go back to something you said earlier, which was that Student Government was representative of the school this year. What does that phrase, “representative of the school,” mean to you?

Monea: I think there’s a lot of different ways to be representative. It can be age, veteran status, gender, race, LGBTQ status.

It’s about meeting people who fit into some of those categories and also people who are committed to helping all those groups. We have [members on Student Government] who are on the board of groups such as BLSA, WLA, and Supero, and it makes it that much easier to work with those groups.

Record: Do you feel like it would be harder to work with those groups if there wasn’t that overlap with Student Government?

Monea: So much of what I do in my job on Student Government is just leveraging connections.

It’s not only me reaching out asking for help on certain policies or ideas, but it’s also people feeling comfortable coming to you with ideas. I do polls, and I hope everyone responds, but it always seems like people are more likely to respond if they know me. It’s helpful for solving problems, and Monea continued on Page 8

Leena Charlton explains why you should take the Public Interest Pledge p. 7

spend 3 years of our lives here.

I’ve seen intimately the needs of a thriving student organization that’s put so much work and care into making the school an amazing place.

Adrian and I work really well together because we have a wide breadth of experience.

We’ve spent the last two years building relationships, and so we’re really excited to bring others to the table and let students have that voice through student government.

Record: What do you think distinguishes you from the other candidates?

AP: First is the experience we have with solving problems. For example, students weren’t able to take the MPRE here at Harvard until this year. We heard complaints Adrian & Amanda continued on Page 6

It Got Really Ugly Really Fast Gordon Arkin reflects on an awkward conversation.

By Gordon Arkin ’70 This past presidential election and its aftermath show how divided this country is over so many social and other issues. Many on both sides of this divide carry a tinder box of opinions that can catch fire at the slightest provocation.

Suffice to say that “false facts” are not a recent creation.

Students of American history well know that American institutions have been tested in battle before and survived. For example, Thomas Jefferson led the nation through ferocious partisanship and cultural warfare amid economic change and external threats, and Andrew Jackson was not accepted by some as a “legitimate” president.

Suffice to say that “false facts” are not a recent creation. So, while we should all probably despair a little less about the future of our country, that doesn’t make our interactions with people who hold strong opinions that are contrary to our own any less challenging. I learned this the hard way.

In 1989, I was elected to serve on the board of directors of a fairly large business. We were a collegial group that spent a considerable amount of time together. At one board meeting in 1995, the board members who lived in town, including the chairman, and their wives hosted a dinner for those of us who were from out of town. The dinner was at one of the best restaurants in Arkin continued on Page 5

To-Do

By Katrina Black ’19 Keep up with readings, Apply for jobs, finish brief, Do something you love Katrina Black is a 1L.

Students ask Dean Minow to implement annual mental health surveys p. 7

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The Harvard Law Record

April 4, 2017

April 1

The Harvard Law Record

Independent at Harvard Law School since 1946 · April 4, 2017 · Volume 143, Issue 5 1585 Massachusetts Avenue · Cambridge, MA 02138 Winner of the 2016 American Bar Association Law School Newspaper Award Editors-in-Chief Jim An ’18 Brianna Rennix ’18 Online Editor Pete Davis ’18 Copy Editor Kate Thoreson ’19

Opinion Editors Nic Mayne ’18 Namita Dhawan ’18

Arkin

Continued from page 1 that city, and it started out as a warm and friendly affair. I was seated in the middle of the table, across from the wife of the chairman.

As the group chatted about various things, the wife of one of my colleagues mentioned her opposition to President Clinton’s nomination of Dr. Henry Foster to be the United States Surgeon General. From reading the paper and listening to the news, I believed that Dr. Foster was a well-regarded physician who had performed thousands of medical procedures over his long career, including about one hundred legal abortions. I asked why the person who spoke was opposed to his nomination and she said “because he is an abortionist.”

That should have been a red flag for me, but because the conversation up to then had been so relaxed and pleasant, and given my relationship with my fellow board members, and after a few glasses of wine, my guard was down. So instead of trying to change the subject, I said “It would be a shame if performing a small number of legal abortions over a long medical

Contributors Andrew Langen ’19 Jimmy Chalk ’18 Evelyn Douek, LLM ’17 Tyra Walker ’18

career disqualified that person from serving as the United States Surgeon General.”

The response from the wives around the table was quick and viscous. Dr. Foster quickly went from being called an “abortionist” to being called a “baby killer,” and the wife of the chairman expressed outrage that I could possibly support his nomination. It was now clear to me that I had inadvertently hit a very hot button. I tried to defuse the situation by acknowledging their deeply held feelings on this subject, and by saying that “I’m not trying to change your opinions, but I have a different view of Dr. Foster’s qualifications.” That simply caused the wives to accuse me of supporting the killing of babies. I was stunned.

I responded by saying, “I am trying to be respectful of your opinion but you are making no effort to be respectful of mine.” That only made the chairman’s wife even angrier.

She said “I don’t respect your opinion because you are simply wrong.”

At that point, even though we were in the middle of dinner, I said, “Unless we start talking about something else

Dean Search: Advance Women’s Issues

By Maria Stearns ’02 Dear President Faust, Thank you for the invitation to provide input regarding the search for the next Dean of Harvard Law School. I am writing on behalf of the Harvard Law School Women’s Alliance (“HLSWA”). Founded in 2010, the HLSWA represents over 13,000 women who have graduated from Harvard Law School — 32% of the HLS alumni. One of the primary goals of the HLSWA is to increase the presence of HLS alumnae in positions of power and leadership.

As the largest and most active HLS alumni and special interest group, we write to encourage the Search Committee to include in the evaluation of candidates for the position of Dean of HLS evidence of his or her commitment to promoting advancement of women and gender equality.

The newest graduates of HLS will have experienced a legal education in which half of the HLS student body is female. However, the ongoing gendered nature of the legal profession and resulting challenges cannot be denied. As Professor David Wilkins documents in the Career Path Study

Supporting the Travel Ban is a Joke

By Marco Castanos ’18 I commend Mr. Cullen’s satirical editorial recently published in The Crimson for challenging all Americans who defend the remaining rotting columns of white supremacy to face the mirror and consider our place on this land’s past, present, and future. His piece can be read here: http://www.thecrimson.com/ article/2017/2/22/alexander-cullen-in-suppor t- of-t he -immigration-ban/ Read plainly, Mr. Cullen argues that Trump’s travel ban is necessary to protect American freedom from people in the seven banned countries who threaten our values from beyond our borders. Though people may “travel to the United States to partake in our democratic tradition—and even serve in our military,” he argues, “due caution is necessary to protect our solid ground of liberty from anyone who fundamentally opposes it.” This, told through the lens of Pedro Salsedo who arrived in the Americas on Columbus’ voyage of 1492. Ironic—I know.

Although difficult, at first, to recognize as satire, if you follow his arguments closely, you’ll realize that he never intended for us to consider his notions seriously. First, Mr. Cullen references Salsedo, his ancestor on the Santa Maria who traveled with Columbus to Puerto Rico in 1492.

But a cursory web search reveals that Columbus did not visit Puerto Rico in

1492 and the Santa Maria ran aground in Haiti before venturing as far east as PR. So what is Mr. Cullen getting at, if not signaling to the reader that she should treat with skepticism his remaining positions?

He continues, “There is no mistake the promise and opportunity that this continent, and particularly these United States, offers to those who dwell here.” Here, I ask, is there a mistake? I’ve learned that normative positions are red flags begging for critical analysis. So why doesn’t Mr. Cullen mention those millions of people who occupied the land before European expansion? Is it because, in his ignorance, Mr. Cullen merely overlooked them? Or is it deliberate? So the reader realizes that he overlooked them for effect, and, in fact, hopes to emphasize their/our existence? This is important because, if his intent is the latter, then he challenges the reader to consider how Native peoples were the first from whom “promise and opportunity” were ripped. And that promise and opportunity continues to be ripped from those resilient communities who still organize, not because of, but in spite of the tenets of American democracy.

Before moving on from an argument rooted in the experiences of indigenous peoples, Mr. Cullen identifies our ironic deference to the ideals of freedom. Ironic, I say—and I believe his is a position of irony as well—because those very people

If you have a response to any piece in The Record, email us at editor@hlrecord.org.

Cocoa Beach, FL—What began as harmless dropping of the “H bomb” in casual conversation has turned into a friendship-destroying obsession for Edith Untermyer, a proud grandma of an HLS student who would rather not be named “because I’m already getting more free press than I want in the retirement community of Cocoa

Beach; I don’t need to start making enemies at school too.”

Untermyer—whose previous great point of pride in life was the fact that her cat, Crumpet, had lived to be twenty-four before dying of a cheese overdoes and moving into a proud, taxidermic retirement on the mantle—was “over the moon” when her grandson decided to accept his offer to Harvard Law School.

Slush on the ground and Clouds and flurries in the sky April in Cambridge Jim An is the Editor-in-Chief of The Record. He is a 2L.

should have said that I had a different view, but that I did not want to discuss him any further unless we all agreed that we could disagree about this without becoming disagreeable.

In the absence of such agreement, I could have stayed silent and avoided the whole incident. In addition, even if everyone had agreed to this ground rule, when the conversation became disagreeable, I could have changed the subject myself since any further discussion was likely to generate heat but no light.

I also learned that it is probably best to avoid mixing emotionally charged subjects with alcohol. Even though I am sure that none of us at that dinner had too much to drink, I think the wine lowered some of our inhibitions, which helped all of us inadvertently walk onto that mine field.

