harvard thesis law

Think of yourself as a member of a jury, listening to a lawyer who is presenting an opening argument. You'll want to know very soon whether the lawyer believes the accused to be guilty or not guilty, and how the lawyer plans to convince you. Readers of academic essays are like jury members: before they have read too far, they want to know what the essay argues as well as how the writer plans to make the argument. After reading your thesis statement, the reader should think, "This essay is going to try to convince me of something. I'm not convinced yet, but I'm interested to see how I might be."

An effective thesis cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." A thesis is not a topic; nor is it a fact; nor is it an opinion. "Reasons for the fall of communism" is a topic. "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" is a fact known by educated people. "The fall of communism is the best thing that ever happened in Europe" is an opinion. (Superlatives like "the best" almost always lead to trouble. It's impossible to weigh every "thing" that ever happened in Europe. And what about the fall of Hitler? Couldn't that be "the best thing"?)

A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should "telegraph" how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay.

Steps in Constructing a Thesis

First, analyze your primary sources.  Look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication. Does the author contradict himself or herself? Is a point made and later reversed? What are the deeper implications of the author's argument? Figuring out the why to one or more of these questions, or to related questions, will put you on the path to developing a working thesis. (Without the why, you probably have only come up with an observation—that there are, for instance, many different metaphors in such-and-such a poem—which is not a thesis.)

Once you have a working thesis, write it down.  There is nothing as frustrating as hitting on a great idea for a thesis, then forgetting it when you lose concentration. And by writing down your thesis you will be forced to think of it clearly, logically, and concisely. You probably will not be able to write out a final-draft version of your thesis the first time you try, but you'll get yourself on the right track by writing down what you have.

Keep your thesis prominent in your introduction.  A good, standard place for your thesis statement is at the end of an introductory paragraph, especially in shorter (5-15 page) essays. Readers are used to finding theses there, so they automatically pay more attention when they read the last sentence of your introduction. Although this is not required in all academic essays, it is a good rule of thumb.

Anticipate the counterarguments.  Once you have a working thesis, you should think about what might be said against it. This will help you to refine your thesis, and it will also make you think of the arguments that you'll need to refute later on in your essay. (Every argument has a counterargument. If yours doesn't, then it's not an argument—it may be a fact, or an opinion, but it is not an argument.)

This statement is on its way to being a thesis. However, it is too easy to imagine possible counterarguments. For example, a political observer might believe that Dukakis lost because he suffered from a "soft-on-crime" image. If you complicate your thesis by anticipating the counterargument, you'll strengthen your argument, as shown in the sentence below.

Some Caveats and Some Examples

A thesis is never a question.  Readers of academic essays expect to have questions discussed, explored, or even answered. A question ("Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?") is not an argument, and without an argument, a thesis is dead in the water.

A thesis is never a list.  "For political, economic, social and cultural reasons, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" does a good job of "telegraphing" the reader what to expect in the essay—a section about political reasons, a section about economic reasons, a section about social reasons, and a section about cultural reasons. However, political, economic, social and cultural reasons are pretty much the only possible reasons why communism could collapse. This sentence lacks tension and doesn't advance an argument. Everyone knows that politics, economics, and culture are important.

A thesis should never be vague, combative or confrontational.  An ineffective thesis would be, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because communism is evil." This is hard to argue (evil from whose perspective? what does evil mean?) and it is likely to mark you as moralistic and judgmental rather than rational and thorough. It also may spark a defensive reaction from readers sympathetic to communism. If readers strongly disagree with you right off the bat, they may stop reading.

An effective thesis has a definable, arguable claim.  "While cultural forces contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of economies played the key role in driving its decline" is an effective thesis sentence that "telegraphs," so that the reader expects the essay to have a section about cultural forces and another about the disintegration of economies. This thesis makes a definite, arguable claim: that the disintegration of economies played a more important role than cultural forces in defeating communism in Eastern Europe. The reader would react to this statement by thinking, "Perhaps what the author says is true, but I am not convinced. I want to read further to see how the author argues this claim."

A thesis should be as clear and specific as possible.  Avoid overused, general terms and abstractions. For example, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because of the ruling elite's inability to address the economic concerns of the people" is more powerful than "Communism collapsed due to societal discontent."

Copyright 1999, Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University

• Formatting Your Dissertation
• Introduction

Harvard Griffin GSAS strives to provide students with timely, accurate, and clear information. If you need help understanding a specific policy, please contact the office that administers that policy.

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When preparing the dissertation for submission, students must meet the following minimum formatting requirements. The Registrar’s Office will review the dissertation for compliance and these formatting elements and will contact the student to confirm acceptance or to request revision. The Harvard Griffin GSAS resource on dissertation formatting best practices expands on many of the elements below.

Please carefully review your dissertation before submitting it to ProQuestETD. The Registrar’s Office will email you through ProQuest if they have identified major formatting errors that need correction. Students will be provided with a brief extended deadline to make only the requested formatting updates.  

• Embedded Fonts : If fonts are not embedded, non-English characters may not appear as intended. It is the student’s responsibility to make sure that fonts are embedded properly prior to submission. Instructions for embedding fonts can be found on the Dissertation Formatting Guidance resource .  
• Thesis Acceptance Certificate: A copy of the Thesis Acceptance Certificate (TAC) should appear as the first page. This page should not be counted or numbered. The TAC will appear in the online version of the published dissertation. The author name and date on the TAC and title page should be the same.  
• Title Page: The dissertation begins with the title page; the title should be as concise as possible and should provide an accurate description of the dissertation. The author name and date on the TAC and title page should be the same. Do not print a page number on the title page. It is understood to be page  i  for counting purposes only. 
• Abstract : An abstract, numbered as page  iii , should immediately follow the copyright page and should state the problem, describe the methods and procedures used, and give the main results or conclusions of the research. The abstract will appear in the online version of the dissertation and will be made available by ProQuest and DASH. There is no maximum word count for the abstract.  
• Preliminary pages (abstract, table of contents, list of tables, graphs, illustrations, and preface) should use small Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). 
• All pages must contain text or images.  
• Count the title page as page i and the copyright page as page ii, but do not print page numbers on either page. 
• For the body of text, use Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) starting with page 1 on the first page of text.
• Page numbers must be centered throughout the manuscript at the top or bottom. 
• Every numbered page must be consecutively ordered, including tables, graphs, illustrations, and bibliography/index (if included); letter suffixes (such as 10a, 10b, etc.) are not allowed. 
• It is customary not to have a page number on the page containing a chapter heading. Check pagination carefully. Account for all pages. 
• Copyright Statement: A copyright notice should appear on a separate page immediately following the title page and include the copyright symbol ©, the year of first publication of the work, and the name of the author: © [ year ] [ Author’s Name ]. All rights reserved. Alternatively, students may choose to license their work openly under a Creative Commons license. The author remains the copyright holder while at the same time granting upfront permission to others to read, share, and—depending on the license—adapt the work so long as proper attribution is given. (If a student chooses a Creative Commons license, the copyright statement must not include the “all rights reserved” disclaimer and should instead indicate the specific Creative Commons license.) Please note: The copyright statement applies only to the student’s own work; the copyright status of third-party material incorporated into the dissertation will not change. Do not  print a page number on the copyright page. It is understood to be page  ii  for counting purposes only. 
• Abstract 
• Table of Contents 
• Front Matter 
• Body of Text 
• Back Matter 

Students can refer to the resource on Dissertation Formatting Best Practice Resource for information on best practices for front and back matter

Individual academic programs may require additional formatting elements to meet the standards of a specific field or discipline. Students are responsible to ensure that their Dissertation Advisory Committee is in support of the final formatting as signified by the sign off on the Thesis Acceptance Certificate. Any deviation from these requirements may lead to rejection of the dissertation and delay in the conferral of the degree. 

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Still haven't found what you're looking for? Submit Your Question

Answered By: Mindy Kent Last Updated: Feb 22, 2016     Views: 215

Most Harvard Law School LLM and SJD theses have a circulating copy and may be borrowed by Harvard affiliates with borrowing privileges. Most theses also have a second Red Set copy. This is an archival copy and may be viewed by appointment in our Historical and Special Collections if necessary. Please consult the circulating copy whenever possible. 

