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Workshops and Seminars for Students and Faculty

Harvard Law School offers several legal workshops and seminars focused on specialized fields of law. These workshops and seminars bring together students, faculty, and others to learn about emerging scholarship from leading thinkers, explore challenges in various fields of law, and engage in vibrant discussion.

Workshops and seminars have different attendance requirements, so please reach out to the relevant contact person to find out whether you will be able to participate.

This workshop will examine key questions in  comparative law, using as focal points the study of Chinese, Islamic and African law, and legal history. Students will read examples of influential scholarship in each field both for their importance and as a vehicle for thinking about methodological issues in comparative work in general.  Students will also have the opportunity to engage several leading  scholars in each field, as well as scholars earlier in their career, who will present works-in-progress.

FALL 2024 – Professors William Alford & Idriss Fofana TUESDAYS, 3:45-5:45PM, Hauser 102

September 17 – Xia Ying, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, Hong Kong – Guerrilla Lawyering: Litigating Environmental Public Interest in China

September 24 – Intisar Rabb, Professor of Law, HLS; Director, Program in Islamic Law (HLS); Professor of History, Harvard University – Islamic Common Law

October 1 – Matthew Erie, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies, University of Oxford, United Kingdom – Adversarial Comparativism

October 8 – Ada Ordor, Professor, Department of Commercial Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa – Human Rights and the Social Contract in Africa’s Layered Legal Landscape

 October 22 -Taisu Zhang, Professor of Law, Yale Law School; Professor of History, Yale University – Legal Internalism (co-author Shyam Balganesh)

October 29 -Yutian An, Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law, HLS – Beyond the Verdict: The Impact of Juries on Judicial Support (co-author Yingjie Fan)

November 12 – Havva Guney-Ruebenacker, Lecturer on Law, HLS – The Theory of Slavery and Abolition in Islamic Law: “So that the Burden of the War May Be Lifted”

November 19 – Abadir Ibrahim, Associate Director, Human Rights Program, HLS – Contributions of the African Human Rights System to International Climate Law (co-author Angela Hefti)

November 26 – Maha Shehade Switat, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weatherhead Scholars Program, Harvard University – Negotiating Inequality: Court Dynamics, Expectations and Perceptions of Justice in Labor Dispute Settlements

Our sessions will operate on the assumption that all in attendance will have read the paper(s) that form the basis of any given day’s discussion.  If you would like a copy of any paper (which should be available 10 days prior to the session at which it will be discussed) , please contact Emma Johnson .

This workshop involves reading, discussing, and critiquing scholarly works broadly relating to the theme of Global Justice. Among the topics addressed are distributive justice across national boundaries; state responsibility for the international consequences of domestic policy decisions; and comparisons between legal and moral responsibilities among states and among individuals. The focus will be on the doctrinal and theoretical aspects of these questions rather than hands-on practice.

Fall 2024 – Interim Dean John Goldberg and Professor Gabriella Blum MONDAYS,1:30-3:30PM, Hauser 104

Sep. 16 Tarun Khaitan, London School of Economics and Political Science, Public Law Free Media or Healthy Media? Verity as a Constitutional Value

Sep. 23 Katie Young, B.C. Law Human Rights in the Constitutional Era of Dobbs

Sep. 30 Jay Butler, University of Virginia School of Law International Tax and Corporate Discretion

Oct. 7 Kristen Eichensehr, University of Virginia School of Law Frictionless Government and Foreign Relations

Oct 28. Alexander Guerrero, Rutgers University Dept. of Philosophy Risk, Harm, Technology, and Global Justice: Detech and Disconnect

Nov. 4 Sandesh Sivakumaran, University of Cambridge (Zoom) Prosecutor v Akayesu and the characterization of rape as genocide

Nov. 11 Andre Nollkaemper, University of Amsterdam Climate Reparations and Global Justice: Exploring the Promise and Limits of International Law

Nov. 18 Rachel Lopez, Temple University Beasley School of Law The Paradox of Punishing for a Democratic Future

Nov. 25 Galit Sarfaty, University of Toronto Law Global Governance at a Distance: A Socio-Legal Theory of Corporations and International Law-Making

If you would like to attend, please email Deema Qashat for a copy of the paper.