While these are pretty simple rules, I hope they may help you avoid or defuse situations that could otherwise become really ugly really fast.

immediately, I am going to get up and leave the restaurant.”

After an awkward silence, one of my fellow board members finally came to my rescue, successfully changing the subject, and the dinner resumed and concluded without further incident. The next morning, the chairman apologized to me for what he said was the “inexcusable rudeness” of his wife. I accepted that apology.

So what did I learn from this ugly incident that might be useful in today’s tinder box political environment?

I’m glad I stood my ground about Dr. Foster, even though President Clinton ultimately withdrew his nomination because of the kind of opposition that was expressed during that dinner. Some members of the dinner group were trying to intimidate me, and this intimidation was intensified by my colleagues’ silence, which seemed to me to both sanction and validate the attack that I was experiencing. This gave me a better understanding about how a bystander’s decision to stand silent or to speak out can impact unacceptable behavior.

I also now understand that I

should not have accepted the apology from the chairman. Rather, I should have told him that if he wanted to apologize, it should be for choosing to be a silent bystander who allowed the attempted intimidation to continue, and that if his wife wanted to apologize for her own unacceptable behavior, she should do it herself. While this would have been much harder to do then accepting his apology, I regret not doing it.

of the Men and Women of Harvard Law School, these gender gaps in the profession start early and widen over time. Notably, this study was funded with the support of the HLS Dean and alumnae, underscoring the importance of selecting a Dean who will prioritize gender initiatives. The new Dean must continue to focus on these issues as challenges remain not only for graduates, but also for students. As the letter submitted to the Search Committee by the Women’s Law Association (WLA) makes clear, much work still remains to be done to foster gender equality even at the Law School.

While the conditions that result in these gaps in academia and the profession emanate from various sources, the HLS Dean would ideally lead the charge to 2 ensure that HLS is playing a leading role in solving these issues.

This includes equipping all students

to tackle these issues as individuals; leading the faculty in academic initiatives designed to level the playing field and create opportunities for women law students and lawyers; and educating law firm and other leaders on how to lead effectively across gender.

This effort will require a comprehensive assessment of all aspects of life at HLS, from the curriculum to classroom dynamics, from student life to career services, from faculty representation to the gender make-up of guest speakers. We fully support the WLA’s call for an active leader “whose lived experiences and life’s work emphasizes a commitment to diversity and gender equality, to social justice, to inclusiveness and community, to transparency, and to continuing innovation in the legal profession.” We are confident that such a leader can have a meaningful impact and promote long-term change

on the important and challenging issue of achieving gender equality in the legal profession.

We request to meet with the Search Committee to learn how these considerations will be factored into the search and to provide input about how the Dean’s selection can impact the women who represent almost onethird of HLS alumni.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide our input into the search for the new leader of one of the greatest and most influential educational institutions in our country. We look forward to continuing the discussion.

Sincerely, Maria Stearns

emphasize misogyny at home. He demands that Americans reconcile our disdain for sexism (i.e. normalized sexual harassment & assault, lack of access to meaningful reproductive health, unfair pay scales, etc.) with electing a sexual predator as president; depriving the trans community of basic human dignity; and police coercing sex from young women of color. He ends, “The bystanders who fail to condemn these practices commit no lesser sin . . . [and] to deny this conclusion signifies either ignorance of atrocity or arrogance in refusing to recognize it.” Correct. He is absolutely correct.

I do, however, disagree with one of Mr. Cullen’s basic points. “President Trump’s policies are not against Muslims,” he argues, “as 87% of the world’s Muslims . . . remain unaffected by the ban.” I wonder if perhaps he has applied the same logic to terrorism and Islam? An argument along the lines of, “Islam is not a religion that espouses terrorism and violence,” because, “X percent of the world’s Muslims do not practice violence and terrorism,” seems logical.

Moving along, Mr. Cullen arrives at the conclusion that progressives have wrestled with for years when he correctly points out that the travel ban has origins in the Obama administration. I hope to God that that argument doesn’t fall flat. The challenge of convincing people that the problem is beyond just a rejection of DJT is very real and often a difficult conversation to have. Obama’s promise to deport “felons not families” paved the way for the current pattern of first criminalizing then deporting undocumented people. Thank you,

Mr. Cullen, for drawing attention to a critical understanding of social justice and progressivism.

Beyond the travel ban, Mr. Cullen doesn’t really dwell on the current immigration system. He makes no mention of undocumented immigrants from the Caribbean and Latin America and, once more, I wonder: is it on purpose? Perhaps the Puerto Rican night guard is a sign post for Mr. Cullen’s true position? The night guard, no doubt, holds status because in the early 20th century the United States expanded through forceful political control. Which, in turn, meant opening its borders to the people under its control. The modern framework, however, is more creative because it derives power from capital—not force—and disentangles citizenship from colonization. This leaves those fleeing from violence and destitution in the Americas—El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti—as victims of American foreign policy, without enjoying any of its benefits. In referring to Puerto Rico, then, Mr. Cullen calls on America to complete the project and thus grant citizenship to everyone arriving from countries with undoubted American influence.

If, however, we are to accept each of Mr. Cullen’s arguments at face value, then I’d encourage everyone victimized by white supremacy and settler colonialism to Venmo-request reparations from him. After all, Mr. Cullen pointed out that he can trace his ancestors to the very first perpetrators of a genocide that we still have neither rectified nor reckoned with.

I’d encourage everyone ... to Venmo-request reparations from [Alexander Cullen]. whom we divorced from their land have endured, but survived, a cultural genocide that criminalized studying and engaging their own indigenous cultures. I will not lay out the prolonged history and enduring legacies of Native American boarding schools—but you should look them up.

You really, really should.

I love, I absolutely LOVE, Mr. Cullen’s second point. He masterfully uses examples of radical Islam to then critique Christians who espouse the exact.same.beliefs. I did not click on his links because, of course, they will direct the reader to Dylann Roof, who mercilessly murdered Christians in prayer. Or perhaps the neo-Nazis who, as they propelled DJT to the American presidency[4], professed a devotion to anti-Semitism and white supremacy through xenophobia and over-policing in communities of color.

This, keeping in mind that victims of terrorism rooted in Islamist rhetoric (and reactions against American occupation and historically expropriated resources) are overwhelmingly people who themselves observe and practice Islam. Mr. Cullen—you’re a genius!

And then he does it for the women!

Make no mistake, Mr. Cullen is a feminist—using examples of violence against women around the world to

A bystander’s decision to stand silent or speak out can impact unacceptable behavior.

This experience also made me realize that abortion and other equally divisive subjects should not be discussed without first establishing some ground rules. For example, when I was told that Dr. Foster was not qualified to be the Surgeon General because he was an abortionist, I

Florida Grandma Won’t Stop Namedropping HLS

By Mark Satta ’19

By Jim An ’18

“He did undergrad at Cornell, which was cool and all I guess, but a lot of my gal pals weren’t too impressed by that” said Untermyer, who was sporting a “Proud Harvard Law Grandma” shirt at the time of the interview. “But Harvard—now there’s a name that’ll get people talking during the commercial breaks on Wheel of Fortune!”

Reliable sources confirm that Untermyer began with more modest

tactics, subtly throwing into conversation things like, “Well, my grandson is at a law school up in the Boston area. He loves it. From what I hear he’s just painting the town red, or should I say crimson.”

But when these tactics ceased to disrupt games of bridge or backgammon, Untermyer was forced to up her game. Her new measures included obtaining a custom made “Welcome

Gordon Arkin is a 1970 graduate of the Law School. He is a retired partner of Foley and Lardner LLP.

Maria Stearns a 2002 graduate of the Law School. She is President of the Harvard Law School Women’s Alliance.

Marco Castanos is a 2L. to our Harvard Law Home” welcome mat from Etsy and stories about her grandson’s encounters at the law school with individuals such as Louise Slaughter, Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, the Queen of England, Wesley Snipes, Chuck Norris, and Shakira.

(As of now, we have been unable to confirm that Untermyer’s grandson has had encounters with any of these persons at the law school.)

Mark Satta is a 1L.

April 4, 2017

3

The Harvard Law Record

Meet the Candidates: Director of Student Organizations Paola Eisner, Director of Student Orgs

By Kate Thoreson ’19 The Record: Why are you running for Director of Student Organizations?

Paola Eisner: One of the most important roles of Student Government is to bring people together and talk about what’s important to the student body, and student orgs are a big part of that. I’m excited about the opportunity to promote communication between our student orgs.

Record: What distinguishes you as a candidate?

PE: I have experience working with Student Government as a 1L Representative for Section 4, and that’s given me an inside look on how Student Government runs, how it can improve, and different methods that work and don’t work with the administration.

Record: What would you like to do if you win?

PE: As the Director of Student

Orgs, I’d be very focused on promoting communication and collaboration among the student organizations. I’ve been very active in quite a few of those student organizations because I believe that the work we’re doing provides a lot of value to the Harvard Law School community. I’m excited about creating opportunities and spaces to further improve our activities.

Record: Is there anything that you would like to see change about Harvard’s community or the law school in general that you would say is beyond your control?

PE: This is an issue that’s come up quite a few times in Student Government. I’m concerned that the administration doesn’t see its students as its number one clients. We hear a lot about the endowment. Its importance has often been compared to the importance of student interests, and that concerns me when the endowment is a sum of money and the students are its current clients.

While I know that we need to think for the future, it’s really strange for me to hear that kind of rhetoric from the administration.

I would like to feel more confident

that the university really cares about our success.

Record: Would you like to see more dogs, fewer dogs, or about the same number of dogs on campus?