The circulating copy of a thesis may also be borrowed via Interlibrary Loan. Non-Harvard users should consult their local library's ILL department to initiate a request. 

We do not hold the copyright in these works, so we are unable to sell or make photocopies, PDFs or otherwise reproduce them. Please contact the author directly for permission to copy. 

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Online Legal History Sources

Getting started, books and theses, journals and newspaper articles, finding cases, statutes and codes, finding & using archival sources, blogs and web resources, getting help, reference works.

• Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History

Harvard Law School Research Guides

More detailed resources on legal history can be found in these pages and research guides created by Harvard Law School Librarians:

• Harvard Law School Historical & Special Collections
• Research Guide for Federal Legislative History To find additional early congressional documents and sources for legislative history, please consult this research guide.
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Other Online Research Guides

These guides from other law schools may be helpful when identifying resources. Links may be restricted, but we may have Harvard access to the databases. Check Harvard E-Resources for access.

• American Legal History Online (University of Chicago Law)
• Legal History on the Web (Duke)
• Guide to Online Databases in Legal History (Georgetown)

Legal Texts & Treatises

Early treatises can be an important source for discovering the law and early cases.

• Hein Online:Seldon Society Publications and the History of Early English Law
• Hein Online:Scottish Legal History: Featuring Publications of the Stair Society
• Making of Modern Law Legal treatises from the United States and Great Britain. more... less... Legal Treatises comprises over 21,000 works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on British Commonwealth and American law, with 14,900 titles from the nineteenth century and 7,100 titles from the years 1900 to 1926. It covers nearly every aspect of law, encompassing a range of analytical, theoretical, and practical literature. The monographs and materials in Legal Treatises include casebooks, local practice manuals, books on legal form, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, and speeches. The collection is of interest to scholars and patrons interested in domestic and international law, legal history, business and economics, politics and government, national defense, criminology, religion, education, labor and social welfare, and military justice. The database provides for simple and advanced searching, and for browsing by author, title, and subject terms.
• LLMC Digital LLMC includes a number of treatises in it's Multi Jurisdictional Subject Collection. The British Empire Studies Collection includes a number of works relevant to the colonial period.
• Hein Online Legal Classics The HeinOnline Legal Classics Library is a digital collection of many of the most highly regarded works written on American law, published in this country or abroad, from its beginnings to the end of 1860. It also includes American works on foreign, comparative and international law. The collection is based on titles listed in the Bibliography of Early American Law, by Morris L. Cohen. Additional titles have been selected from the AALS Law Books Recommended for Libraries, plus a number of additional early British and Commonwealth titles.

General Historical Collections

These comprehensive collections of online texts include treatises, pamphlets and primary legal materials.

• 18th Century Collections Online - SEE: Eighteenth Century Collections Online Extensive collection of eighteenth century British sources, not limited to law. Useful for the colonial period.
• Early American Imprints, Series 1 (1639-1800) Comprehensive collection of works published in America between 1639 and 1819. more... less... This resource is based on the microform collection of books, pamphlets and broadsides issued in America from 1639 to 1800, recorded in Charles Evans' American Bibliography and Roger P. Bristol's Supplement to Charles Evans' American Bibliography, which includes material on virtually every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America. The database provides for simple and advanced searching, and for browsing by a variety of subject terms, genre, author, and printer/publisher. Searchable, OCR-generated ASCII text is associated with each page image.
• Google Books
• Early English Books Online
• Find a Database: Historical Collections Selected list of Harvard databases useful for legal history research
• Google Books: Advanced Search

Theses and Dissertations

• Dissertation Abstracts - SEE: Dissertations and Theses Full Text (ProQuest)
• Index to Theses in the UK and Ireland

Online Legal History Journals

Indexes, Bibliographies and Abstracts

• Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981 (Law Login Required) 1908-1981 more... less... This retrospective database indexes over 750 legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Annual surveys of the laws of a jurisdiction, annual surveys of the federal courts, yearbooks, annual institutes, and annual reviews of the work in a given field or on a given topic will also be covered.
• America: History and Life (ABC-CLIO) Indexes journal articles vrom approximately 2000 publications on American and Canadian history. more... less... America: History and Life is the primary bibliographic reference to the history of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present, covering over 2,000 journals published worldwide. In addition to all key English-language historical journals, America: History and Life coverage includes selected historical journals from major countries, state, and local history journals, and a targeted selection of journals in the social sciences and humanities. In addition to articles, the database includes book and media reviews and citations to abstracts of dissertations.
• Historical Abstracts (ABC-CLIO) Indexes approximately 2000 journals on topics related to history (excluding U.S. and Canada) from 1450 to present more... less... http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.eresource:amhislif
• IMB - SEE: International Medieval Bibliography

Historical Newspaper Sources

• Newspaper & News Collections List of newspapers and collections available at Harvard selected and annotated by HLS Librarians.
• Guide to Using Harvards Newspaper Resources
• ProQuest Historical Newspapers Includes the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and other major newspapers. Dates of coverage vary by title.
• Historical Newspapers Online Indexes, including full-text of the London Times 1800-1870 more... less... Historical Newspapers Online, produced by Chadwyck-Healey, contains three major historical resources: Palmer's Index to the Times which covers the period from 1790 to 1905 in The Times; The Official Index to the Times which takes the coverage forward from 1906 to 1980; The Historical Index to the New York Times which covers The New York Times from 1851 to September 1922.
• Times (London, England) - SEE: Times Digital Archive Digital archive of the complete contents of The Times of London from 1785-1985
• America’s Historical Newspapers Digital collection of historical newspapers including Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922; African American Newspapers, 1827-1998; and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980. more... less... Full-text database of newspapers published in the United States. Includes titles from all 50 present states, in various, separately searchable, series: Early American Newspapers Series 1-10, 1690-1922; 20th-Century American Newspapers Series 1-3, 1690-1993; African American Newspapers, 1827-1998; Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971 and Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980. OCR-generated ASCII text is associated with each page image. Searchable by key word; searches may be limited by date, era, article type, language, place of publication, and newspaper title.

Journal Collections

• JSTOR more... less... Includes all titles in the JSTOR collection, excluding recent issues. JSTOR (www.jstor.org) is a not-for-profit organization with a dual mission to create and maintain a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide access to these journals as widely as possible. Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. For complete lists of titles and collections, please refer to http://www.jstor.org/about/collection.list.html.
• HeinOnline more... less... http://heinonline.org.ezp1.harvard.edu/HOL/Help?topic=lucenesyntax
• Academic Search Premier (Harvard Login) more... less... Academic Search Premier (ASP) is a multi-disciplinary database that includes citations and abstracts from over 4,700 scholarly publications (journals, magazines and newspapers). Full text is available for more than 3,600 of the publications and is searchable.
• Find a Journal at Harvard Search by journal title, article title or location to locate print or online journals at Harvard

Sources for Early Case Law

Several historical databases include early case reporters and collections of laws:

• Hein Online: English Reports Full Reprint (1220-1867) Reprint of over 100,000 significant early English cases. Finding tools allow searching by nominative citation and case name.
• LLMC Digital LLMC Digital includes a number of early U.S. case law reporters organized by state. It also includes non-US primary legal materials organized by jurisdiction. Content varies by country. Tools on the home page let you jump to a specific nominative reporter citation or search by case name.
• 18th Century Collections Online - SEE: Eighteenth Century Collections Online Extensive collection of eighteenth century British sources, not limited to law. Includes some early case reporters and digests.

Using Nominative Reporters

Case citations from early works can be hard to decipher. Early collections of case decisions were cited by the name of the clerk who reported the cases, and citation formats were not standard.

Here are some tips for finding and interpreting early nominative and non-standard citations:

• Check the source of your citation to see if the author provided a table or guide to the abbreviations .
• Use an abbreviation index,  or dictionary to decipher difficult abbreviations.
• If possible determine the jurisdiction .
• For U.S. Federal and State cases, check Table 1 of the Bluebook.
• Try finding the case cited in a more modern source with standardized citations.
• Search case databases by party name instead of citation. Look for  alternate spellings of the party names.