The Health Law, Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts. You can visit the Petrie-Flom Center for  Upcoming Health Law Workshops. For information about the workshops you can contact David LeBreton .

This seminar provides students with an opportunity to engage with ongoing research in the economic analysis of law.

Fall 2024 — Professor Louis Kaplow & Professor Steven Shavell TUESDAYS, 4:00-5:30 PM, HAUSER 102

Sept. 3 Students only session

Sept. 10 Mark Roe* (HLS) and Charles Wang (HBS), Half the Firms, Double the Profits: Public Firms’ Transformation, 1996-2022

Sept. 17 Ronen Avraham (Texas) and William Hubbard* (Chicago), Stubhub for Courts? Technology, Markets, and New Solutions to Court Congestion

Sept. 24 Students only session

Oct. 1 Michael Gilbert* (Virginia) and Andrew Hayashi (Virginia), Law and Economics for Empaths

Oct. 8 Thomas Coleman (Chicago) and David Weisbach* (Chicago), How Progressive is the US Tax System?

Oct. 15 HLS holiday

Oct. 22 Lital Helman (Ono) and Gideon Parchomovsky* (Penn), Artificial Inventorship

Oct. 29 Louis Kaplow (HLS), Out of Market, Out of Mind Nov. 5 HLS holiday

Nov. 12 Sureyya Avci (Sabanci), Cindy Schipani (Michigan), Nejat Seyhun (Michigan), and Andrew Verstein* (UCLA), Insider Trading by Other Means

Nov. 19 Emma Harrington (Virginia), William Murdock (Lazard), and Hannah Shaffer* (HLS), Prediction Errors, Incarceration, & Violent Crime: Evidence from Linking Prosecutor Surveys to Court Records

Nov. 26 Fernan Restrepo (UCLA) and Guhan Subramanian* (HLS), Freezeouts

Dec. 3 Max Schanzenbach (Northwestern) and Robert Sitkoff* (HLS), Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing: The Fight over ESG Investing Since 2020

*Presenting

The course website is available at: https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/146817 . Select “Syllabus” for papers and the course schedule,  or contact Matthew Hunt .

This workshop is devoted to learning about, discussing, and critically evaluating new scholarly work on law and politics. A series of outside speakers, drawn from both law schools and political science departments, will present recent or forthcoming papers on election law and/or American politics.

Fall 2024 — Professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos WEDNESDAYS, 3:45-5:45 PM, WCC 4063

Sept. 11: Jacob Grumbach (Berkeley Public Policy) presenting  Old Money: Campaign Finance and Gerontocracy in the United States

Sept. 25: Kevin Stack (Vanderbilt Law) presenting

Oct. 9: Vincent Pons (Harvard Business School) presenting

Oct. 23: Abby Wood (USC Law) presenting

Nov. 6: Ashraf Ahmed (Columbia Law) presenting

Nov. 20: Ariel White (MIT Political Science) presenting

For faculty or non-registered students who want to attend, please contact  Kathy McGillicuddy.

This seminar involves the presentation by speakers of papers in the fields of law and economics, law and finance, and contract theory.