PE: I’m actually a huge fan of Remi, the campus cat, and I love seeing him on campus. He visited me about the second week of school, when I was studying, and I’ve been in love ever since, so I want to see more of Remi.

Lane Kauder, Director of Student Orgs

By Kate Thoreson ’19 Record: Why are you running for Director of Student Organizations?

Lane Kauder: I have some experience with student organizations. I started a public speaking and debate club [at George Washington University], and my experience in forming that organization gave me insight into the process that students have to go through to form organizations. Student organizations are an

opportunity for students to contribute their energy and time to something that makes the school better for free. The students are volunteering their effort, and if it’s a meaningful or useful idea, then it’s something the school should encourage.

Based on my own experience and my love for the school, I was in a unique position to be able to help students along in that process.

Record: What would you like to do if you win?

LK: I would hopefully have a voice inside of Student Government to advocate for facilitating the formation of student organizations. I’d really like to encourage students to be able to pursue their own endeavors and ideas and pave the way for them however I can. Other than telling my peers the importance of student organizations, there’s not much I can do other than wait for peers to form organizations and help them with that.

Record: Is there a student organization other than Student Government that you would say accurately represents you as an individual, and why that one?

LK: One that comes to mind is the

Meet the Candidates: 2L and 3L Reps Leilani Doktor, 2L Representative

By Kate Thoreson ’19 The Record: Why are you running for 2L Rep? Leilani Doktor: I believe that I give a diverse perspective to student government that is necessary just to be fully representative of our 2L class.

Record: What distinguishes you from the other candidates?

LD: I think that my unique background and public interest focus contribute to my ability to be a good representative. I was very active in student government throughout undergraduate and high school, so I’m very experienced in terms of governance regarding student bodies and creating policies that work for students. As a 1L rep, I’ve been able to make small changes, like getting refills on the free coffee downstairs in the morning and regularly meeting with the dining hall to get new dining options, including the poké bowls in the boxes that you’ve seen added to the Hark menu.

Record: What would you like to do if you are elected as 2L Rep? LD:, I have a couple more small institutional changes, including getting quarter machines in the laundry rooms and getting staplers at all the printers. IT has decided they’re going to add another printer. Most people think that right next to the COOP is a good location, but I’m not sure if it’ll be feasible with IT, so if we couldn’t get it next to the COOP, I was thinking on the second floor right above the COOP. Record: Is there anything that you would like to change about the law school community or Harvard Law in general that you would say is beyond your control?

LD: I think there’s a lot of things that are beyond my control in the sense that I’m just one person within this community, but what I can do as a representative and as an active part of this community is do my best to help build it into a community and make sure that as Harvard students, we feel like we are part of a community and included and heard, and I think that that’s what’s so important about Student Government, is being heard. So often, people think being hard of government is you know, talking to administrators, it’s working on policies, but ultimately, being a representative and being the 2L Representative is about voicing the 2L class’s concerns and voice and opinions, and that’s a job I take really seriously.

Record: Is there a student organization on campus other than Student Government that you would say accurately represents who you are as a person, and why that one?

LD: Absolutely. I believe NALSA accurately represents me as a person. NALSA is the Native American Law Students Association. I plan to be very active in it next year as a co-President. As an indigenous woman, indigenous issues are incredibly important to me, and although I kind of split the categories in terms of affinities groups because there is no clear-cut category for Pacific Islanders, NALSA really speaks to my dedication to the minority of the minorities, the

people who are generally overlooked, the ones who have a deep connection to the earth and the environment, and really care deeply about it and continue to rely on it, and often are marginalized, but have an incredible perspective that needs to be heard and needs to be recognized.

So that’s an organization that I’m really involved in, I think it speaks to my identity, and I’m really excited to bring that perspective to the rest of the student body.

Record: Do you think there needs to be more dogs at Harvard Law School, fewer dogs, or about the same?

LD: I love dogs. Remi the cat is very cute and I fully support Remi, but I would love to have a dog companion. That would be really adorable if there was a ginger dog, or maybe a black dog that went with Remi around this law school. I think Mopsy [a service dog belonging to Jameyanne Fuller ‘19] needs friends.

Kaitlyn Beck, 2L Representative

By Kate Thoreson ’19 The Record: Why are you running for 2L Rep? Kaitlyn Beck: I had a good experience in Student Government this year. I learned a lot about how the law school operates, and I could use that knowledge to better help the student body next year.

Record: What distinguishes you from the other candidates?

KB: I would say one positive distinction is that I have served on Student Government and I know some of them have not. I think another distinction is that this is something that I’m very passionate about and have been considering doing for a long time. My service to Student Government shows that this is something that I am very much qualified for and interested in.

Record: What would you like to do if you won?

KB: I would love for our administration to be more transparent about information. They’ve been very accommodating about little requests, like new refrigerators or printers, but when we ask “how does the system work?” or “who’s in what class and what grades are being gotten?” they won’t give us information.

One thing we’d want to do is make sure that we are keeping the administration accountable for giving the information to the student.

The other big thing is that we’ve had a lot of issues this year relating to mental health and student awareness of the resources available to them. That’s something that everyone running for Student Government this year has on their minds, and it’s certainly on my mind as well.

Record: What student organization other than Student Government would you say most accurately represents you as an individual, and why that one?

KB: Mock Trial. I really love the courtroom setting, working with a team and preparing a project for several weeks, and I do love the competition aspect of it.

Record: Is there anything that you would like to change about the law school community or the law

school in general that you would say is beyond your control?

KB: If I had my way, people wouldn’t be so insulated into little groups. I think it’s very easy to join your political affinity group, get all of your outlines and answers from them, and make that your social group, and I would make it much more of a general community rather than little pockets.

Record: Do you think there needs to be more dogs, fewer dogs, or about the same number of dogs on campus?

KB: Always more dogs! But only if they’re cute.

his name rhymes with “Trespo.” Get some more women on the faculty.

Record: Do you think there needs to be more dogs, fewer dogs, or about the same number of dogs on campus?

SG: More. Absolutely more. It’s just a direct effect, more dogs, more happiness. I’ve been described as a dog multiple times. Once, I was characterized as a golden retriever puppy, which was the best day of my life. That’s the dream right there.

Sam Garcia, 2L Representative

By Jim An ’18

By Kate Thoreson ’19 The Record: Why are you running for 2L Representative?

Sam Garcia: I think it’s an important position. There are a few things I want to get done for sure, and if you can tell by my candidate statement, I really don’t care about things outside of them.

Mental health is at the top of the list.

As far as broad platform points go, I’m not really a fan of those. I don’t really want to promise you things that I don’t think I can do, so I’m telling you what I think I can do, and whether that’s “find my missing sock” or “get a stapler next to a copier,” that’s what I think I can do.

Record: What distinguishes you from the other candidates?

SG: I would say one thing that distinguishes me from them is that they’re much better writers than me. Their statements are seamless, almost bulletproof, and mine just has so many holes. I’m sure Leilani’s an excellent surfer, so Instagram tells me. I am not. Kaitlyn, she’s going to mock trial. I’ve never been to trial except for a speeding ticket once, so I think that’s a big difference. I’m a huge Detroit Lions fan. I don’t think they quite are. I really think the voters should take into account that I once painted my face to go watch the Lions play as a true testament to my loyalty. If people remember that 0 and 16 season, I was there, still a Lions fan. That’s the same attitude I bring to everything.

Record: What student organization other than Student Government would you say represents who you are as an individual, and why that one?

SG: I’d say a mix of La Alianza and Texas Club. I love being from Texas. It’s the greatest state in the Union for a fact. What I love about being from Texas is that I get to troll other people that are not from Texas.

Texas is actually just a great place.

This is my first time living outside of it, so it was cool to go back to a club that was so specific to a group of people that would have common experiences that I did.

Record: What is one thing that you would like to change about the HLS community that you would say is beyond your control?

SG: Just being totally honest, when people say, “I want to make the school more diverse,” that’s really not up to us as much as it is the administration. I would get a Latino professor tenured. I think there’s a guy that’s in a great position for it. I think

Raj Salhotra, 3L Representative Record: Why are you running for 3L rep?

Raj Salhotra: I had a great year this year. I got to head up the academic affairs committee, and there I got to organize professor lunches, make some progress with registration, and start to do some work on advising. That’s what inspired me to run again, to see if we can keep moving the ball on that. Also, five of the students that I used to teach [as a high school teacher] came in to sit in on classes.

They loved it, and it reminded me that we gotta do more for low-income and first-generation students on campus. Supero’s taken a great lead on that, and I want to be a part of that.

Record: Anything else you want to do in the next year?

RS: I’ve focused on academic affairs because it’s one of the things I feel like I have a comparative advantage on as a former teacher. But one of the other things I hope we’ll do is making sure that we’ll support public service. That’s one of the areas where I want to be involved, even if I’m not carrying the torch.

For example, the community center I’m working at this summer isn’t recruiting up here at Harvard.

Maybe it’s too expensive or maybe they don’t know the process. Students work at many nonprofits, and it would be an easy thing for us to build a catalog and invite them to recruit up here. There are probably a lot of Harvard students who want to work at places like that and don’t know about them. If we can reduce search costs, I think that’s a win.

Record: What’s beyond your or Student Government’s control that you’d want to change about HLS? RS: This is a selfish concern, I think we should have more classes, more guidance to students who are interested in going into politics.

There’s been an upswell of interest, especially after the election. Adrian [Perkins] has really led this, but there’s going to be a point where Student Government can’t do it [on their own].