Subject Digests

Digests are a useful tool for finding case citations organized by subject. Digest can cover a court, a jurisdiction or a subject. 

• Century Edition of the American Digest Covers cases from 1658-1896

Deciphering Legal Abbreviations

• Prince's Bieber dictionary of legal abbreviations : a reference guide for attorneys, legal secretaries, paralegals, and law students / by Mary Miles Prince. Location: Ref Desk KF246 .B46 2009
• Cardiff Index of Legal Abbreviations The Cardiff Index of Legal Abbreviations is a searchable online database of English language legal publications. It is particularly useful for identifying citations of cases, statutes and legal periodicals from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States

Notable and Historical Trials

Accounts and documents for notable trials were sometimes published in books, newspapers or pamphlets. Others have been gathered into historical databases. Other trial documents can be found in libraries and archives.

• Search   HOLLIS or WorldCat for your case name and the word " Trial "
• Search  newspapers for accounts of the trial. This research guide gives tips for using Harvard's newspaper collection
• Search historical full-text databases. 
• Search the web - schools, universities, historical societies, museums and other interest groups sometimes post information on famous trials. 
• Making of Modern Law Trials 1600-1926 Access via HarvardKey. Full-text, page image collection of books and pamphlets, official and unofficial trial documents and materials, legal transcripts, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from the early seventeenth century to 1926. The materials include not only published trial transcripts, but also popular printed accounts of sensational trials for murder, adultery and other crimes.
• American State Trials Seventeen volume set containing excerpts and transcripts from selected criminal trials from the 17th to the early 20th century.
• Crime in New York: 1850-1950 Digitization project of the Lloyd Sealey Library at John Jay College. The project includes a searchable digital index their microfilm collection of The Trial Transcripts of the County of New York 1883 - 1927. The microfilm is available to borrow via ILL. The online collection also includes 150 full-text transcripts, available as searchable PDF's files linked to the web-index.
• World Trials Library (HeinOnline) Access via HarvardKey. Transcripts and accounts of trials from around the world. Also included are works that analyze and debate famous trials and biographies of well-known trial lawyers.
• The Old Bailey Online - Proceedings of the Old Bailey 1674-1913 Searchable edition of the records of thousands of criminal trials held at the Old Bailey in central London.

HLSL Historical & Special Collections

Our Historical and Special Collections department has also digitized some significant and historically interesting trial records and accounts. Additional digital collections from HSC can be found on their web page.

• Joseph Berry Keenan Papers: Digital Materials The Joseph Berry Keenan Digital Collection—comprised of manuscript materials and photographs—offers researchers invaluable insight into the Japanese War Crimes Trial -- one of the most important trials of the twentieth century.
• Nuremberg Trials Project The Library holds over one million pages of documents related to the war crimes tribunals held after World War II. The Nuremberg Trials Project combines document imaging, document re-keying, and document analysis to create a database of information about the trials, and a Web interface that will allow searching of the documents and the trial transcripts themselves, with links to the various evidentiary documents used in the trials. The first stage of the project presents documents from and relating to the Medical Case--more commonly known as the Doctors' Trial--which was Case 1 of the NMT trials.
• Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders Digitized edition of the Harvard Law School Library's collection of crime broadsides spanning the years 1707 to 1891. The broadsides include accounts of executions for such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse stealing, murder, rape, robbery, and treason. Many of the broadsides vividly describe the results of sentences handed down at London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey, linked above.
• Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the US & UK 1815-1914 Digitized versions of over 420 separately published trial narratives from the Harvard Law School Library's extensive trial collections.

U.S. Statutes

• Hein Online: U.S. Code Complete coverage of the US Code back to its initial publication in 1925. Also includes the Early Federal Laws Collection
• Hein Online: US Statutes at Large
• Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926 Contains state and municipal codes, constitutional material and other legal history sources. more... less... Comprising 1,360 titles--and almost two million fully searchable pages—drawn chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources, 1620-1926 contains digital images of cases, statutes and regulations that have shaped American legal history. The digital archive includes early state codes (compilations of laws arranged alphabetically by subject); city charters (enacted and proposed charters and ordinances in American municipal jurisdictions); law dictionaries (important for investigating the history of legal concepts or interpreting the meaning of older documents); digests (indexes to reported cases, arranged by subject); and the published records of the American colonies (more than sixty titles of records and documents that have been transcribed, edited, printed, and indexed by six generations of scholars). The database provides for simple and advance searching, and for browsing by author and title.
• Hein Online: Session Laws Complete session laws for all 50 states
• HeinOnline State Statutes: A Historical Archive Coverage varies by state.
• Hein Online: New York Legal Research Library Includes New York Codes Prior to 1923
• LLMC Digital LLMC Digital includes early codes, session laws and other state documents organized by state.

UK Statutes

British statutes are cited by regnal year and chapter. Regnal year refers to the year of a monarch's reign. 

For example, 2 Hen. 5, c. 7 refers to the 7th act passed in the 2nd year of the reign of King Henry V which, according to the regnal year chart, was 1414.

• Hein Online: English Reports: Statutes of the Realm Includes Vols. 1-11 (1235-1713)
• Early English Laws
• Sweet & Maxwell - Regnal Years (PDF) Table to convert regnal years to calendar dates

Combined Sources for Early Statutes and Codes

Several historical databases include statutes and codes:

• 18th Century Collections Online - SEE: Eighteenth Century Collections Online Extensive collection of eighteenth century British sources, not limited to law. Includes some case reports. Includes several editions of Ruffhead's English Statutes at Large. Useful for the colonial period.

Constitutional History

In addition to the databases listed under Statutes and Codes, the following sources can be useful for state and federal constitutional history.

• Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention (Library of Congress)
• American State Papers
• The NBER/Maryland State Constitutions Project
• World Constitutions Illustrated (HeinOnline) Access via Harvard Key. HeinOnline World Constitutions Illustrated provides access to contemporary and historical documents, as well as resources of interest to scholars researching the constitutional and political development of the nations of the world. World Constitutions Illustrated includes, for each nation represented copies of the current constitution in its original language format accompanied by at least one English translation, secondary materials related to constitutional law and history, and links to online sources such including official government websites. Jurisdiction: Global

Primary Sources at Harvard

Finding Primary Source Material in Harvard's Archives and Libraries

Primary sources available at Harvard include both published source material, such as correspondence and diaries,  and archival materials.

Harvard's special collection libraries and archival repositories are a great source of unique and rare books, historical manuscripts, documents, photographs, maps, artifacts, and numeric data.

Start in HOLLIS

The HOLLIS Catalog contains the records of published sources and of many of the manuscript and document collections located in Harvard's libraries and archives.

Note:  Not everything is included in HOLLIS, so in addition to searching HOLLIS, we recommend that you contact the individual repositories for additional holdings information.

HOLLIS Advanced Search Strategies:

Use both  Author  and  Subject  searches to find the papers of an individual.

Search by  Author  or using  Author Keywords  to find annual reports, proceedings, minutes, etc. produced by an organization.

Add the term " sources " to a subject word search.

Limit by  Resource Type  such as Archives/Manuscripts

• HOLLIS Advanced Search
• HOLLIS for Archival Discovery

 How can you locate specific documents within an archival collection?

Most manuscript and archival collections have a finding aid that provides detailed information about the collection.

Use HOLLIS for Archival Discovery  to locate finding aids which describe the contents of faculty papers and other manuscript collections at Harvard.

• HOLLIS for Archival Discovery LibGuide Information on the structure and functionality of Harvard Library's platform for searching special collections and archival materials, as well as search tips.

How Are HOLLIS & HOLLIS for Archival Discovery Different?

• HOLLIS gives you brief catalog records for books, journals and other library materials, including summary records of manuscript collections.
• HOLLIS for Archival Discovery gives you detailed finding aids that describe entire manuscript collections. 