Fall 2024 – Professors Louis Kaplow, Lucian Bebchuk, and Kathryn Spier MONDAYS, 12:45-2:15 PM, HAUSER 105

Sept. 9:            Shai Bernstein (HBS), Do Startups Benefit from Their Investors’ Reputation? Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Sept. 16:          Raffaella Sadun (HBS), Training Within Firms

Sept. 23:          Daniel Chen (Toulouse School of Economics), Data Science for Justice: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment in Kenya

Sept. 30:          Luigi Zingales (Chicago Booth), The Conflict-of-Interest Discount in the Marketplace of Ideas

Oct. 7:             Roberto Tallarita (HLS), Expanding Shareholder Voice: The Impact of SEC Guidance on Environmental and Social Proposals

[Oct. 14:          No classes – Indigenous Peoples’ Day / Columbus Day]

Oct. 21:           Adriana Robertson (University of Chicago), Corporate Political Disclosure and Shareholder Voting

Oct. 28:           A ndrei Shleifer (Harvard), Cognitive Economics

Nov. 4:            Oren Bar-Gill (Harvard) and Alma Cohen (Harvard), Uncertainty About Signal Correlation

Nov. 11:          Roman Rivera (Princeton), Performance Pay and Multitasking Police

Nov. 18:          Stephanie Kestelman (Harvard), The Economics of Discretion in Land Use Decisions

Nov. 25:          Josh Teitelbaum (Georgetown), The Law of General Average

Dec. 2:            Kathryn Spier (Harvard), A New Way to Align the Incentives of Lawyers and Clients

The course website is available at:  https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/146823 . Select “Syllabus” for papers and the course schedule, or contact Molly Eskridge , (617) 495-4635.

Spring 2025

Spring 2025 — Professor Louis Kaplow & Professor Steven Shavell TUESDAYS,4:00-5:30 PM, Hauser 102

The course website is available at:

Select “Syllabus” for papers and the course schedule,  or contact Matthew Hunt .

This workshop is devoted to reading and discussing new scholarly work on law and political economy. Outside speakers and members of the Harvard faculty will present forthcoming papers or recent work, both theoretical and programmatic, on the role of law in structuring social relations, power, and justice in market society. It is not designed to offer a systematic overview of the field of law and political economy, although there will be two sessions for students only when we will discuss the field as a whole, as it is reflected in the papers presented during this semester.

Spring 2024 — Professor Yochai Benkler MONDAYS, 3:45-5:45 PM, Hauser 104

January 29.  Saule Omarova , Cornell Law School.  Public Banking as an Institutional Design Project

February 12.  Madison Condon , Boston University,  Scenarios   (on the possible role of scenario analysis as a locus for planning for decarbonization of the economy).

March 4: Maggie Blackhawk , NYU, chapters from a book in progress developed from  The Constitution of American Colonialism .

March 18: William Boyd , UCLA,  De-commodifying electricity March 25: Ahmed White , University of Colorado, chapters from book in progress:  Sedition and the Hand of Fraternity: Radical Unions, the Forgotten Red Scare, and the Making of the Modern Labor Movement .

April 8: Fellows presentations. Chika Okafor , HLS LPE Fellow, Seeing Through Colorblindness: Social Networks as a Mechanism for Discrimination and Brian Highsmith , HLS LPE Fellow, Regulating Location Incentives

April 15: Ashraf   Ahmed ,  Columbia Law School,  The Rule of Law and the Closing of the Democratic Mind . 

This workshop examines major works in the field of legal history, important historiographical debates and critical methodologies. Students will participate in workshop presentations by leading scholars.

Spring 2025 — Professors Anna Lvovsky and Jill Lepore MONDAYS, 3:45-5:45 PM, WCC 5044

Papers will be distributed roughly one week before each session. For additional information, please contact  Susan Smith , 617-496-2028.

This workshop explores the foundations of private law — property, contracts, torts, and restitution. Emphasis will be on theories that offer explanations, justifications, and criticisms of architectural features of these areas of law and of their connections to one another. Sessions will be devoted to paper presentations by outside speakers and to discussions of classic and contemporary works reflecting philosophical, historical, and economic approaches to private law topics.

Spring 2025: Interim Dean John Goldberg and Professor Henry Smith WEDNESDAYS, 1:30-3:30PM, Hauser 105

Papers will be available approximately 7-10 days before each presentation.  For any questions or request for papers, please contact Bradford Conner .

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