I wish we could also provide more funding for [Student Practice Organizations]. To take an example from the Tenant Advocacy Project, we have two attorneys who supervise us and who help us serve tenants, but we could help more people if we had a third attorney supervisor or if we could pay our current supervisors more [so they could put in more time].

Record: Anything else?

RS: I’m excited for this year. We

CR-CL, the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. I’ve really enjoyed my time there, and seeing the people come together to work on a mutual endeavor like that, seeing that kind of cooperation totally student-run like that is kind of inspiring for me.

Record: Is there anything you would like to improve about the law school community that you would say is beyond your control?

LK: There’s a lot, of course, that’s beyond our control. I think Harvard Law School is the best law school in the world, so I would really like to see the school focus on really kind of innovative and enriching educational pedagogy to really try to push ourselves in understanding and in mastering these subjects. I think a strong academic curriculum is a central thing. That’s why we’re all here, so that’s the first thing that we need to check off the list, make sure that we have a world-class academic curriculum, so that’s always important.

I think obviously, professors should be more available. Sometimes, in my experience here, it’s hard to get in office hours with a professor, and I think that we’d benefit from having a more open door policy.

know that this is a high stress environment. To the extent that we can make people more comfortable and more supported, that’s worth being on student government.

Cameron Pritchett, 3L Representative

By Jim An ’18 Record: Why are you running for 3L rep?

Cameron Pritchett: Student Government is something I’ve always been passionate about. It gives you the opportunity to work to enhance the student experience.

I think there’s a lot of work left to be done, but I’ve been happy with the direction things are going. I see next year being even more productive than the last two.

Record: What are some of the things you want to get done next year?

CP: My view of Student Government is it should be driven by what students needs are. I want to make sure the next Student Government is responsive to what students are asking for. For instance, printing is something that students expressed in surveys that needed to be corrected.

So Student Government made that a priority and [changed the printing system].

At the same time, there are some things that have implications beyond a given year. For example, we don’t do a great enough job in the legal profession and particularly here at Harvard Law School of encouraging students to speak openly about the difficulties they may be facing. While Harvard Law School and Harvard University have increased mental health resources, still some students are reluctant to take advantage of them.

Record: Why do you think students are reluctant to take advantage of those resources?

CP: I think there’s still a stigma associated with saying, “I’m having difficulty.” It should be an atmosphere and an environment where a person can say, “I’m struggling,” or “I’ve found it difficult to adjust.”

Record: What can Student Government do to change that?

CP: One of the most important things that Student Government does is programming. In the area of mental health, a lot of what we do is events. I’m on the health and wellness committee and we’ve put on events to highlight mental health and awareness.

Record: Anything else you want to do for students for the upcoming year?

CP: Student Government has taken seriously our responsibility to be a leader when it comes to Title IX and sexual assault issues. There’s more we can offer students or even require of students in this area. We want to work with Dean Sells to improve and reformat training during orientation. And I’m working with the health and wellness committee on a resolution that would require each student organization to send a member to attending a training on bystander intervention and sexual assault prevention, and we hope that this will foster more conversation on the topic. Rather than just relying on orientation, we think this will broaden the conversation on sexual assault prevention and invite more critical thinking about how we can continue to make progress within the legal community and the Harvard Law community.

4

The Harvard Law Record

April 4, 2017

April 4, 2017

The Harvard Law Record

5

The Hark Lord Returns!

F

rom Feburary 24 to Februrary 28, the Harvard Law School Drama Society put on the 57th annual Parody. This year’s show was entitled “Harry Palsgraf in Fantastic Briefs and Where to Find Them,” and was based on the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

In Fantastic Briefs, a bearded Jessica Soban invites legacy admit and Chosen 1L

Harry Palsgraf to the Harvard School of Lawcraft and Resume Padding. There, he meets his best friends, Ron Westlaw and Hermione Gunner, along with rival Draco Malpractice and her minions, Crabbath and Wachtoyle.

However, danger lurks in the wings as a nefarious cohort of professors plots to bring back the Hark Lord, He-Who-Shall-Not-BeName-Dropped, Justice Antonin Scalia. Once

A Molly Malavey & Photos by Jim An; poster by Kelly Rice Cayman Mitchell Production

resurrected, Justice Scalia forces the resignation acting, and production of the show. Dean MarAssistant Producer Elisabeth Mabus • Directors Ben Burkett, Brian Pilchik, & Brittney Xu • Stage Manager Cayman Mitchell of Dean Dumbleminow and turns the school into tha Minow made a cameo appearance as Dean Music Directors Alex Fischbein & Amanda Sweat • Band Director Megan Fitzgerald • Assistant Band Director Maxwell Gottschall Lead Choreographers Hellgren & Frances Manzo • Assistant Choreographers Kristin on TurnerFebruary & Christian Williams 26 • Technical Director Evan Tallmadge Dumbleminow (upper left), and the place of cutthroat competition it Tess once was.

Prop Designer Rachel Crosswell • Costume Designers Monica Wilk & Michael Haley • Set Designer Sarah Plavcan • Sound Designer Lydia Lichlyter Head Writer Ben Burkett • Writers Jeff Adler, Jim An, Sam Corrao Clanon, Scott Olmsted, Lindsay Pierce, Brian Pilchik, Cassie Rasmussen Solano Professors Jeannie Suk-Gersen (left),& Jack Andrew Just when all seemed lost, Harry draws upon his happy memories at HLS and summons Jus- Crespo, Robert Bordone, Mark Tushnet, and tice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the scene. Justice others also made cameo appearances.

Ginsburg convinces Justice Scalia that times Disclosure: Jim An was a writer in the 2017 change, and sometimes for the better.

Over 100 students participated in the writing, Parody.

6

The Harvard Law Record

Tyra & Anika

Joe & Jin

Continued from page 1

change, student organizations provide community to students here, but we feel and we know they feel that they’re often siloed, and when you want to advocate for students, if you have all the orgs together, then it’s a lot harder [for the administration] to say no.

TW: There’s a lot of power in unity.

Record: You mention that student groups are sometimes siloed. Is that because of self-segregation?

TW: We have a vast student body, and we have so many different interests.

The result of that is we have a vast number of student organizations, and that’s a good thing. People find a lot of meaning in their student organizations. But we’re not harnessing the power of the student power, and there is an opportunity right now to connect everybody.

AK: For instance, in [student orgs’ leadership] transitions, there’s a lot of informal conversations, and in navigating new leadership roles, it’s very easy to rely on traditional partners, and [as Student Government, we can allow them to meet groups with very similar needs and interests and allow them to branch out beyond their traditional partnerships or expand those [existing] partnerships.

Record: What are some of those items where there’s overlap in interests among the student orgs?

AK: Well, for example, there’s interest among several organizations on how to get together and do workshops on campus on how to learn things outside of a traditional classroom, such as how to get involved, or improve your public speaking skills, or get more context for classroom courses.

For example, this past month there have been five events on the judiciary [by separate groups]. It comes down to intersectionality, and that happens with a conversation among all the groups at the beginning of the year.

Record: One of your campaign planks is to support public interest initiatives. What are some of the initiatives you had in mind?

AK: Along with Aaron Marks, I helped co-found the Public Interest Pledge, and what we’re asking is for students to donate a day’s pay to support local organizations, national organizations, and the Harvard Public Service Venture Fund, [which provides fellowships to HLS graduates who enter public service.] Currently, the Public Service Venture Fund doesn’t have enough money to fund all the graduates who are eligible. That said, given the current national situation, though, we certainly understand students who want to donate to direct service organizations.

Record: What do you make of the current national situation? And where does Student Government fit in, if at all?

TW: We were both very moved by the 2016 election.

We’re at a turning point in American politics where a lot of people have to decide what kind of future they want to see. We’ve allowed ourselves to be a divided nation for a long time. We can’t just pretend that not addressing the big issues will allow us to move forward. We’re at a point where

April 4, 2017

Adrian & Amanda

Continued from page 1 we need to come together around hard truths and be honest about the situation on the ground and not be immersed in double-speak.

Record: What are some of the hard truths you had in mind?

TW: We’re allowed to think differently about America’s past.

We’re allowed to think differently about the minimum amount of respect we’re allowed to give others because of our identities.

AK: Also, something that applies to the student body here is that people will pick their torts reading over helping someone or that, for me, I’d rather not make an appointment with a counselor rather than have people know that I’m getting help.

Record: Are those hard truths? Or just unpleasant?

AK: They’re things that are hard to accept that you do.

TW: I empathize with what you’re saying about hard truths because someone else in this interview might have a different idea of what those hard truths are, and right now we’re allowing ourselves to see whatever hard truths we want to see.

Record: I’d like to go back to the Public Interest Pledge. In a recent Record piece on the Pledge, the author noted that it can be relatively more difficult to enter a public interest career without a clear vision. What can Student Government do to get students to be more prepared for public interest jobs?

AK: One of the things is that public interest is seen as an alternative [to firm jobs].

Firm jobs are a straight line and public interest is a veer, and we have to change that culture. For example, we can get 1Ls more exposure to the 2L and 3L students who have chosen public interest so that those 1Ls can ask questions such as “what made you take this path?” and “did you face pressure to do something else and if so, how did you overcome that?” That can help people look inside themselves and ask, “what is it that I hope to accomplish from this legal education?” The more stories [from public interest lawyers] students hear, the more that will become a part of the culture.

TW: To have achieved so much in your life, you deserve the option to even try out a public interest career and decide that maybe it’s not for you.

I think that by weighing the path so heavily against a student who wants to investigate their interest in public interest, we’re doing a great disservice to amount of available lawyers who would be able to go into that field.

We can do a lot more to offer Harvard-trained people who are ready to go into this career.