Compare the HOLLIS record and the finding aid for the Law Library's collection of Joseph Story's papers:

• Joseph Story's Papers (HOLLIS Record)
• Joseph Story's Papers (HFAD Record)

Planning your archival visit

If you are planning a visit to an archive or special collection, make sure to contact them directly before visiting. Many items are stored off site or need special arrangements for use, so give as much lead time as possible.

• A Survival Guide for Archival Research Tips for archival researchers from Barbara Heck, Elizabeth Preston, and Bill Svec, "A Survival Guide for Archival Researchers" from the December 2004 issue of Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Society

Visiting Historical & Special Collections at HLSL

To schedule a research visit in the Root Room, create a HOLLIS Special Request account which will allow you to place requests to view HSC's material from within HOLLIS.

Next, fill out an appointment request form at least 1 business day in advance and tell us when you would like to visit. 

Note that two days advance notice are required for visual materials and modern manuscripts (e.g. faculty papers) as they are stored offsite. 

• Getting Started in HOLLIS Special Request
• HSC Appointment Request Request an appointment with Harvard Law School Library's Historical & Special Collections
• Harvard Law School Historical & Special Collections Start your research into HLS History with the resources compiled by Harvard Law School's Historical & Special Collections

HLSL Collected Papers (Digitized)

The following collections of papers related to the history of the Harvard Law School have been digitized.

To find other collections, search HOLLIS for Archival Discovery.

• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Digital Suite A collection of digitized documents and images from five manuscript collections and three image groups held by the Harvard Law School Library.
• Law & Society Since the Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from the Collection of the Harvard Law School Library (Harvard Key) Part of ProQuest History Vault. Collection includes digitzed papers of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Richard H. Field, Roscoe Pound, Sheldon Glueck, William H. Hastie & Zechariah Chafee Jr.

Other Archives and Manuscript Collections

Archives & special collections at harvard.

• Harvard University Archives
• Harvard Library Locations & Hours Filter location by Features>Special collections and archives
• Harvard Guide to Manuscripts and Archives Use this detailed guide to locate archives and manuscript collections both within and outside of Harvard.

Finding Archives & Special Collections Outside of Harvard

• ArchiveGrid: Open the Door to History ArchiveGrid is a collection of nearly two million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. ArchiveGrid data is primarily focused on archival material descriptions for institutions in the United States.
• Archive Finder Archive Finder is a current directory which describes over 220,000 collections of primary source material housed in thousands of repositories across the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Online Document Collections

• American Memory (Library of Congress)
• The Avalon Project Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
• Primary Documents in American History (Library of Congress)
• The Anglo American Legal Tradition
• Studies in Scarlet
• The Roman Law Library

Blogs and Current Awareness

• Legal History Blog
• SSRN Legal History e-Journal
• Edinburgh Legal History Blog
• Osgood Society for Canadian Legal History Blog
• Harvard Law School Program of Study: Legal History

Contact Us!

  Ask Us!  Submit a question or search our knowledge base.

Chat with us!  Chat   with a librarian (HLS only)

Email: [email protected]

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  Meet with Us   Schedule an online consult with a Librarian

Hours  Library Hours

Classes  View  Training Calendar  or  Request an Insta-Class

 Text  Ask a Librarian, 617-702-2728

 Call  Reference & Research Services, 617-495-4516

• Last Updated: Apr 18, 2024 4:51 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/onlinelegalhistory

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All virtual services are available and some libraries are open for in-person use, while others remain closed through January 23, 2022. Learn more .

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Start with  HOLLIS  (HarvardKey login required for some full text, including theses & dissertations)

• Those presented for graduate degrees 
• Bowdoin prize essays 
• Undergraduate honors theses

How do you know if it's available online? 

• “View Online” button links out to full text.
• If there's no "View Online" button, the work probably has not been digitized.

What Harvard theses and dissertations can you expect to find online in full text? How do you get to them?

• Follow the links in HOLLIS.
• Not a Harvard affiliate? log in through the library of your academic institution OR
• you can usually purchase directly from  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Express.  
• undergraduates are not required to submit theses or prizewinning papers to DASH
• Harvard Extension School ALM theses 2012-2016 were not entered into DASH. 
• Under certain circumstances dissertations may be embargoed by the author; DASH may be the only place this information is given.

If the work hasn't been digitized:

You can order PDFs or photocopies of most Harvard theses and dissertations (unless they're available through the Proquest database linked above) from 1873 through November 2011 (and ALM theses to 2016) 

• See our Reproduction Requests page to register
• When you submit the online order form, Imaging Services staff will reply with cost and delivery information.
• Questions about the online ordering process or pricing? Contact Imaging Services staff directly for additional information at 617/495-3995  or [email protected] (M-F, 9-5 Eastern) ​

For Extension School ALM theses  check out our  Library Guide for Harvard Extension School theses page

Want to view a dissertation or thesis at the library? Check with the archival collection location listed in HOLLIS.

Wondering what dissertations and theses have been submitted in the recent past?  Use DASH .

For more on undergraduate theses and dissertations, see our " How can I locate a Harvard undergraduate thesis?" FAQ.

Looking for non-Harvard theses & dissertations? See our "How can I find theses and dissertations?"  FAQ.

• Ask a Librarian, including chat and email, will be suspended Thursday July 4 through Sunday, July 7, 2024, in observance of the holiday weekend. Any questions received during this period will be answered beginning Monday, July 8 .
• If If you're experiencing an ongoing technical issue when you attempt to access library materials with your HarvardKey during these times, please report it to Library Technology Services.

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Reach out to librarians and other reference specialists by email using our online form . We usually respond within 24 hours Monday through Friday.

Talk to a librarian for advice on defining your topic, developing your research strategy, and locating and using sources. Make an appointment now .

These services are intended primarily for Harvard University faculty, staff and students. If you are not affiliated with Harvard, please use these services only to request information about the Library and its collections.

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We are happy to answer questions from all Harvard affiliates and from non-affiliates inquiring about the library's collections.

Unfortunately, we're unable to answer questions from the general public which are not directly related to Harvard Library services and collections.

Harvard University Digital Accessibility Policy

Theses from Previous Years

We have collected some theses from previous years to help guide you. Please use them as examples of how to structure your own thesis. 

Theory  .

Theory Thesis 1  

Theory Thesis 2  

Theory Thesis 3  

Theory Thesis 4  

Theory Thesis 5  

Comparative   

Comparative Thesis 1  

Comparative Thesis 2  

Comparative Thesis 3  

Comparative Thesis 4  

Comparative Thesis 5  

Comparative Thesis 7  

Comparative Thesis 8  

American  

American Thesis 1  

American Thesis 2  

American Thesis 3  

American Thesis 4  

American Thesis 5  

American Thesis 6  

American Thesis 7  

American Thesis 8  

International Relations  

IR Thesis 1  

IR Thesis 2  

IR Thesis 3  

IR Thesis 4  

IR Thesis 5  

IR Thesis 6  

Library Services

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES

• Guides and databases
• Library skills

Thesis or dissertation

• A-Z of Harvard references
• Citing authors with Harvard
• Page numbers and punctuation
• References with missing details
• Secondary referencing
• Example reference list
• Journal article
• Magazine article
• Newspaper article
• Online video
• Radio and internet radio
• Television advertisement
• Television programme
• Ancient text
• Bibliography
• Book (printed, one author or editor)
• Book (printed, multiple authors or editors)
• Book (printed, with no author)
• Chapter in a book (print)
• Collected works
• Dictionaries and Encyclopedia entries
• Multivolume work
• Religious text
• Translated work
• Census data
• Financial report
• Mathematical equation
• Scientific dataset
• Book illustration, Figure or Diagram
• Inscription on a building
• Installation
• Painting or Drawing
• Interview (on the internet)
• Interview (newspaper)
• Interview (radio or television)
• Interview (as part of research)
• Act of the UK parliament (statute)
• Bill (House of Commons/Lords)
• Birth/Death/Marriage certificate
• British standards
• Command paper
• European Union publication
• Government/Official publication
• House of Commons/Lords paper
• Legislation from UK devolved assemblies
• Statutory instrument
• Military record
• Film/Television script
• Musical score
• Play (live performance)
• Play script
• Song lyrics
• Conference paper
• Conference proceedings
• Discussion paper
• Minutes of meeting
• Personal communication
• PowerPoint presentation
• Published report
• Student's own work
• Tutor materials for academic course
• Unpublished report
• Working paper
• Generative AI
• Referencing glossary

To be made up of:

• Year of submission (in round brackets).
• Title of thesis (in italics).
• Degree statement.
• Degree-awarding body.
• Available at: URL.
• (Accessed: date).

