Last Tuesday, April 1, students and faculty gathered for “Vigorous Public Interest Law Day” in Langdell Hall North and Milstein East throughout the afternoon and evening. The stated goal of the event was to “build solidarity with lawyers challenging government/corporate power, crime, and control.” Ralph Nader, J.D. ‘58, planned the event in collaboration with his associates from Public Citizen, a legal nonprofit focused on consumer rights advocacy, and the Harvard Plaintiffs’ Law Association.
“Let’s not mince words here. We’re seeing a fascist dictatorship.” said Nader during his brief remarks. The speakers frequently made reference to the fraught political context in which it took place: many legal commentators have raised concerns about rule of law in the country and other observers have alleged that the US is drifting towards authoritarianism under the Trump administration.
A common theme raised by speakers was the need for courageous action from various stakeholders in the legal and political process. Bruce Fein, J.D. ‘72, an expert on civil liberties and prolific author of articles of presidential impeachment, directed attendees to work on shifting public opinion to impose consequences on political figures. He stated that courage is “the essential component of being a lawyer,” and that the failure of lawyers in government and politics to effectively corral the erosion of safeguards against presidential excess has led us to this moment.
His entreaties were echoed by James Henry, J.D. ‘76, an economist and investigative journalist with a focus on tax justice. Henry stated that “once you’re inside these [elite] ‘institutions,’ your own ethical system is challenged on a daily basis.” He called on law schools to put greater effort into providing examples of courageous lawyering so as to cultivate a zealous responsibility to the law. As an example, Henry referenced his former professor Abe Chayes, J.D. ‘49, namesake of the Chayes International Public Interest Fellowships, who regularly led ambitious human rights litigation throughout the 20th Century despite threats from hostile governments.
During her opening remarks in the event’s evening session,, retired Judge Nancy Gertner shared, for the first time, her own story of courageous lawyering. She described how in November 1990, a group of students called the Coalition for Civil Rights sued Harvard for discrimination in hiring, arguing, among other claims, that HLS disproportionately refused to hire women or minorities. Those students represented themselves in court, but sought advice from one outside lawyer on their case: Nancy Gertner. Since Gertner was a lawyer in private practice and a visiting professor at Harvard at the time, she did not disclose her involvement to Harvard.
The story added background to Gertner’s outspoken criticisms of the Trump administration, especially their targeting of Democratic states who largely contribute more in taxes than they receive in federal funding or services. She called the administration’s attacks on the rule of law “as profound a constitutional crisis as I have ever seen in my life.” Gertner served as a federal judge for 17 years. “We have to all do something,” Gertner added to close her talk. “You can’t be neutral on this moving train.”
Alongside a call for principled action, the event offered a demonstration of the enormous breadth of different ways to serve in the public interest with a law degree. Elizabeth Beavers, for example, spoke on her experience as a public interest policy advocate in her role as Director of Congress Watch at Public Citizen. Moving from her previous anti-war advocacy to lobbying for consumers, she emphasized the connective thread between all struggles against concentrated power. “When we’re sort of firing in our different silos…when there are even just a few phone calls to a congressional office it makes a difference” she noted.
Another pathway for change was discussed by Deepak Gupta, founding partner of the prestigious D.C. plaintiffs’ firm Gupta Wessler LLP. Gupta expressed an optimistic enthusiasm about his work, embracing the creativity inherent to finding “hinge moments” where plaintiffs lawyers can shape the legal field. “Every case is entrepreneurial; you can take something you read in the magazine or newspaper and turn that into a case idea. That is very exciting to me,” he said. Gupta added that law schools should expand their efforts to teach students how to run legal businesses, raising his recent reading group on public interest entrepreneurship as a fruitful learning experience for both himself and his students.
The event concluded with Pete Davis, J.D. ‘18, former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Record and co-founder of Democracy Policy Network, a pro-democracy advocacy group. Davis gave an energetic presentation drawing upon his book, Our Bicentennial Crisis, which he wrote in his final year of law school. The book discusses the litany of ways the law is slanted against indigent clients and working class people, allowing corporations and social elites to engage in legalized malfeasance at the expense of the marginalized. In particular, he criticizes law schools for funneling students towards Big Law, which he claims is often used to expand inequities. He also warns students against being “justice-minded, but passive,” which Davis claims is a disposition highly likely to end up in Big Law despite wanting to serve the public interest.
In spite of the dour context that motivated the event, the small army of lawyers and academics who participated seemed to be hopeful about the future, or at least proud of their role in the work ahead. Nader summed up the core ethos of the event with a quote from Cicero: “Freedom is participation in power.” He continued, “The great work of human beings is justice.”