Harvard Law School

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Harvard shield-Law.png Harvard Law School (HLS) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. It is one of the world's leading law schools, with about 1,800 students in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is home to the largest law library in the world.

HLS routinely places as one of the top three schools in rankings, along with Yale and Stanford, and usually receives the highest reputation scores from judges, academics and practitioners. According to U.S. News & World Report, its entering class boasts the highest LSAT scores in the nation and its graduates have a higher bar passage rate and average salary upon graduation than do graduates of its closest rival Yale.

Fourteen of the school's graduates have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, more than any other law school, and another four justices attended the school. Six of the current nine members of the court attended HLS: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer. (Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School and did not graduate from Harvard.)

The current dean of Harvard Law school is Elena Kagan, who took over for Robert Clark in 2003.

Contents

[edit]

History

The school was established in 1817 and has operated continuously since then, making Harvard Law School the third oldest law school in the nation. Only the law schools at the College of William and Mary (Marshall-Wythe School of Law - 1779) and the University of Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Law School - 1790) are older.

Students of the Juris Doctor (JD) program are involved in preparing and publishing the Harvard Law Review, one of the most renowned university law reviews. The Harvard Law Review was first published in 1885, and has had several famous Harvard alumni serve on its staff and editorial committee.

[edit]

Berkman Center for Internet & Society

The Harvard Law School includes the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, which focuses on the legal study of cyberspace. The Center sponsors conferences, visiting lecturers, and residential fellows. Members of the Center do research and write books, articles, and weblogs with RSS 2.0 feeds, for which the Center holds the specification. The Center's headquarters is a small Victorian wood-frame building next to the bigger brick-and-stone Harvard Law School buildings. Its newsletter, "The Filter", is on the Web and available by e-mail, and it hosts a blog community of Harvard faculty, students and Berkman Center affiliates. The Berkman Center is funding the Openlaw project. One of the major initiative of the Berkman Center is the OpenNet Initiative, which is a joint worldwide study of the filtering of the web, along with the Universities of Toronto and Cambridge (UK).

see also: prof Lawrence Lessig, John Palfrey, Jonathan Zittrain

[edit]

Labor & Worklife Program

The Labor and Worklife Program (LWP) is Harvard University’s forum for research and teaching on the world of work and its implications for society. Located at the Harvard Law School, the LWP brings together scholars and policy experts from a variety of disciplines to analyze critical labor issues in the law, economy, and society. The LWP also provides unique education for labor leaders throughout the world via the oldest executive training program at Harvard University, the Harvard Trade Union Program, founded in 1942. As a multidisciplinary research and policy network, the LWP organizes projects and programs that seek to understand critical changes in labor markets and labor law, and to analyze the role of unions, business, and government as they affect the world of work. By engaging scholars, students, and members of the labor community, the program coordinates legal, educational, and cultural activities designed to improve the quality of work life.

The faculty, staff, and research associates of the Program include some of the nation’s premier scholars of labor studies and an array of internationally renowned intellectuals. The executive training program (HTUP) works closely with trade unions around the world to bring excellence in labor education to trade union leadership. The LWP regularly holds forums, conferences, and discussion groups on labor issues of concern to business, unions, and the government.

[edit]

WorklifeWizard

The WorklifeWizard is an international collaboration between the European WageIndicator, the Labor and Worklife Program and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The project began this year and will become a salary checker, a database and a resource for information about American work life.

[edit]

Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center

Harvard Law School has one of the country's best clinical programs. The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center is Harvard Law School’s oldest and largest clinical teaching facility, a general practice law firm that provides legal counsel to over 1,200 clients annually. It offers students an opportunity to gain practical legal experience and earn academic credit by handling real cases for real clients under the supervision of clinical instructors who are experienced practitioners and mentors. The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center sponsors up to 70 students each semester through several clinical courses offered at Harvard Law School and, during the summer, sponsors a program for volunteer law students from across the country.

Students working at the Center are placed in one of the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center’s clinics housed in its five substantive practice groups and work with clinical instructors, experienced practitioners and mentors, who supervise student work and provide guidance as students build and manage their own caseload. The Center provides substantive training in each practice area and also offers general instruction on topics such as client interviewing and intake, case management, legal investigation and discovery, creative legal analysis, research and drafting.

The Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center is located in Boston’s culturally diverse Jamaica Plain neighborhood.

[edit]

Other Harvard Law School programs

  • The Ames Moot Court Competition
  • The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
  • Child Advocacy Program
  • Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
  • East Asian Legal Studies Program
  • European Law Research Center
  • Fund for Tax and Fiscal Research
  • Human Rights Program
  • Islamic Legal Studies Program
  • John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics and Business
  • Journal of Law and Technology
  • Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics
  • Program on Corporate Governance
  • Program on Emprical Legal Studies
  • Program on International Financial Systems
  • Program on Negotiation
  • Program on the Legal Profession

There are two additional programs affiliated with Harvard Law School, the Ames Foundation and the Selden Society.

[edit]

Notable professors

[edit]

Famous alumni

Image:Hls langdell hall.jpeg See List of notable Harvard Law School graduates.

See also: Harvard University people

[edit]

Harvard Law School in popular culture

The story of several movies takes partially place at the School. Most of them have scenes filmed on location at or around Harvard University. They include:

Many popular movies feature characters introduced as Harvard Law graduates. Some of these movies include:

Scott Turow, a novelist, has also written a book about his experience as a freshman law student in One L.

[edit]

External links

Template:Harvard

Retrieved from "http://www.netipedia.com/index.php/Harvard_Law_School"