In-text citation: 

(Smith, 2019)

Reference List:  

Smith, E. R. C. (2019). Conduits of invasive species into the UK: the angling route? Ph. D. Thesis. University College London. Available at: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10072700 (Accessed: 20 May 2021).

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PON – Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School - https://www.pon.harvard.edu

Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization

Discover how to build a winning team and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report, Team Building Strategies for Your Organization, from Harvard Law School.

• Conflict Resolution in the Ebook Era

New technologies bring new business models—and often, lawsuits follow. Various disputes involving ebooks in recent years highlight the need to approach negotiations carefully so that you can minimize the need for conflict resolution.

By Katie Shonk — on July 22nd, 2024 / Conflict Resolution

Businesses often overlook the potential negative impact of their strategic decisions on outside parties—and end up trying to resolve their differences in court. Three disputes involving the publisher Hachette and its ebooks illustrate this risk and suggest how negotiations can avoid the need for conflict resolution at a later date.

A Case of Collusion

Back in 2007, as Apple was about to launch the iPad, five major U.S. publishers—Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster—jointly negotiated a new business model for ebook pricing. Under the existing wholesale model, retailers such as Amazon could set whatever prices they liked for the ebooks they bought from publishers. The publishers convinced Apple to switch to an “agency model” in which the publishers would set their own ebook prices and give Apple a 30% sales commission. Amazon reluctantly agreed to adhere to the new model as well.

Claim your FREE copy: The New Conflict Management

In our FREE special report from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School - The New Conflict Management: Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation – renowned negotiation experts uncover unconventional approaches to conflict management that can turn adversaries into partners.

However, the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently accused the publishers and Apple of colluding to artificially raise ebook prices. The publishers all reached agreement with the government through settlement negotiations. Apple went to court and was found guilty of price fixing and ordered to pay $450 million in damages.

The negotiations and subsequent need for conflict resolution highlight a potential risk for business negotiators who are considering teaming up with competitors. When negotiating, consider how your potential deal might affect outsiders, including customers, clients, and society at large. And consult with lawyers who know the ins and outs of antitrust law to ensure that your plans do not violate industry standards or the law.

Dirty Tricks and Conflict Resolution

In May 2014, publisher Hachette and Amazon again faced the need for dispute resolution regarding the pricing of Hachette ebooks on the online retailer. Amazon wanted pricing control over Hachette ebooks and planned to discount most Hachette digital titles to under $10 per ebook, according to the Guardian . Hachette refused. To try to force Hachette to cave, Amazon engaged in dirty tricks, including raising the price of Hachette ebooks and delaying their delivery. Sales of Hachette titles plunged, harming many of the publisher’s authors financially. Amazon’s moves attracted widespread condemnation.

Hachette might have gained negotiating leverage by offering Amazon Kindle users a significant discount on Hachette ebooks downloaded from the retailer’s competitors (such as Apple, Google, and Nook). But, due to its own lack of foresight, Hachette was prohibited from doing so, writes Cory Doctorow in the Guardian .

Ironically, Hachette was a staunch supporter of a 1998 law that gave retailers, and not publishers, control of piracy-prevention measures for ebooks. That is, having instructed Amazon to “lock” its ebooks, Hachette was legally prohibited from taking the locks off or from encouraging consumers or retailers to do so. Consequently, “Hachette has allowed Amazon to utterly usurp its relationship with its customers,” writes Doctorow. And it squandered a key bargaining chip in the process.

Publishers could level the playing field in their pricing disputes with retailers such as Amazon by refusing to put digital locks in their ebooks, says Doctorow. He urges all publishers to avoid the “Hachette trap” by releasing their entire catalog unlocked.

In November 2014, Hachette and Amazon negotiated an end to their dispute. Hachette maintained the power to set the prices of its ebooks in exchange for “specific financial incentives . . . to deliver prices,” according to Amazon .

Missed Opportunities for Negotiation

Hachette became involved in yet another dispute surrounding ebooks in 2020. With libraries closing because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the nonprofit Internet Archive expanded a program that allows users to borrow scanned copies of the printed books in its archive, Dan Cohen writes in the Atlantic .

Many of the books in this “National Emergency Library” were still copyrighted by their publishers, but the Internet Archive cited the pandemic and a novel legal theory, known as controlled digital lending (CDL), to justify its program. According to CDL, libraries should have the right to loan out “either the digital version or the hard copy of any material it owns (but not both at the same time),” explains Cohen. While CDL clearly benefits library patrons, it could erode publishers’ profits.

In June 2020, Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley sued the Internet Archive for copyright infringement. In March 2023, the judge ruled in favor of the publishers, citing the “market harm” the program created. The decision could prevent libraries nationwide from being able to create and lend digital copies of the print books on their shelves, requiring them to purchase digital editions of books from publishers instead, according to Cohen.

Cohen criticizes the publishers’ lawsuit as a heavy-handed response that jeopardizes libraries’ ability to meet their patrons’ needs. He proposes balancing the interests of libraries and book publishers through a narrow version of CDL.

It’s also true that the Internet Archive might have avoided the lawsuit by trying to negotiate directly with publishers. Whenever our business decisions seem likely to trigger a dispute and the need for conflict resolution, it’s wise to try to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement rather than charging ahead.

What advice do you have for negotiators who are dealing with disputes and the need for conflict resolution?

Related Posts

• Conflict Management: Intervening in Workplace Conflict
• Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
• Types of Conflict in Business Negotiation—and How to Avoid Them
• Types of Conflict in Negotiation
• Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts: Hostage Negotiation Tips for Business Negotiators

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Preparing for negotiation.

Understanding how to arrange the meeting space is a key aspect of preparing for negotiation. In this video, Professor Guhan Subramanian discusses a real world example of how seating arrangements can influence a negotiator’s success. This discussion was held at the 3 day executive education workshop for senior executives at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Guhan Subramanian is the Professor of Law and Business at the Harvard Law School and Professor of Business Law at the Harvard Business School.

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UPD Thesis Guidelines

Upd independent thesis.

Urban Planning and Urban Design students are not required by their degree to complete an Independent Thesis. The thesis project is an opportunity for students to pursue a design project which they have researched and developed independently. UPD students are required to declare their second-year course plans in the spring of their second semester. UPD students who declare Independent Thesis will be required to enroll in Thesis Prep (ADV-9204; 4-units) in the fall of their final year. Independent Design Thesis (ADV-9302) is a full-year commitment and carries a total of 12-units. For MUP students, Independent Design Thesis satisfies the Project-Based Learning requirement. For MAUD/MLAUD students who receive a grade of pass or higher in both first-year studios are eligible to meet their degree requirements by declaring an Independent Design Thesis for their final year. The Independent Design Thesis is taken in place of the fourth-semester Option Studio.  Students who elect to pursue an Independent Thesis instead of an option studio in the spring term of the second year may not petition to opt out of an option studio in the fall term. UPD Thesis Handbook 2023-2024 Recent UPD Theses Addendum: Open Source Thesis Guide at the GSD UPD Faculty Eligible for Thesis Advising in 2024-2025 UPD students must declare thesis by Monday, April 1st, 2024 by submitting their second-year declaration forms: MUP Declaration Form MAUD MLAUD Declaration Form Those UPD Students who declare Thesis will then be required to submit a secondary Thesis Petition by May 1, 2024, with their topic and the signature of their advisor: UPD Secondary Thesis Petition MAUD-MLAUD Petition for Alternative Thesis Prep Selected UPD theses are available through  HOLLIS  (Harvard Library), or as hard copy in the Loeb Design Library. For current thesis students, all final PDF theses must be submitted to the Thesis Director and Program Coordinator by no later than 9:00 AM (ET) on May 13th, 2024. The Department reserves the right to withhold student grades until thesis materials are submitted.