Record: Anything else?

AK: A lot of people are disenchanted, but we have to start somewhere. Tyra and I have learned from each and every person that we’ve talked to, and that’s why we think there’s a real opportunity to create a community.

TW: We hope people will make us their first call for next year’s student government.

Disclosure: Tyra Walker is a regular contributor to The Record.

time [on the phone]. Sometimes you just have to leave a message and wait for them to get back to you.

Once you get through that, there’s wait time until your first appointment. I waited three weeks until I could see someone. I understand that there’s heightened demand, but the reason people reach out for these services is because they need to talk to someone.

Record: What else motivated you guys to run?

JS: One thing in particular was an article that I saw a little over a month ago on the two former [HLS] administrators who embezzled $110,000. It was shocking to me, and it gets you thinking on not only how $110,009 goes missing, but what else is out there, and who’s keeping track. And if we don’t know how that money is spent, it’s hard to answer that question.

Record: In your platform, you assumed that the average HLS professor makes $200,000 a year.

What’s the basis of that assumption?

JS: Well, we don’t know [for certain], but I looked online for what law professors are looking. You can see what professors at public universities make [as that data is publicly available].

Record: Do you think HLS should pay more or less than public university law schools?

JS: I think we’re moreor-less peer institutions and we’re often competing for the same talent, so I’d say somewhere in the same ballpark. If anything I might even say less. Harvard Law School has a heightened platform, and perhaps part of your compensation is the ability to speak from a Harvard Law School platform and that might induce people to work here for less.

Record: Should a university pay less because it can provide those ancillary, non-monetary benefits?

JS: If people are willing to accept wages that are less than at other schools because of other benefits that come with [the job], then yes, I think a law school is entitled to [offer them less].

JK: I worked in management consulting, and we understand that there might be some sensitivity around releasing some of this information, but I think as the leaders of Student Government, what we’re going to do is strike a balance between increasing transparency for students and protecting the sensitivity that’s inherent [in salary data].

Record: I’d like to talk about cost of living. It’s significantly cheaper to live in, say, Ann Arbor, than in Cambridge. Should that factor into HLS salaries?

JS: Just as we see that salaries in big cities are higher than in smaller markets, perhaps Harvard pays more, but it probably [needn’t] fully compensate for the differences in cost of living. For example, New York doesn’t pay twice the salary of [less-expensive cities] because people want to live in New York.

Record: Suppose the average HLS faculty salary was $400,000 instead of $200,000. How would that change your platform?

Joe: That would change how we feel about our

The U.S.News Rankings are Overrated

By Andrew Langen ‘19 I recently discovered, after a reasonable amount of time has passed, the way someone who definitely does not obsess over rankings would discover, that Harvard Law School is ranked number 3 behind Yale and Stanford.

Completely independently of that, I think it is time that we discuss the problems inherent in the current ranking system.

First of all, the current system

places heavy weight on incoming class GPA and LSAT. This means schools are pressured into taking a specific subset of students, specifically those that are actually good. Schools are forced to take a decline in the rankings in order to select the students they truly want, like legacy students from wealthy families who will not enroll in LIPP when they graduate. When so much of the admissions process is reduced to two numbers, we lose sight of what really matters in determining the value of an applicant: their personal statement.

February 21, 2017

Taking the Public Interest Pledge

Continued from page 1 platform. But another part is that we don’t know the salaries. And if students were to find out that professors were making that kind of money, I think people would sense that those wages are high, and I think people would be upset.

JK: But we would like to spend more time looking at other cost areas [besides faculty salary]. At the end of the day, people come to Harvard for excellent faculty.

We don’t want to get into the weeds of negotiating faculty salaries.

Record: One of your other concerns was financial aid. How would you improve financial aid if you had total control?

JS: First, we’d look at the allocation. For example, I think most people here are surprised to find that the need-based grants that they thought they had are later taken away due to the summer contribution policy.

Second, the amount of needbased aid is not keeping up with the increases in tuition. Tuition has been outpacing inflation since 1996, so unless we increase needbased grants [proportionally], the real cost is going to increase.

Record: Now, firstyear associate salaries have also increased from about $85,000 to $180,000 in that time period, is that something you’re also concerned with?

JS: First, tuition has actually tripled in nominal dollars, from $21,000 in 1996 to over $60,000 today.

Second, I don’t think it’s impossible to grant that [tuition and associate salaries are both increasing] and also question where our money is going.

Third, we’re talking about big firms. Public interest and government salaries have more-or-less been flat.

Maybe the problem is partially solved for those going on BigLaw salaries, but it’s worse for [those going to] public interest salaries.

Record: Does LIPP solve that problem?

JK: One thing is that when people benchmark our LIPP program to Yale’s, ours is not as generous as [theirs]. I’d love to look more into it and do some benchmark analysis so we can be at least as competitive as our peer schools.

Record: Anything else?

JS: Students here at HLS deserve to know where their $61,650 in tuition is going, and they deserve to have a say in how that’s allocated, and that’s what this campaign is going to do.

Jin and I actually met with the Dean of Students, and we presented them with our proposal. We pointed them to something that Harvard Business School already does: a financial statement they release every year that shows how much they’re taking in and how much they’re spending, and when we did that, they were pretty receptive to our plan.

And now we have a meeting that’s being set up with Harvard’s chief financial officer, and we think there’s potential to get some action on this issue.

We’ve made some progress, but we’d love to do more. Student Government has a mechanism to find out what people want and it has access to the administration to get things done.

Additionally, schools have a massive incentive to fiddle with their numbers. For the part of the rankings based on employment of former students, up to 25% of student careers can be left unknown without being penalized. As a result, schools will not seek out those among their students who are unable to find jobs, like those of us who want to work in the public interest world but are not good enough to receive a fellowship. Therefore, schools known for their transparency, accountability, and a general desire to not take the easy way out of difficult problems, like Harvard Law School, are at a disadvantage, and schools with less integrity are able to skip ahead: this is (probably) why Yale and Stanford are ranked higher up.

from students that they were driving to places like New York to take the MPRE. So we took it to DOS and within a couple of weeks, I talked to the company who runs the MPRE and we were able to get 200 slots here at HLS for students. Another example is that we got a bar prep company, Kaplan, to cover some public interest students so they don’t have to seek out one of their friends who are going to a firm to get their bar prep covered.

AL: Through the HLS Affinity Coalition, which includes groups such as WLA, BLSA, APALSA, Lambda, and others, we put together a project last fall to put up posters of law faculty throughout the school that all of our membership nominated to highlight the importance of having different perspectives and identities in legal education.

That something we did for the community to have people interact with the posters, write notes on them, and generally to do something that’s better for HLS as a whole.

Record: One of your campaign issues is transparency.

How are you guys going to accomplish that and how can students push for progress?

AP: Right now, DOS is the primary go-to for whatever problems student or student orgs have. But a lot of orgs want things such as data from admissions. We want to have town halls where we invite the administrators responsible, such as Dean Soban, to answer the questions we students have.

Record: How do you address the concerns that these town halls might not be very effective and that students won’t actually be able to ask substantive questions, or as we sang in Parody, “at the end we [administrators] might let you hold the mike”?

AP: Don’t get me wrong, the administration has done a really good job of deflecting.

At these town halls, students might see an administrator decline to answer a question or say “we aren’t gonna do that,” but that actually can help a lot because it prevents amorphous “we can’t do that.”

It also helps to know the pressure points of the system.

AL: Transparency and accountability requires a conversation. Town halls are just a first of many steps.

One thing we recognize is that Student Government is a soft power. We don’t have the same institutionalized power the same way a dean does.

But the student body has a lot of leverage. We are really excited to support students and leverage what students bring to make the administration [more transparent]. And that’s why we care so much about uniting students. When student groups unite around a particular issue, it’s much harder for the administration to deflect.

Record: But how do you unite students? What’s the process there?

AP: Experience and relationships. When you go to these groups, go to their meetings, you get to know people and know their concerns. And that engagement allows you to bring their concerns together.

We can incorporate everyone’s concerns and push those pressure points that we know that are there.

AL: And if elected, Adrian and I would be totally excited to work with student groups to discuss what groups are looking for.

The legal world has a public reputation for not being shady, manipulative, or two-faced: shouldn’t our ranking system reflect that?

Rankings also create a structural problem. The differences between the schools at the top of the list are actually pretty minor, but because every school must be placed ahead or behind every other one, these differences are magnified beyond recognition, because of how much emphasis is placed on going to the absolute best school. Because there is no nuance to the rankings, and students almost automatically select the highest ranked school they get into, schools have no incentive to differentiate themselves from the pack, making them more appealing to some groups

Record: You’ve talked a lot about working with student leaders, but how do ordinary students get their voices heard?

AP: Most students here are leaders. Just because they aren’t the president of a [student] group, they still lead here, they still set the tone here, they’re still gonna go out into the world and be Harvard Law School graduates. But that’s why we want to have things such as the monthly town halls. You can be any student at HLS and voice your concerns, voice your opinions, and we’re gonna be here for you and we’re gonna listen to you. And one of the things I worked on this year was to get 1L and 2L class representatives access to the listservs for their class. Before I had this conversation in March, elected [representatives] could not email their class.

Record: What are some things that you think we can do for returning students to improve their experience?

AL: Adrian and I are really focused on that everyone here feels that this campus is theirs, and that even if they’re not involved in everything, that there’s a sense of community for everyone.

AP: One of the ways we want to get after that is to have a fall Barrister’s Ball for everyone. That Barrister’s Ball wouldn’t just help 2Ls who are now out of their sections to meet other 2Ls and 3Ls, but it’d also help LL.M.s meet people. And we’d want to have reduced ticket prices, like $10-$15 to get everybody into it.

