The ''Harvard Law Record'' is an independent student-edited newspaper based at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. Founded in 1946, it is the oldest law school newspaper in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Characteristics

The ''Record'', a print and online publication, includes law school news, world and national news, and scholarly articles and op-eds written by Harvard Law School students and professors, as well as outside contributors. It should not be confused with the ''

Harvard Law Review The ''Harvard Law Review'' is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the ''Harvard Law Review''s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of 143 ...

'', which is limited to publishing scholarly academic articles exclusively. Although it is student-run, the ''Record'' is owned by the Harvard Law School Record Corporation, an independent

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

funded primarily through donations. It does not receive much funding or substantial support from the law school. The paper operates out of a basement in the Harvard Law School dorms. The ''Record'' is home to fictional law student Fenno, who since the 1950s has satirically chronicled the adventures of an anonymous law student, and has lampooned prominent members of the Harvard Law School community in the process. It also publishes an annual

April Fool's Day April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...

issue, renowned for its satire.

History

The ''Record'' was founded in 1946 by a group of returning

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

veterans who were unhappy with conditions at the School, particularly a lack of student housing. The three primary founders of the ''Record'' were Charles O. Porter, who later served as a U.S. Congressman from Oregon, Charles Sweet, later a judge, and Paul Hellmuth, who became managing partner of the Boston law firm Hale & Dorr (now

WilmerHale Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known as Hale & Dorr and WilmerHale, is an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. It is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Boston. It was formed in 2004 thr ...

). Among the former editors of the ''Record'' is

Ralph Nader Ralph Nader (; born February 27, 1934) is an American political activist, author, lecturer, and attorney noted for his involvement in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. The son of Lebanese immigrants to the Un ...

, who published his first article on unsafe conditions in the auto industry entitled, "American Cars: Designed for Death", in the ''Record'' in 1958. The article was later expanded into Nader's seminal work on the subject, ''Unsafe at Any Speed''. After a year in which the ''Record'' ceased publishing, Ralph Nader worked with a law student, Michael Shammas, to revive the paper for the 2015-2016 academic year. In 1959, Nader and co-editor David Binder traveled to

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

to report on the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...

in the ''Record'', which coverage included an exclusive interview with

Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (; ; 13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 200 ...

. Also in 1959,

William H. Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from 1 ...

, then a young

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

lawyer, wrote an editorial in the ''Record'' entitled "The Making of a Supreme Court Justice," in which he criticized the U.S. Senate for not questioning the judicial philosophy of

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

nominees. The article was later cited by members of the

Senate Judiciary Committee The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nominations, a ...

when he refused to answer questions during his confirmation hearings. In April 1971, the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' reported that Harvard Law School professors

Alan Dershowitz Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and former law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appoin ...

and

Paul Freund Paul Abraham Freund (February 16, 1908February 5, 1992) was an American jurist and law professor. He taught most of his life at Harvard Law School and is known for his writings on the United States Constitution and the Supreme Court of the United ...

had quit after picking up the story from the ''Records April Fool's Day issue. In the last decade the ''Record'' has won several awards from the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...

Law Student Division for outstanding writing, including the 2007 awards for Best Editorial and Best Feature Article. Although the print edition briefly paused circulating in 2012, in 2013 Harvard Law students Sima Atri and Michael Shammas revamped the paper with the guidance of former editor-in-chief Ralph Nader. The newspaper has an active staff of law students and routinely publishes articles by professors and law students around the country. In the 2015-2016 year, with Michael Shammas as editor-in-chief and Lindsay Church as co-editor-in-chief, the paper published stories that were referenced in ''The New York Times'', ''American Lawyer'', ''Jerusalem Post'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Boston Globe'', and other national and international news organizations. The paper also won the American Bar Association's 2016 "Best Law School Newspaper" Award. In addition to its print edition, The Record operates a website. Robert Mahari is currently the editor-in-chief.

Notable editors and contributors

* Jacob M. Appel, fiction writer and bioethicist *

Derrick Bell Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Bell worked for first the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 schoo ...

, law professor at

NYU Law School New York University School of Law (NYU Law) is the law school of New York University, a private research university in New York City. Established in 1835, it is the oldest law school in New York City and the oldest surviving law school in New ...

Jeremy Blachman Jeremy Blachman (born 1979), a 2005 graduate of Harvard Law School, is a journalist and the author of ''Anonymous Lawyer: A Novel''. Biography Blachman graduated from Hunter College High School in 1996. He received his undergraduate degree from P ...

, author of the Anonymous Lawyer blog and books *

Alexander Boldizar Alexander Boldizar (born in Czechoslovakia, now Slovak Republic, 1971) is a writer, lawyer and art critic. He was the first post-independence Slovak citizen to graduate with a ''Juris Doctor'' degree from Harvard Law School. His writing has won a PE ...

, novelist and art critic *

Ruben Bolling Ruben Bolling (born c. 1963 in New Jersey) is a pseudonym for Ken Fisher, an American cartoonist, the author of '' Tom the Dancing Bug'' and ''Super-Fun-Pak Comix''. His work started out apolitical, instead featuring absurdist humor, parodying c ...

, aka Ken Fisher, cartoonist and creator of ''

Tom the Dancing Bug ''Tom the Dancing Bug'' is a weekly satirical comic strip by cartoonist and political commentator Ruben Bolling that covers mostly US current events from a liberal point of view. Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008,Gardner, Ala ...