Update on University Rights and Responsibilities

Dear Members of the Harvard Community,   Harvard’s  University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities  (USRR) expresses our core commitments to advancing freedom of thought, open inquiry, and free speech; to protecting the safety and well-being of members of the Harvard community; and to ensuring that all within our community can pursue a shared mission of academic excellence through teaching, learning, and research. To fully realize those commitments, the processes by which we implement them must be fair, effective, and evenhanded. In recent years, this goal has been challenged in a growing number of disciplinary cases involving students from different Schools who are involved in the same event or behavior but may be subject to quite different investigative and fact-finding processes. Fully acknowledging that, at Harvard, each School is responsible for determining discipline for its own students, the facts informing discipline should not vary depending on what School a particular student attends.   The University Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (UCRR) offers a solution to this problem. Established in 1970 and populated each year with faculty and students designated by each School, the UCRR was designed to coordinate fact-finding processes involving multiple Schools while leaving the final disciplinary decisions to the Schools themselves. Until now, however, effective procedures for implementing this function have not been formalized.   Last fall, the president and provost convened a working group of academic leaders to propose appropriate procedures, drawing upon other University processes already in place. This working group solicited feedback from faculty and staff on disciplinary boards across the University. The proposed procedures closely track those recently adopted to implement other University-wide policies.   Interim President Garber has now adopted the proposed  UCRR Procedures  for an initial period of two years. During this period, we will gain experience and gather additional community input about the UCRR Procedures so that revisions may be made as appropriate.   We support this decision, also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, as an important step toward promoting more consistent application of the USRR by ensuring that each School’s disciplinary decision in cross-school cases will be informed by a common understanding of the relevant facts. We welcome your input, and we are grateful for your cooperation.   Sincerely,   Alan M. Garber Interim President   John F. Manning Interim Provost   Meredith Weenick Executive Vice President Andrea Baccarelli Dean, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health   Tomiko Brown-Nagin Dean, Harvard Radcliffe Institute   Nancy Coleman Dean, Division of Continuing Education and University Extension   George Q. Daley Dean, Harvard Medical School   Srikant Datar Dean, Harvard Business School   Emma Dench Dean, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences   Marla Frederick Dean, Harvard Divinity School   William V. Giannobile Dean, Harvard School of Dental Medicine   John C.P. Goldberg Interim Dean, Harvard Law School   Hopi E. Hoekstra Edgerley Family Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences   Rakesh Khurana Danoff Dean, Harvard College   Nonie K. Lesaux Interim Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Education   David C. Parkes Dean, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences   Jeremy Weinstein Dean, Harvard Kennedy School of Government   Sarah M. Whiting Dean, Harvard Graduate School of Design

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Clockwise from left, former President Donald Trump, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, and Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Photos via AP; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff

What the judge was thinking and what’s next in Trump documents case

Obama-era White House counsel says key point in Nixon decision should have ended inquiry

Harvard Staff Writer

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, ruling that Special Counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed.

Smith’s team charged Trump with illegally retaining classified material after leaving the White House, including national security documents, and obstructing efforts by the government to retrieve them. The case was seen by many as the strongest of the major criminal cases against the ex-president, who appointed Cannon. Smith plans to appeal the ruling.

W. Neil Eggleston served as counsel to President Obama and is now a lecturer at the Law School. He offered his analysis of the Cannon ruling and weighed what’s next in the case in a conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.

Cannon ruled that the special counsel was appointed improperly. What was her legal reasoning?

It’s a mashup of statutory analysis and two constitutional principles — the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause . She looks at the provisions in the order appointing Smith that set forth the statutory basis for that appointment. She also looks at the statutes and concludes that the statutes do not authorize the attorney general to appoint a special counsel. She focuses on the fact that Smith was not a Department of Justice employee or officer at the time of the appointment — he was working at The Hague. It’s not clear to me why that matters, because today he’s a Department of Justice official. She infuses the analysis with lengthy discussions of the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause.

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How would you characterize the decision?

In my view, her reading of the statutory provisions is quite stingy. Two other district courts and the D.C. Circuit have considered this issue — the legality of the special counsel — and they have all rejected it. Cannon is the only judge to find the appointment invalid. The D.C. Circuit has twice rejected a challenge to the use of special counsels — during the Iran-Contra investigation and during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump. Judge Dabney Friedrich of the District Court in D.C., who is a Trump appointee, tossed aside a similar challenge without a lot of effort in a fairly short opinion in a case involving Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Judge T.S. Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia similarly tossed this issue aside in a case that also involved Mueller. So, the other courts that have looked at this issue have had no trouble with it and have ruled contrary to Cannon.

“I’ve never seen a district court conclude that a portion of a Supreme Court opinion is not binding; that was a first for me.”

What are the regulations under which special counsels are appointed?

Special counsels have been around for decades. From the 1970s until the late ’90s there was the independent counsel statute, which provided for a much more independent special prosecutor than what Attorney General [Merrick] Garland authorized in this matter. The Supreme Court upheld the statute in Morrison v. Olson , but it expired in 1999. After its expiration, DOJ implemented its own regulations providing for the appointment of special counsels who possess functions similar to U.S. attorneys. In 2020, in an Appointments Clause case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court essentially reaffirmed Morrison v. Olson as a valid exception to a general rule about appointments.

What surprised you most about the decision?

One very surprising thing is how Cannon deals with the Supreme Court precedent in United States v. Nixon . There’s a sentence in that 9-0 opinion which resolves this issue entirely. The sentence says that Archibald Cox, who was one of the prosecutors of Nixon, was appropriately appointed pursuant to the statute. And you would have thought that would have ended this inquiry. Cannon does something I think I’ve never seen a district judge do before, which is that she looks into the history of the Nixon case, decides the issue wasn’t particularly briefed, and as a result determines that a sentence in a Supreme Court opinion that was decided 9-0 was, in fact, “dicta,” which means that it is not binding in subsequent cases as legal precedent. And as a result, she as a district judge was entitled to disregard it. I’ve never seen a district court conclude that a portion of a Supreme Court opinion is not binding; that was a first for me.

In my seminar at Harvard Law School, I teach that portion of the Nixon opinion, and the beginning of it is essentially whether the matter is justiciable and whether the case is properly in the court, partially because it’s an intra-branch fight — it’s two parts of the executive branch that are litigating against each other. It was important to the court to point out that the special counsel was validly appointed and validly in the court, because if they thought he had not been, then the matter would not have been justiciable. The entire first part of the Nixon opinion is really about justiciability.

Cannon was appointed by Trump in 2020. Some observers say that judges shouldn’t be allowed to rule on the person who appointed them. What is your opinion?

That does not trouble me at all. Presidents appoint a lot of judges who then go off and make all sorts of decisions. This comes up in the administrative law context all the time, where district judges and appeals judges must rule on presidential policies. I don’t think most people think that the fact that they’ve been nominated by the person whose policy they’re now reviewing creates an appearance of impropriety. There is a lot of criticism about the way Cannon was handling the matter. I would not go so far as to say that she should not have taken the matter due to an appearance of impropriety.

Smith has said that he’s going to appeal. Can you talk about his likely strategy and whether the case might end up before the Supreme Court?

Smith’s appeal is going to be based on the issues we’re talking about. He’ll say that the judge’s reading of the authorizing statutes is wrong, and that in fact, the attorney general is entitled to appoint non-DOJ personnel to be special counsel. That’ll be the principal argument. Smith will also argue that the infused atmosphere of the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause really has no place in the discussion. It’s a question of whether the statute permits it or doesn’t permit it. He’ll also raise the notion that essentially Nixon has already decided this case.

