Elizabeth Hidalgo Reese, Yunpoví (Willow Flower), is a nationally recognized scholar of American Indian tribal law, federal Indian law, and U.S. constitutional law, as well as a tribally enrolled citizen of Nambé Pueblo. She served as Senior Policy Advisor for Native Affairs at the White House Domestic Policy Council, where she advised President Biden and helped shape tribal policy. Her legal career includes litigating civil rights cases at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, supporting tribal governments at the National Congress of American Indians, and clerking in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. A graduate of Yale, Cambridge, and Harvard Law School, Professor Reese now teaches at Stanford Law School. As both a policy advisor and scholar, Professor Reese brings a distinctive perspective to questions of tribal sovereignty, civil rights, and constitutional law. Her work offers critical insights into federal Indian law and the legal frameworks that govern the relationship between tribal nations and the United States. In this interview, Professor Reese and the HULR discuss the exclusion of tribal nations from American legal structures, the development of tribal representation, and the broader possibilities for building a more inclusive vision of American democracy.

Professor Eva Micheler is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Economics in Vienna. She specialises in corporate law, securities regulation, and the evolving legal challenges posed by financial technology. Particularly, Professor Micheler focuses on blockchain and distributed ledger technology, which is the focus of this interview. In recent years, Professor Micheler’s research has probed the legal implications of blockchain-based systems for securities markets and corporate governance. Her work critically examines how traditional legal concepts such as ownership, property rights, and intermediated holdings are challenged and transformed by the rise of decentralized technologies, which underpin cryptocurrency. She has raised important questions about the adequacy of existing private law frameworks to support innovations, such as tokenized assets and decentralized finance.

In this interview, Professor Micheler and the HULR discussed the effect of cryptocurrency on areas of private law such as property law, securities law, and corporate law in Europe and how this impact will likely develop in the coming years.

Sidney Chalhoub is the David and Peggy Rockefeller Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard College, where he has taught for the past decade. Previously, he spent thirty years teaching at the University of Campinas in Brazil. Chalhoub’s work focuses on 19th and early-20th-century Brazil, particularly the history of slavery, labor, and public health. This interview discusses how Chalhoub approaches social history by drawing upon legal archives and sources. 

Professor Carmel Shachar is currently an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School. Her work focuses on some of the most pressing issues in healthcare today — from expanding access to care for vulnerable and underserved populations to leveraging telehealth and digital health tools to improve patient outcomes. She also studies the application of public health ethics to real-world challenges.

Emily M. Broad Leib is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, and Founding Director of the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the nation's first law school clinic dedicated to addressing the diverse array of issues within the U.S.' food system. Through a hands-on approach focused on policy-driven solutions, she has championed community-led food system change, reduction in food waste, food access, and equity and sustainability in food production. In this interview, Broad Leib explores the nuances of the novel field of food law, the successes she's experienced with her Clinic, and opportunities for students interested in the field.

The interview below was conducted in the Spring of 2024. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Michael Jewell is an attorney at Jewell & Associates, PLLC. Having been involved in Texas legislature and public policy for more than 25 years, Jewell’s work focuses primarily on representing clients before state and federal regulatory agencies addressing electricity, telecommunications, and professional regulation. He has worked with national and international corporations, including AT&T, Reliant Energy, Enel X, and Direct Energy, and has participated in the Association of Electric Companies of Texas and the Gulf Coast Power Association. In this interview, Jewell and HULR discuss how the intersection of legal, business, and technological experiences can help navigate the challenges in the energy industry at both a state and national level.

This interview was conducted in the Spring of 2024. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Dr. Jim Greiner is the Honorable S. William Green Professor of Public Law at Harvard Law School. Griener is also the faculty director of the Access to Justice Lab, which focuses its research on which societal barriers stand in the way of effective legal participation. This interview focuses on exploring the work of Professor Greiner with the Access to Justice Lab, diving into the reasons that so many families in the United States have restricted access to the legal system. Furthermore, Greiner discusses the main ways in which the legal system can adapt to provide increased access to justice.

Dr. Myisha S. Eatmon is an Assistant Professor in African and African American Studies and History at Harvard University. She is currently working on a book project, tentatively titled, Litigating in Black and White: Black Legal Culture, White Violence, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies, which explores how Black people challenged white violence during Jim Crow. Her scholarship notably sheds light on often overlooked aspects of “Black legal culture” during Jim Crow and how it played a critical role in the resistance to white violence. Professor Eatmon is also the recipient of various grants and fellowship awards, including the American Historical Association’s Littleton-Griswold Research in Legal History Research Grant and the Mellon/American Council for Learned Scholars Dissertation Completion Fellowship.

The interview with Martha Field, Langdell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, conducted by the Harvard Undergraduate Law Review (HULR), provides a comprehensive overview of her distinguished career and her perspectives on a range of legal issues related to civil and human rights. Field's academic journey, spanning from her education at Radcliffe College and the University of Chicago Law School to her clerkship at the US Supreme Court, has equipped her with a unique vantage point on matters of constitutional law, disability law, and social justice.

The interview delves into her early experiences growing up in the Deep South during a period marked by racial segregation, which ignited her passion for activism and the pursuit of civil and human rights. Field's work has encompassed topics such as wrongful-life and wrongful-birth suits, surrogacy, and abortion law. Her insights shed light on the legal complexities surrounding these issues and emphasize the need for better protection of the rights of surrogate mothers.

Field also offers her thoughts on the evolving landscape of abortion law in the United States, particularly in the context of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, expressing concerns about the erosion of reproductive rights and the lack of judicial consistency in these matters.

The interview concludes with a call to action, with Field advocating for greater attention to disability rights and the need for more advocates in this field. She highlights the technical nature of disability law and its importance in combating systemic inequalities in the legal system. In addition, Field raises concerns about the narrowing of civil rights protections and the limitation of remedies, particularly punitive damages, in discrimination cases.

While Field acknowledges not currently working on any specific projects, her extensive contributions to the legal field and her ongoing role as the Langdell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School underscore her commitment to advancing civil and human rights through education and advocacy.

As questions regarding TikTok, ChatGPT, and social media continue to bombard our notifications, one must wonder where the state of our data privacy is. Today, our digital footprint exists in all corners of the Internet, and with that, sensitive and private information. Furthermore, recent data breaches such as the SolarWinds Hack and the US Marshall Service Security Breach have placed the question of data privacy at the forefront of our attention. Many states, such as California and Virginia, are now moving toward stricter consumer data protection legislation. Will it be enough? Moreover, with the rise of AI, how will our data remain secure? What obstacles loom ahead? What don’t we know?

The Harvard Undergraduate Law Review had the chance to sit down with Dayle Duran regarding information security, class action litigations, and how AI plays a role in all of this. After graduating from the Northeastern University School of Law, concentrating in Privacy, Intellectual Property, and Innovation, Ms. Duran worked as a data privacy analyst and consultant for a variety of top companies. These include Focal Point Data Risk, Wellframe, and currently operates as the Privacy and Data Policy Manager at Meta.