Harvard Law & Policy Review

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Fighting the Unconscious: Moving Courts to Recognize Implicit Bias

By Arusha Gordon Last month marked the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, commemorating the marches in Selma that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. The fight for the Voting Rights Act was in large part successful because the atrocities of Bloody Sunday were caught on camera and broadcast around the world. Images of tear gas, horses, and screams of peaceful protestors streamed into living rooms, disrupting a complacent white America, and spurring political leaders to action. And while …

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Trans-Injustice: Prejudice & Fear Dominate First Circuit Opinion

By Amy Fettig Even as transwomen like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock grace the cover of Time magazine or facilitate dialogue on MSNBC, the reality is that trans people, and transwomen in particular, still can’t get justice in our federal courts.  But now there’s a chance that too could change.  Last week a petition for writ of certiorari was quietly filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in one of the potentially most important cases for the transgender community and prisoner rights this term.  The …

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Recognizing Gains and Losses: National and Local Interests in the Olympics

By Ezra Rosser Having become the officially backed U.S. city to bid on the 2024 Olympic Games, Boston now faces the problem that the national gains of hosting the Olympics are under-recognized and the local losses associated with creating Olympic venues are under-compensated.  The failure to recognize and account for the winners and losers when it comes to hosting the games is somewhat ironic given that the Olympic Games are all about recognizing minute differences, down to hundredths of a …

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Privacy Uber Alles?

By Charles McGonigal Andreas Lubitz was medically unfit to work when he apparently crashed the Germanwings flight last Tuesday, according to a doctor’s note found in Lubitz’ apartment. Why? Nobody knows. Germanwings, as his employer, would not know because German law allows these declarations to be written without a diagnosis or reason, to protect the patient’s privacy. I say “would not know,” because Germanwings appears not to have known about the declaration. The doctor cannot even share the …

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What’s access to justice for? Let’s get more philosophical. In a hurry. Part II

By D. James Greiner In the previous post, I talked about how, if the goal of a legal aid organization’s debt collection litigation defense program is to prevent defendants from having to pay debts sued upon, then there might be a far cheaper way to go about fulfilling that goal, namely, by buying debts on the open market and forgiving them.  And I concluded the last post by saying that buying and forgiving debts feels wrong somehow. Or maybe not wrong. Incomplete. And I think it is …

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What’s access to justice for? Let’s get more philosophical. In a hurry.

By D. James Greiner “Harry suddenly realized that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr. Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes. ‘That will do,’ he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor.” --Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone I’m a statistician.  My job is to measure things.  But I don’t want to be like Mr. Ollivander’s tape measure.  I don’t want to end up crumpled into a heap on the …

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