An appeal in the 11th Circuit would take roughly a year to decide. If Trump is elected president, after his inauguration he will certainly order the Department of Justice to dismiss the federal cases against him. The Department of Justice would then dismiss those cases and there would not be an appeal.

If Trump is not elected, there’s a strong chance that the 11th Circuit will reverse Cannon’s decision. Whichever way the 11th Circuit ruled, I suspect the issues would then be decided in the Supreme Court. I’m not going to predict what the Supreme Court would do.

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• Contributors

Yearly Archives: 2024

Jarkesy supreme court ruling limits sec’s enforcement authority.

Kenneth Breen and Phara Guberman are Partners at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP. This post is based on their Cadwalader memorandum.

In a 6-3 decision issued on June 27, 2024 in SEC v. Jarkesy, the U.S. Supreme Court curtailed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) enforcement authority in recognizing that there is a right to a jury trial in SEC actions alleging securities fraud where civil penalties are sought. Prior to the Jarkesy opinion, the SEC had unfettered discretion to bring securities fraud actions in the forum of its choosing (whether that be in federal court or an SEC administrative proceeding), the choice of which was not required to be disclosed prior to the action being brought. It can no longer forum shop.

The choice of forum can dictate both a defendant’s procedural protections and the available remedies for the SEC. When a case is heard in federal court, a life-tenured, salary-protected Article III judge presides, the litigation is governed by the Federal Rules of Evidence and ordinary rules of discovery, a jury finds the facts depending on the claim, and there is an appellate path should one be necessary and appropriate. Contrarily, when the SEC adjudicates the matter in-house, the Commission or a delegated Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) presides acting as both judge and jury; it finds facts, it decides discovery disputes, it determines the scope and form of permissible evidence, and the SEC’s Rules of Practice govern.

READ MORE »

Dissonance in Climate Disclosure: the SEC, EU, California, and ISSB Regimes

Stavros Gadinis  is Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. This post is based on his working paper .

The global push for corporate climate disclosure has gained significant momentum in recent years, with major financial centers and regulatory bodies introducing new rules and frameworks. However, this increased activity has led to a puzzling divergence in approaches, particularly regarding the disclosure of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While there is broad agreement on the importance of climate-related financial disclosures, regulators and standard-setters have taken notably different paths in implementing these requirements, especially concerning Scope 3 emissions. This divergence is particularly striking given the shared goals of enhancing transparency, combating greenwashing, and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. The puzzle lies in understanding why, despite these common objectives, major jurisdictions have arrived at such different regulatory solutions. This situation raises important questions about the feasibility, effectiveness, and potential impacts of various disclosure regimes.

Court Scrutinizes Sponsor and Financial Advisor Conflicts Under Up-C Structure

Gail Weinstein  is Senior Counsel,  Philip Richter  is a Partner, and  Steven Epstein is Managing Partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP. This post is based on a Fried Frank memorandum by Ms. Weinstein, Mr. Richter, Mr. Epstein, Steven Steinman , Warren S. de Wied , and Maxwell Yim  and is part of the  Delaware law series ; links to other posts in the series are available  here .

In Firefighters’ Pension System v. Foundation Building Materials, Inc. (May 28, 2024), the Delaware Court of Chancery, at the pleading stage of litigation, declined to dismiss claims challenging the $1.37 billion sale of Foundation Building Materials, Inc. (the “Company”), to an unrelated third party in an arm’s-length transaction (the “Merger”), after the Company had gone public in an Up-C initial public offering (the “IPO”).

In connection with the IPO, the Company’s private equity fund sponsor, which controlled the Company both before and after the IPO (the “Sponsor”), had entered into a customary tax receivable agreement with the Company (the “TRA”). Under the TRA, the Sponsor was entitled to terminate the TRA upon a change of control of the Company, and in such event to receive an early termination payment (the “ETP”), calculated as the present value of the payments that the Sponsor would have received over the full term of the TRA, under certain assumptions favorable to the Sponsor.

Statement Regarding the Activision Amendments

Michael Hanrahan is Director at Prickett, Jones & Elliott, P.A. and Litigator in the Delaware Court of Chancery. This post is based on his recent statement and is part of the  Delaware law series ; links to other posts in the series are available  here .

In 2024, Delaware enacted extensive amendments to the Delaware General Corporation Law to overrule three recent opinions by the Delaware Court of Chancery. Many of these hurriedly written amendments attack the Court’s February 29, 2024 Activision opinion.

In Activision , the Delaware Court of Chancery held that the plaintiff, a former Activision stockholder, had stated a claim that Activision and its board of directors had not complied with the requirement of Delaware’s merger statute, 8 Del. C. § 251, which requires that the board approve an agreement of merger that contains specified items, such as the merger consideration and the terms of the certificate of incorporation of the surviving corporation. [1] Because a merger is such a fundamentally important transaction affecting the ownership of the corporation, Section 251 imposes mandatory steps for the protection of the stockholders. [2]

The Activision opinion was preliminary. There had been no discovery, trial, final decision or appeal. However, within days, rushed efforts began, not only to overturn the Court’s Section 251 analysis of a draft merger agreement, but also to drastically diminish the standards for other board approvals and actions. Unlike the careful process and consideration Delaware usually employs for DGCL amendments, the multiple statutory changes directed at Activision were hastily concocted. As a result, the Activision Amendments are overbroad, imprecise and undermine the Court of Chancery and the DGCL’s protection of stockholders.

The Overlooked Reality of Shareholder Activism in China: Defying Western Expectations

Zhou Chun is an Associate Professor at Guanghua School of Law, Zhang Wei is an Associate Professor at the Yong Pung How School of Law, and Dan W Puchniak is a Professor of Law at Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University. This post is based on their working paper .

China is known in the West for many things. However, a rules-based market for shareholder activism is not one of them. President Xi Jinping is (in)famous in the West for demanding “that businesses conform to the aims of the Communist Party”. [1] The newly appointed boss of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) – China’s equivalent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – has earned the sobriquet “Broker Butcher” for his alleged zealous crackdown on traders in the 2000s. Western media regularly reports on “[b]illionaire tycoons, including Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, [being] driven underground or imprisoned after criticizing the government”. [2] This is not exactly an environment in which one would expect to find a vibrant rules-based market for shareholder activism – especially with state owned enterprises as the target of such activism.

And yet, the in-depth empirical and case study evidence in our new ECGI Working Paper – The Overlooked Reality of Shareholder Activism in China: Defying Western Expectations – reveals that shareholder activism in China is thriving. Based on our unique hand collected data, there were nine times as many publicly reported shareholder activist campaigns against listed companies in China in 2023 (27) as in 2008 (3) – with over two-thirds of all the shareholder activist campaigns since 2007 occurring in the last five years (see Table, below).

The Activism Vulnerability Report

Jason Frankl  and  Brian G. Kushner are Senior Managing Directors and Kurt Moeller  is a Managing Director at FTI Consulting. This post is based on a FTI Consulting memorandum by Mr. Frankl, Mr. Kushner, Mr. Moeller, Tom Kim , and  Ryan Chiang .

Introduction

Activism industry headlines are deceptive; this quarter has been quieter than it appears. Despite several campaigns involving very high-profile companies receiving most of the media coverage, shareholder activism in the United States has been relatively quiet through the first five months of 2024. Increased valuations driven by strong U.S. equity markets last year, as shown by the S&P 500’s 26.3% total return, likely decreased the number of companies that activists found appealing. [1] Activists have gained 86 board seats year-to-date through May 31, similar to recent prior years. [2] Overall campaigns were down to a total of 123 relative to 139 in 1Q23, and relatively few campaigns resulted in full-scale proxy contests – fewer than 5% of total campaigns. [3]

S&P 500 CEO Pay Rebounds After Decline in 2022

Amit Batish is Senior Director of Content at Equilar, Inc. This post is based on an Equilar memorandum by Mr. Batish and Courtney Yu.

CEO compensation is a multifaceted and often scrutinized aspect of corporate governance. Public companies typically incentivize CEOs to drive corporate performance with lucrative pay packages. Meanwhile, the magnitude of the pay packages awarded to chief executives is regularly a topic of public debate, often drawing the ire of several stakeholders.

