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Ropes & Gray halts anti-gay adoption work
The Boston firm of Ropes & Gray announced recently that it would no longer do work with Catholic Charities that involved finding ways to keep gay couples from adopting children. Students from Harvard Law’s Lambda contacted the firm with their unhappiness over the work, including meeting with Ropes’ managing partner. Lambda members discussed various options for protesting the firm, which hires more HLS graduates than any Boston firm, when they came to campus for fall OCI. Shortly after the firm’s decision to cease the work, Catholic Charities decided to end its adoption program altogether, because it could not reconcile church doctrine that gay adoptions are “gravely immoral” with state anti-discrimination laws.
Another HLS grad may fill Selya’s seat
Only a few weeks after 1st Circuit Court judge Bruce Selya ’58 announced he was taking senior status, Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee nominated a replacement, Robert Flanders Jr. ’74, for his seat. Flanders, a partner at the firm of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, is a former professor and justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
Ginsburg acknowledges death threats
In a recent speech in South Africa, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged that she and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor have been the target of death threats from what she calls “the irrational fringe.” The Internet threats were brought on by anger over the justices’ use of international law in opinions. “It is disquieting that they have attracted sizeable support,” said Ginsburg of those who wish to harm federal judges. Several incidents in the past year have left judges and their relatives dead in attacks, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales reported at last week’s Judicial Conference that three-fourths of the 2,200 federal judges have asked for home security systems.
Prof. Ryan Goodman ties the knot
The Record sends congratulations to Professor Goodman, who married Dr. Melissa Bender last weekend in New York. Bender, a Harvard College and Harvard Med graduate, is a clinical and research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, who conducts research on HIV/AIDS and socioeconomic inequality in India.
Section Sixer bares it all in public
St. Patrick’s Day got more than a little out of hand for an inebriated Harvard 1L, who allegedly flashed traffic outside the Sports Depot bar Friday evening. According to Sunday’s Boston Herald, Boston Police Department (BPD) officers reported the student was impeding traffic on Cambridge Street, yelling at passing cars and exposing himself. He was arrested for open and gross lewdness and disorderly conduct. BPD officer Michael McCarthy told the Crimson Tuesday that the student made a point of identifying himself as a Harvard Law School student while being arrested.