'' *

, law professor and author *

Debra Dickerson Debra J. Dickerson (born 1959) is an American author, editor, writer, and contributing writer and blogger for '' Mother Jones'' magazine. Dickerson has been most prolific as an essayist, writing on race relations and racial identity in the United S ...

, author and commentator *

Robert Fellmeth Robert ("Bob") Fellmeth is an American lawyer. He is a tenured Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, holder of the Price Chair in Public Interest Law, and executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law and the C ...

, public interest law professor at the

University of San Diego Law School The University of San Diego School of Law (USD Law) is the law school of the University of San Diego, a private Roman Catholic research university in San Diego, California. Founded in 1954, the law school has held ABA approval since 1961. It j ...

* Robert Flanders, Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice * Martin D. Ginsburg, tax law expert at

Georgetown University Law School The Georgetown University Law Center (Georgetown Law) is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and ...

Philip Heymann Philip Benjamin Heymann (October 30, 1932 – November 30, 2021) was an American lawyer, federal prosecutor, legal scholar, and law professor who headed the Criminal Division of the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General during the Pre ...

Deputy Attorney General The Deputy Attorney General (DAG) is the second-highest-ranking official in a department of justice or of law, in various governments of the world. In those governments, the deputy attorney general oversees the day-to-day operation of the departme ...

under

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...

and currently professor at Harvard Law * Ricardo Hinojosa, federal district court judge * D. Brock Hornby, federal district court judge * Murad Kalam,

O. Henry Award The O. Henry Award is an annual American award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American short-story writer O. Henry. The ''PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories'' is an annual collection of the year's twenty best ...

winning novelist * Duncan Kennedy, law professor at Harvard Law School and a founder of Critical Legal Studies. * George N. Leighton, U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois *

James Alan McPherson James Alan McPherson (September 16, 1943 – July 27, 2016) was an American essayist and short-story writer. He was the first African-American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was included among the first group of artists who re ...

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

-winning essayist and short story writer * Johanes Maliza, professional soccer player *

Jamie Metzl Jamie Frederic Metzl (born July 1, 1968) is an American geopolitical commentator, author, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a former partner at the global investment company Cranemere LLC,.Vail Symposium: Is the Red Dragon Breathing ...

, Executive Vice President of the

Asia Society The Asia Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) and around the world (Hong Kong, Man ...

and former

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

official *

Patrick Miles Jr. Patrick A. Miles Jr. (born October 19, 1967) is a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was nominated by President Obama on March 29, 2012 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 29, 2012. ...

, 2010 Michigan congressional candidate *

Makau Mutua Makau W. Mutua (born 1958) is a Kenyan-American professor at the SUNY Buffalo School of Law and was its dean from 2008 to 2014. He teaches international human rights, international business transactions and international law. He is vice presiden ...

, former Dean of the

University at Buffalo Law School The University at Buffalo School of Law (also known as State University of New York at Buffalo Law School, or SUNY Buffalo Law School) is a graduate professional school at the University at Buffalo. Founded in 1887 and affiliate with Niagara Univ ...

, consumer advocate and U.S. presidential candidate *

Charles Ogletree Charles James Ogletree Jr. (born December 31, 1952) is an American attorney, law professor and the Jesse Climenko Professor at Harvard Law School, the founder of the school's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He is also th ...

, law professor *

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

, President of the United States *

Joel Pollak Joel Barry Pollak (born 25 April 1977) is a South African-American conservative political commentator, writer, and attorney. He currently serves as the senior-editor-at-large for Breitbart News.Felsenthal, Carol (1 March 2012)Andrew Breitbart's ...

, 2010 Illinois congressional candidate * Charles O. Porter,

U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they c ...

from

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

Richard Posner Richard Allen Posner (; born January 11, 1939) is an American jurist and legal scholar who served as a federal appellate judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit from 1981 to 2017. A senior lecturer at the University of Chica ...

, federal circuit court judge and law professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

Samantha Power Samantha Jane Power (born September 21, 1970) is an American journalist, diplomat and government official who is currently serving as the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. She previously served as the 28th ...

-winning journalist, and former

United States Ambassador to the United Nations The United States ambassador to the United Nations is the leader of the U.S. delegation, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The position is formally known as the permanent representative of the United States of America to the United Nations ...

William Rehnquist William Hubbs Rehnquist ( ; October 1, 1924 – September 3, 2005) was an American attorney and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 33 years, first as an associate justice from 1972 to 1986 and then as the 16th chief justice from ...

, Chief Justice of the United States * Henry Stern, member of the

New York City Council The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of New York City. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five Borough (New York City), boroughs. The council serves as a check against the Mayor of New York City, mayor in a may ...

and Commissioner of New York City Parks and Recreation * Jerome J. Shestack, former American Bar Association president *

James B. Stewart James Bennett Stewart (born c. 1952) is an American lawyer, journalist, and author. Early life and education Stewart was born in Quincy, Illinois. He graduated from DePauw University and Harvard Law School. Career He is a member of the Bar o ...

, journalist,

-winning author *

Kevin Werbach Kevin Werbach is an American academic, businessman and author. In 2002, he founded the Supernova Group, a technology analysis and consulting firm. Since 2004, Werbach is an Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at The Wharton Sch ...

, business and technology expert at the

Wharton School The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in P ...

References

External links

Official website
{{Harvard, state=collapsed Harvard Law School Law Record Publications established in 1946 Student newspapers published in Massachusetts

Characteristics

History

Notable editors and contributors

See also

References

External links