For 14 years, Equilar has partnered with the Associated Press to study CEO compensation at S&P 500 companies. The 2024 edition identifies trends in compensation awards for CEOs who served in that role at an S&P 500 company for at least two years as of fiscal year end 2023. Companies must have filed a proxy between January 1 and April 30, 2024 to be featured in this study. READ MORE »

Dark Accounting Matter

Colleen Honigsberg is Associate Dean of Curriculum and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. This post is based on her recent paper .

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price to book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80%, appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

In a recent article , I explain that dark accounting matter has become a significant limitation on the relevance of financials reported under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Notably, as I explain, some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset omitted from balance sheets, and is commonly categorized under the S in ESG. Therefore, rather than create separate disclosure regimes, I suggest a unified approach for disclosure of valuable intangible assets—regardless of whether those assets fall under “ESG” or reflect traditional intangible assets such as intellectual property. More precisely, I suggest that issuers be asked to describe and discuss factors that contribute to the difference between their market and book values, and to provide tailored disclosures that seek to shed light on that difference.

Shareholder Proposal No-Action Requests in the 2024 Proxy Season

Marc S. Gerber is Partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. This post is based on his Skadden memorandum.

• For the 2024 proxy season, companies submitted approximately 50% more no-action requests for the exclusion of shareholder proposals than they did for the prior proxy season.
• The SEC Staff granted more than two-thirds of no-action requests, versus approximately 56% in the corresponding prior period.
• The most successful bases for exclusion were that the shareholder proposal suffered from a procedural defect, related to the company’s ordinary business matters, would micromanage the company or would (if implemented) cause the company to violate the law.
• The results this proxy season show that the no-action process remains a viable option for many companies to consider if they want to exclude inappropriate or deficient shareholder proposals.

Climate and Decarbonization Stewardship Guidelines

Joud Abdel Majeid is Global Head of Investment Stewardship at BlackRock Inc. This post is based on her BlackRock memorandum .

BlackRock climate and decarbonization stewardship guidelines [1]

Introduction to blackrock investment stewardship.

BlackRock’s clients depend on us to help them meet their varied investment goals. We consider it one of our responsibilities to be an informed, engaged shareholder on their behalf, given the business decisions that companies make have a direct impact on our clients’ long-term investment outcomes and financial well-being. BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) is a dedicated function within BlackRock, which serves as a link between BlackRock’s clients and the companies we invest in on their behalf. BIS takes a long-term approach in our stewardship efforts, reflecting the investment horizons of the majority of our clients. BIS does this through:

• Engaging with companies in a two-way dialogue to build our understanding of a company’s practices and inform our voting decisions.
• Voting at shareholder meetings on management and shareholder proposals on behalf of clients who have delegated voting authority to BlackRock.
• Contributing to industry dialogue on stewardship to share our perspectives on matters that may impact our clients’ investments.
• Reporting on our activities to inform clients about our stewardship efforts on their behalf through a range of publications and direct reporting.

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HLS Faculty & Senior Fellows

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Harvard Law School Reunions Pound Hall 1563 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138   617-384-9523 [email protected]

Register for Reunion

The Harvard Law School Red Book, otherwise known as the Class Report, is a collection of your classmates’ contact information and their stories – about life, career, family, hobbies, and more – as well as remembrances of departed classmates . This enduring and beloved tradition serves as historical chronicles of the classes and encourages alumni to maintain connections with each other and the Law School. Thank you for your participation in this important tradition.

Alumni will receive their complimentary Red Book with their Reunion materials upon arriving at registration during Reunion Weekend. If you are unable to attend Reunion, you are welcome to order a copy .

Important Notes

Please read as our Red Book process and policies have changed since your last Reunion.

• The inclusion of contact information listed in the Red Books is now “opt-in” only.  No contact information will be published unless you intentionally supply it by participating in the book. If you do not provide your contact information, only your name and class year will be included within the Red Book (John Doe J.D. ’74).
• The deadline to review and complete your profile is Thursday, September 19.
• If you come across an error message, please make sure you are using the preferred web browser, Google Chrome.
• You have the option to  submit a Remembrance note  on behalf of a classmate. Please view the list of departed classmates on the Remembrances form. The link for this form is also available once you have completed your Red Book profile found on the confirmation page.

How to Update Your Profile

• To confirm your profile online, you will first need to claim your HarvardKey. HarvardKey is the University’s new single, convenient log-in for access to online resources, providing simpler, more secure access to the University’s applications and services. To claim your HarvardKey, you will need your unique HAA ID number.  You can find this number in the emails you receive regarding Reunion.
• If you have not set up your HarvardKey: Visit  https://key.harvard.edu  and click on the ‘Claim Your HarvardKey’ link. Click the Alumni tab and follow the instructions, then proceed with the directions below.
• If you have already claimed your HarvardKey, please move onto step 2.
• Visit the Class Report page for your HLS class (listed below). Log in using your HarvardKey login name and password and then approve/update your profile, going through each screen until you receive the “Thank you for updating your information!” message.
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• After submitting your Red Book profile, you will receive a confirmation email. Please review the content in the email to ensure that it was submitted properly.

Red Book FAQ

Find more information and details about Red Book by reading these frequently asked questions.

Red Book Writing Suggestions

Narratives are the heart and soul of the Red Books.

We strongly encourage you to add a narrative to your profile. Many alumni write about their careers, family life, hobbies, travels, and messages to classmates.

Having writer’s block? Here are some writing prompts to consider:

• Write about a memorable time at HLS or a professor you were fond of.
• Tell us about your professional and personal path since you left HLS.
• Share any exciting news about your career and your personal life.
• Describe the most exciting place you have traveled to.
• What are you looking forward to most over the next year: travel plans, a big move, career changes, children, grandchildren etc.
• Since your last HLS Reunion or Red Book entry, have you acquired any new hobbies or interests?

Class Remembrances

Remembrances of your departed classmates are meaningful and are appreciated by your peers. Additionally, when relatives of the departed contact our office for information about their loved ones, it is nice to be able to share these messages with them.

Submit a Remembrance Note

Please view the list of departed classmates on the Remembrances form. The link for this form is also available once you have completed your Red Book profile. If you know of an additional deceased classmate, please notify us at  [email protected]  and, if possible, provide an obituary.

HarvardKey Questions?

Please contact the HLS HarvardKey support line at 617-495-5631 or HLS Alumni Records at  [email protected]  

Red Book Questions?

Please contact Harvard Law School Alumni Relations at 617-384-9523 or  [email protected]  

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Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellows Receive Dissertation Awards

Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellow Luis Flores is the recipient of the 2024 Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association. The award recognizes the best dissertation in the discipline among those nominated by advisers and department chairs.  Luis’ dissertation, "The Regulatory Politics of Home-Based Moneymaking after the American Family Wage," interrogates the emergence, conflict, and contested incorporation surrounding informal income-generation strategies among American households since the 1970s. These strategies challenged a host of regulations—in labor, land-use, tax, code enforcement, mortgage law—that previously sharply separated home from marketplace. His research traces the recent history of home-based manufacturing, the rental of “granny flats,” child labor, home equity extraction instruments, cottage food laws, home-based child care, and “multi-tier marketing” schemes. During his postdoctoral fellowship with the Stone Program, Luis is writing a book manuscript based on this dissertation. Previous recipients of the ASA Dissertation Award include Stone Program faculty affiliates Jason Beckfield, Christina Cross, Elizabeth McKenna, and Christopher Muller.

Stone Program Postdoctoral Fellow Shay O'Brien is the co-winner of the 2024 Theda Skocpol Dissertation Award . The Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association awards the Theda Skocpol Dissertation Award annually to the best doctoral dissertation in the area of comparative-historical sociology. Shay's dissertation, "Dallas: Kinship, Mobility, and Inheritance in an Elite Population, 1895-1945," argues that analytically distinct collections of elites are often connected through kin in sprawling upper-class family networks.

Please join us in congratulating Luis and Shay.

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