AL: We’re really interested in expanding professional development, which isn’t just law firm or this catch-all of “public interest.” Adrian is working with other Student Government members to push a legislative track. I know from my experience at the WLA that after the election that there’s interest to engage in that legislative track.

Record: On the issue of mental health, what should we do differently as a community?

AP: Unfortunately, I’ve had too much exposure to environments where mental health is a priority from my background in the military.

One thing from my experience is that you can have an army of therapists, but those people still won’t be as close as people in someone’s section or that friend in WLA with them. We need to go through a significant amount of training so that people can recognize what to look for in our friends in addition to the [professional] resources that are provided.

AL: And there are a lot of structural changes in the legal profession we need.

I’ve heard from students that there’s a fear of seeking help because some state bar associations’ character and fitness [processes], which might ask about mental health. And Student Government can push the administration to do something for students in terms of that structural change.

Record: Anything else?

AP: I’ve touched on a lot of ways that Student Government can have and has had a tremendous impact on [students’] lives next year and in the years to come, so I hope this school will be engaged in this election.

AL: And we hope people put their faith in us.

of students and not others. This all makes it harder for someone like me, who goes to the third best school, to get a job at the law firm which most closely fits my future goals: “Whichever Firm Is Vault #1,” LLP. Ultimately, we need to move towards a more objective way of alleviating our own insecurities, like a ranking system based on the number of current Supreme Court Justices who graduated from Harvard Law School, or favoring schools which accepted me. It is through doing this that we can achieve the greatest joy of attending a top tier law school: passive aggressive op-eds from students at rival schools whose rankings decline.

Andrew Langen is a 1L.

How HLS students can help fund the fight, even if they work in BigLaw

By Leena Charlton ‘17 When Trump won the election, I spun out a little. To avoid months of anxiety before Election Day, I had refused to believe he could win even though a pit in my stomach told me otherwise.

But he won. I took a couple hours to grieve, and then I started asking myself (and, honestly, anyone who would listen): “What do we do?!”

The best answer has been to prepare ourselves. We need to get out of our feelings, focus, and plan, especially as lawyers-in-training who are in close proximity to the institutions that sanctioned this mess. The weeks and months ahead will be filled with bias and bigotry.

We need to get comfortable now with constant activism and dissent.

We need to be empathetic, to keep having difficult conversations with family and friends, and to organize.

Some friends have even given up their firm jobs for the public sector. But I’m keeping mine — my high-salary, New York City law firm job. I came to law school to change the world, like so many of us, and with minimal effort became a Harvard cliché.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons why people with public interest aspirations wind up in BigLaw. People have family obligations, find they prefer corporate work, or find a public interest career doesn’t live up to their expectations. My reasons to keep my job are personal, but not unique. I have spent my entire adult life (except

A Healing Approach to the Public Interest Pledge

By HLS Effective Altruists

We all want the HLS community to have a big impact on the world.

This is an uncontroversial view as far as it goes, but—as you’ve probably already thought to yourself— that statement doesn’t go very far in the way of defining “big,” “impact,” or “world.” Our community is rife with disagreement as to the meaning of these terms. This is healthy.

Conceptions of justice are inherently controversial.

Let’s not let discussing our values become an impediment to realizing them.

Here’s something uncontroversial: students going into BigLaw will immediately join the top 0.1% of the global income distribution, earning 131 times the global median. That means 1% of your income will be more than the average human makes in a year.

Those of us pursuing public interest

WLA

Continued from page 1 Honors after controlling for gender representation within the entire class, with women receiving 36.86% of total Latin Honors awarded and men receiving 63.14%.

Harvard Law School can no longer ignore the gender disparities in academic performance on its own campus; it must investigate and take action. The litany of recent New York Times articles on this subject explain the macro-level consequences of inaction in their titles alone: “More Law Degrees for Women, but Fewer Good Jobs,” “Women and Minorities Make Slow Progress in Filling Ranks at Law Firms,” “Female Law Partners Earn 44 Percent Less than Male Partners Survey Shows.” Thankfully, some of our peer institutions, including Harvard Business School have led the way in possible methods of addressing gender equity in the graduate school setting, and we should consider emulating and adapting these tactics to our community. For both women at Harvard Law School and for women in the legal profession, we must do better.

Therefore, the selection of the new Dean should embody Harvard’s commitment to expanding diversity among the law school faculty and student body. The new dean should make a serious commitment to actions addressing issues around diversity, including issues related to gender, race, class, and beyond.

Commitment to Social Justice

A Harvard Law School degree is powerful currency in today’s world.

Unfortunately, the majority of this currency is concentrated in the private sector. For example, only 10% of the graduating class of 2015 entered public service.

While the Office of Public Interest Advising, the Low Income Protection Plan, discounted bar review courses, the Public Service Venture Fund, and other initiatives launched under the leadership of Dean Minow have encouraged more Harvard Law graduates to join the public sector, we need a dean who will not only solidify but grow the institution’s support for much needed legal services.

As part of its efforts in facilitating

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work won’t do too badly either, falling just outside the global 1% and earning 36 times the global median.

“Privilege” is another word we frequently butt heads on. These numbers cast it in a new light, but the fundamental question remains: what are we to do with our privilege? The four of us have chosen, as the first and lightest step on a long journey, to pledge at least 1% of our future incomes to the world’s most impactful charities.

One for the World, the organization through which we’ll donate, makes this easy. They’ve collaborated with the most rigorous charity evaluators to identify the places where additional dollars will make the most difference for people most in need. Consider what just 1% of a first-year associate’s salary — $1,800 — can accomplish: • Distribute 720 mosquito nets that would protect over a thousand people from malaria, or • Protect 3,600 children from parasitic worms for a year, or • Provide safe drinking water for 1,700 people The mind boggles at how easily any one of us can meaningfully touch so many lives.

Yet we choose not to. We so often

entry into the public sector, Harvard should commit itself to combating the existing power imbalance in the application of the law and improving access to justice. While students may have direct client contact and may see the impact of the law first-hand by working in clinics and student practice organizations, Harvard should go beyond simply having a pro bono requirement (which can be fulfilled without direct services work) and should bring discussions of the the legal imbalance into the classroom. In addition to expanding the upper-level course offerings for students who want to engage in this discourse, the new Dean of Harvard Law School should take action to reform and standardize the 1L curriculum to include discussion of the power imbalance of the law.

Finally, the new Dean of Harvard Law School should take a clear stance against misogyny and racism and encourage students and organizations to actively engage in conversations to combat systemic forms of oppression. The willingness of both the Law School and the broader University to sign on to litigation against President Trump is encouraging, but we recognize that there will be other moments when Harvard either cannot or will not take a similar stance.

At those times, the next Dean of Harvard Law School should be transparent in sharing the reasoning behind that decision and should give the individual and collective members of the community the space to take their own positions and actions.

Therefore, you should name a Dean who will be committed to progressing social justice by expanding classroom discussion of the law’s disparate impact, increasing support for students entering the public service after graduation, and supporting efforts which combat societal and institutional oppression.

Commitment to Innovation in Legal Education

The needs and pressures of the legal community have changed significantly in the past few years.

At the same time, the makeup of the Harvard Law School body has changed as well. Modifications to the 1L curriculum, such as the introduction of Legislation and Regulation, International Law, and Problem

law school) in New York City, and plan to live there for the foreseeable future. I’ll graduate with the maximum student loan debt this fine school allows with interest accruing daily. While I care more about racial justice and civil rights, reproductive justice and women’s rights, housing law, police reform, consumer protection, immigration law, and voting rights than corporate law, my public interests never narrowed. Finding a non-profit job in New York City requires focus and obsession, and I need more time to develop that. The corporate world allows me to generalize for a while longer. Yet it has been hard to see myself as anything other than a hypocrite.

I still want to be involved in any way I can. I’ll be taking advantage of my firm’s generous pro bono policy. And I’ll continue to sign petitions, boycott businesses, call my congressional representatives, and prefer to focus on domestic politics because there are powerful people making concerted efforts to undermine our values in that sphere. While we can’t ignore that threat, we can’t allow it to so consume us that we forget the values we almost universally share. We all agree that children should live to see their fifth birthdays, and each one of us can make that a reality for a child right now. So let’s continue fighting our political battles, but let’s not let discussing our values become an impediment to realizing them.

We write to start this conversation and ask that students, whether liberal or conservative, bound for the public or private sector, step back and consider your potential and the scale of your opportunities to change the world for the better. Take this first step by joining the students who have already signed up for One for the World or publicly committed to donate to one of the charities they recommend through the HLS Public Interest Pledge.

As our school and our country continue to reel from recent strife; we hope you’ll consider taking a step towards healing by joining those students in bolstering our common humanity.

Adam Savitt, Matt Reardon, and Vivian Dong are 2Ls. Cullen O’Keefe is a 1L. They comprise the executive board of the HLS Effective Altruists.

Solving Workshop, have attempted to address the needs of the changing legal world and the changing student body. The next Dean of Harvard Law School should continue to innovate and improve the law school curricu-

The next Dean of Harvard Law School simply cannot afford to maintain the status quo. lum. As discussed above, this innovation should include discussions of intersectionality and the disparate impact of the law, but it should also include even more access to practitioners and more opportunities to move the learning experience beyond the classroom.

Harvard Law School’s preeminence among the legal community means other institutions look to us to set the standard for legal education. We should use our status as a leader to innovate ways to improve access to and implementation of the legal education. The Dean should also expand the traditional boundaries of legal work by creating campus programs that channel student potential and interest in political representation, policy work, socially responsive start-ups, and other non-traditional legal paths.

Additionally, the WLA has benefitted greatly from our strong relationships with law school alumni.

For example, the Harvard Law School Women’s Alliance (HLSWA) has been an invaluable resource for the women on campus and beyond.

Dean Minow has continually identified and recruited women to visit our campus and encouraged students to form lasting relationships within our networks. The Dean should continue to build relationships outside of Cambridge and bring HLS alumnae in positions of power and leadership back to the school to mentor, teach, and inspire students.

Therefore, the next Dean of Harvard Law School should continue to innovate within the curriculum

What non-profits and legal services organizations really need is money. go to protests.

But what non-profits and legal services organizations really need is money. It allows them to hire additional staff, cover more legal issues, use expert testimony and research, write white papers, and expand outreach and communications efforts. Money gives non-profits the freedom to innovate. From my temporary corporate perch, I’ll have that one thing that non-profits always need.

The HLS Public Interest Pledge asks that students and recent graduates going into the private sector pledge to donate one day’s pay. Students donate to organizations such as the ACLU, CAIR, SPLC, and Education Law Center. Donating

to more local organizations or direct service providers lacking the media attention of the ACLU is also encouraged. Their website links to a list of organizations.

Making the pledge is easy. I’ve already pledged. For now, it’s just a promise to make an affordable commitment. More than that, it’s a reminder to put everything I can into the fight — time, education, and money.

During my corporate interlude, I refuse to disassociate from the social justice fight. I may not be devoting this part of my career to fighting our current administration or the intolerance that is surfacing.

But I will contribute what I can.

Resisting a Trump administration will take the coordinated effort of thousands (if not millions) of activists, voters, lawyers, politicians, and everyday Americans.

The HLS Public Interest Pledge is only a start to show that Harvard Law students are more than the cliché.

Leena Charlton is a 3L.

An Open Letter to Dean Minow on Mental Health

Dear Dean Minow, We support the immediate and annual implementation of optional anonymous mental health surveys at Harvard Law School.

We have no recent data on the student body at Harvard Law, but we do know that scheduling counseling appointments can take weeks. To help our community, we must first know where we stand. In addition, to evaluate the effects of policy changes, we need surveys each year.

A 2014 study at Yale Law School found that 70% of students reported experiencing mental health challenges and Harvard Law school needs the same data on our own community.

Sincerely, Gideon Palte, President, Jewish Law Students Association Han Park, Co-President 20172018, Lambda Kassi Yukevich, President, American Constitution Society Liz Gyori & Peter Im, Co-Presidents, APALSA Mariel Hooper, Co-President 2016-2017, Lambda Matt Reardon, President, Effective Altruists Minjoo Kim, President, Student

and develop opportunities for students to apply their skills to direct client services, policy work, political work, and more to help law students adapt and advance with the rapidly changing legal profession. To help drive adaptation and advancement, next Dean should also help students engage with alumni in a deep and meaningful way — a mission which necessitates the selection of an individual who has spent time cultivating relationships and is ready to connect students, faculty, and staff with the broader legal profession.

Commitment to Student Inclusiveness and Community Building

While Justice Kagan’s decision to eliminate traditional letter grades and refine the section model has likely increased the sense of camaraderie and inclusiveness at the law school, we still have much room for improvement. Speaking generally, those students who are lucky enough to be placed with an active section, with an attentive section leader, have the benefit of forming bonds that last beyond first year, stretching even past graduation. These model sections have enhanced the benefits of a diverse student body as they have forged a sense of trust among their members, facilitating conversations between individuals of different backgrounds, whether political, socioeconomic, religious, or academic. Through these conversations, students can truly learn from and draw upon each other’s experiences. This level of cohesion and engagement is particularly important as the community engages in dialogue in the midst of a trying political climate. Still, only a few sections enjoy this sense of camaraderie, and sections cannot and will not be the only solution to campus inclusion and community development. We need a Dean who will make cultivating community and encouraging students to engage with each other a top priority.

Therefore, you should name a Dean who will expand and continue to refine the section model and develop new, innovative approaches to develop deeper levels of inclusiveness, which will help to increase engagement and facilitate dialogue on difficult and contentious topics.

To help our community, we must first know where we stand.

Mental Health Association Patricia Alejandro, President, Catholic Law Students Association Pete Davis, President, Harvard Law School Forum Pete Williamson, Chaplain, HLS Christian Fellowship Tom Holt, Organizer, Advocates for Mental Health David Clark, President, Harvard Midwest Club Marilyn Robb, President, Harvard Midwest Club Chase Giacomo, President, Harvard Law Students for Life Adam Savitt, Aabid Allibhai, Presidents, Law & Behavioral Science Student Group Patrick Cheong & Seng-Hwan Chun, Co-presidents, Korean Association of Harvard Law School Hana Al-Henaid, Co-President, Muslim Law Students Association Filippo Raso, Executive Board, Canadian Law Student Association

Commitment to Transparency

As students have attempted to improve the Harvard Law School experience, they have encountered unexpected barriers at almost every level, from IT improvements to Reclaim Harvard’s advocacy efforts.

The unexpected manifestation of these barriers — and, at times, their seemingly insurmountable nature — has engendered distrust and frustration among the student body.

Increased transparency regarding the role and limitations of the Dean, and transparency into the extent to which Harvard Law School is independent from the larger University, will help to increase trust and buy-in from the student body. This transparency should manifest as both enhanced individual accessibility to the Dean outside of class-related meetings and as visibility into the workings and priorities of the administration.

Therefore, you should name a Dean who is committed to working with students to reform the school and who will be open about the administration’s priorities and limitations.

Above all, Harvard Law School needs a leader. We need a visionary. We need someone whose lived experiences and life’s work emphasizes a commitment to diversity and gender equality, to social justice, to inclusiveness and community, to transparency, and to continuing innovation in the legal profession.

Our country, our profession, and our justice system are all facing significant challenges, and the next Dean of Harvard Law School cannot afford to simply maintain the status quo.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to our organization at wla@lists.harvard.edu. You may find more information about our 176 board members on our website at https://orgs. law.harvard.edu/wla/. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely, The Women’s Law Association Harvard Law School

3Ls Jacqueline Trudeau and Natalie Vernon and 2Ls Paavani Garg and Amanda Lee drafted the letter, which was endorsed by the WLA Board.

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April 4, 2017

HGSU Objects to Harvard’s Unionization Elections

Students involved in unionization efforts argue that Harvard has been unfair to them.

By Alexandra Rawlings ‘19, Andrew Donnelly, Charles Du, Jonathon Booth ‘19, Will Bloom, William J. Rainsford The historic graduate student union election at Harvard in November was the first graduate student union election since the National Labor Relations Board’s August 2016 decision in Columbia University[i] restored the right to bargain collectively to student workers. Since then, graduate students have voted to unionize at Columbia[ii] and Yale[iii] Universities, a graduate student union has been certified at Loyola University of Chicago[iv], the votes in a graduate student union election are being counted at Cornell University[v], and graduate students at Boston College[vi] have filed a petition for an election. As graduate students sense their employment becoming more precarious under the Trump administration, we should expect this trend to continue.

At Harvard, the Harvard Graduate Students Union-UAW has filed objections to the election based on the fact that the employer’s voter list was

incomplete by hundreds of names.

In October of 2016, HGSU-UAW and Harvard signed an election agreement defining eligible categories of workers in the bargaining unit: “All students enrolled in Harvard

Harvard can’t but accept that the initial voter list was deficient. degree programs employed by the Employer who provide instructional services at Harvard University . . . [and] employed by the Employer who serve as Research Assistants.”[vii] It was Harvard’s responsibility, as it is always the employer’s responsibility, to use these categories to create the list of eligible voters. The union’s charge is that this list had hundreds of omissions.

Rules for the eligibility lists in union elections are defined by the NLRB’s 1966 Excelsior Underwear Inc. decision, which states: “the access of all employees to such

communications can be insured only if all parties have the names and addresses of all the voters.”[viii] “All employees” is a high standard for a complete list, but the Board has consistently defended that this high standard is necessary because of the huge disparity in access to employees between the employer and the employees organizing the union. The Excelsior rule holds that it is critical that parties to the election receive access to the contact information of eligible voters to ensure a fair election. In the decision, the NLRB held “an employee who has had an effective opportunity to hear the arguments concerning representation is in a better position to make a more fully informed and reasonable choice.” To ensure that all voters hear both sides of the issue, employers and the union must both be working with the same clearly defined group of eligible voters.

In this case, Harvard can’t but accept that the initial voter list was deficient. Harvard is arguing that the Excelsior standard requires some revision given the specific context of university employment. In its formal response to the union’s objection, Harvard writes, “The University’s relationship with these voters is primarily academic, not employment,

and the information systems reflect that orientation. Harvard does not record and track the proposed bargaining unit members as it does its traditional employees.”[ix] If the Regional Board accepts the specific context of university employment to excuse employers from the “all the voters” standard of the Excelsior decision, it would establish new, lower standards for universities as employers in union elections.

Moreover, if the union prevails in its objection and Harvard wins on an appeal to the Trump-appointed NLRB, the Board might revise the Excelsior decision for lower standards for employers’ eligibility lists in all industries.

A lower standard for a complete eligibility list creates a dangerous precedent for university employees, especially as graduate student union campaigns spread in this region and across the country. It would grant university administrations significant leeway to create incomplete or otherwise deficient eligibility lists.

This would compromise the democratic nature of union elections and prevent university workers from receiving the opportunity to make an informed vote in a free and fair election. HGSU-UAW is not arguing that Harvard created an incomplete list

An Interview with Professor Tribe

Professor Tribe is suing the President of the United States. We asked how that was going.

By Nic Mayne ‘18 Professor Laurence Tribe is part of a legal team that has filed a lawsuit against President Trump, arguing that transactions between the Trump Organization and foreign governments violate the Emoluments Clause in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. The Record recently spoke to Professor Tribe about the Emoluments Clause and the lawsuit his group has filed.

The Record: Explain the lawsuit you’ve filed against the President – what is the Emoluments Clause and how has President Trump violated it?

Larry Tribe: Working with a large group of very talented lawyers, I’ve filed a federal lawsuit against the President asking the U.S. District Court for SDNY to declare him in violation of the Emoluments Clause and require him to take the steps needed to stop that violation.

Actually, there are two Emoluments Clauses and not just one.

There’s the Foreign Emoluments Clause of Article I, Sec. 9, which forbids high federal officials like the President from receiving economically valuable benefits, whether in cash or in any other form, from foreign governments or those they control – as a way of ensuring that our officials won’t be beholden to anyone but the American people and, in particular, that they won’t even be tempted to do the bidding of any foreign power, and so that no foreign power will be tempted to curry favor with our officials, especially our President, through conduct benefiting not the United States but the private fortunes of

Monea

Continued from page 1 it’s helpful for identifying problems to have all these people on the team.

Record: Do you feel like the helpfulness of having affinity group members on Student Government implicitly means that people who are in those groups aren’t stepping outside of their group?

Monea: I don’t think it’s that people aren’t stepping outside of their group. Rather, it’s that if you’re trying to [form a government], [that government] should look like the people you’re trying to represent.

That has value in and of itself. It gives the government more legitimacy, and it makes it easier to reach out to a wide variety of groups.

Record: What do you feel like

the President or others in the Federal Government.

That’s the Clause that President Trump is violating on a continuing basis and has been ever since he took the Oath of Office – through things like receiving the enormously valuable trademarks that China just issued to him upon his becoming President after a decade of denying his previous legal efforts to win those trademarks, or his nearly $1 billion in loans from the Bank of China, or his shadowy but lucrative dealings with Russian oligarchs, or Kuwait’s sudden switch from the Four Seasons to the Trump Hotel in DC as the place to host a major Kuwaiti event in return for $60,000 in cash and the huge PR value of showing off that hotel as the go-to venue for foreign governments seeking to grease the President’s palm.

That gusher of money and other benefits pouring from governments around the globe into a whole constellation of businesses owned by Trump (even if temporarily operated by others) imperils our vital interests by creating both the reality and the appearance that, whenever President Trump negotiates a trade deal or imposes a travel ban or makes any other policy decision with large implications for American workers, companies, consumers, or potential victims of terror, his choices of what deal to strike or which countries to exempt from the ban will be driven by an invisible mix of genuine patriotic concern and sheer personal greed. The point of the Foreign Emoluments Clause was to make guesswork about the motives of a high U.S. official,

whether a cabinet member or the President, unnecessary and to avoid the corrosive implosion of public confidence in the integrity of those who exercise governmental power over our lives.

The other relevant clause is the Domestic Emoluments Clause of Article II, Sec.1. It forbids all payments or benefits (other than POTUS’s congressionally fixed compensation) flowing to the President from any federal department or from any of the states or cities that might otherwise be tempted to seek the President’s favor over competing cities or states or departments when it comes to budgetary allocations or other discretionary decisions.

The Record: I hadn’t heard of the Emoluments Clause before you filed this suit – why do we have this clause in the Constitution?

LT: I can’t blame you for never having heard of either of the Emoluments Clauses, or maybe thinking they were just funny names for some exotic lotions to be smeared over the skin to protect it from harmful sunlight.

Most Presidents have taken great care not to violate those clauses, so they have gone largely unnoticed by the lay public, not having generated impeachment proceedings or judicial decisions. But the enormous importance of both clauses, especially the Foreign Emoluments Clause, was clear to the Framers and should be obvious to anyone who reflects on the way they function to head off the worst conflicts of interest that any of us might imagine.

The Record: Has a President ever been accused of violating this clause before?

LT: No President has done what this President is doing and thus no

previous President has been in a position to trigger a serious accusation of violating the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Other Presidents who have had great personal wealth have taken the steps needed to put their funds into genuinely blind trusts so that a “great wall” and not a oneway mirror would stand between them and the temptation of doing the bidding of foreign masters. It strikes me as hugely ironic that a hyper-nationalist administration should be the one to preside over what’s starting to look like a hostile takeover of the United States by a foreign adversary. But that’s what seems to be going on behind a different sort of opaque wall, the one with which this President has surrounded his labyrinth of debts and other financial dealings that might be revealed if he were to release his tax returns.

The Record: President Trump’s Executive Order concerning immigration was obviously criticized by Democrats for a host of reasons, but interestingly many Republicans who supported the idea of an executive order halting immigration from Muslim nations were nonetheless critical of the President for leaving nations he does business with (i.e.

Saudi Arabia) off the list. Is that the type of thing the Emoluments Clause is concerned with?

LT: Yes, this is indeed the sort of thing the Foreign Emoluments Clause is designed to avoid.

you’ve learned from Student Government about the limits of what government can do?

Monea: A lot of people ask about what power Student Government has when they’re asking about joining, and the answer is that we both have a lot and none at all. We don’t have power in the same way Congress can pass a law, but most of the policies we work on aren’t within our power to pass. That means we have to understand the problem, find people who are affected by the problem, and try to organize people to direct them to those who do directly oversee the problem.

Record: It seems like the HLS Student Government has rather less power than a lot of undergrad student governments, including the one at Harvard College. What do

you make of that?

Monea: I think some people, especially those who are older, see it as they’ve done their student orgs in college and want to move on to other things. Though of course that’s not universal, and we have 30-year-olds on Student Government now.

Also, several years ago, Student Government kind of fell apart, and got reduced to not doing much beyond planning a few events such as a Halloween party, but it was not envisioned at that time to try to change policy on campus or take stands on controversial issues. And I hope whomever succeeds me will keep that on.

Record: More broadly, what do you make of the national political situation?

Monea: I think the national political situation is really troubling.

Everything from gutting healthcare reform, gutting Legal Services Corporation, and every day a news story comes out that’s just utterly terrible. If there’s one thing that gives me hope, it’s that you see people become engaged for the first time.

I’ve never seen so many people get excited about running for [political] office. It’s heartening to see so many people get involved for the first time.

Record: Any hopes for the future?

Monea: My hope is that anytime the school makes an important decision, students will be an integral part of the process. For example, students could be much more involved in the dean search process, and I think the school could take

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This is indeed the sort of thing the Foreign Emoluments Clause is designed to avoid.

in bad faith, but the lower standards Harvard is asking the NLRB to grant it would certainly open the door for bad-acting university administrators to create incomplete lists that intentionally prejudice the union.

Universities are complex, bureaucratic entities — though often not more so than big private corporations. Still, they will entail some forms of employment not found in other industries. Given these potential variations, it is all the more imperative not to allow the existing state of university payroll systems to dictate fairness but, instead, to ensure that universities adhere to the standards of fair union elections as established by decades of precedent.

Alexandra Rawlings is a 1L at Harvard Law School. Andrew Donnelly is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Harvard, is a member of HGSU-UAW, and has been assisting the union in its case at the NLRB. Charles Du is 3L at Yale Law School.

Jonathon Booth is a 1L at Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. candidate in history. Will Bloom is a 3L at Yale Law School. William J. Rainsford is a 3L at Northeastern University School of Law and a member of Graduate Employees of Northeastern University-UAW.

The Record: The media response to this lawsuit (from what I’ve seen) seems to be along the lines of “it’s worth a try, but likely to fail” – specifically because of the difficulty you may have proving injury. Is this suit destined to fail?

LT: If I thought it were likely, much less destined, to fail, I wouldn’t be wasting my time on it.

In my view, this lawsuit is rock solid.

Critics who suggest that the group I’m representing doesn’t suffer concrete injury and hence doesn’t have standing to sue the President over these violations in an Article III court are mistaken both about how the group called Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Government (CREW) is impacted and about the Havens Realty precedent’s vitality in the Second Circuit, but this isn’t the place or time to go into that in detail. At any rate, other plaintiffs with unquestionable standing are clamoring to join our lawsuit, so any thought that it might just go away on technical grounds would be foolish.

The Record: Where is the case at procedurally?

LT: The Government’s answer to our complaint is due to be filed next month, and we’re looking forward to seeing what they have to say.

The Record: How, if at all, do you think the role of lawyers and legal scholars has, or should, change it was has been dubbed “The Post-Truth Era”?

LT: Lawyers and legal scholars have an even more fundamental role now that more people than ever seem to challenge the very idea of objective truth and talk as though all factual questions were matters of opinion. Part of what falls to our profession is the task of reminding people that they’re entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts. That might be a cliché, but it’s a vital one.

Nic Mayne is a 2L. students much more seriously.

Record: There’s obviously a great deal of self-selection in which students serve on such committees. Do you feel that creates issues around which voices are, and more importantly, are not represented?

Monea: As long as students are the ones making the students are making the decisions, I think you just have to trust in the ability of students to select the people they think are going to be representative.

Record: Anything else?

Monea: If people have concerns, please don’t hesitate to write to me or the official email, even if it’s something tiny. I’m always happy to talk.

Jim An is the Editor-in-Chief of The Record. He is a 2L.

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