Harvard Law Record
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Harvard Law Record | |
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| Type | Weekly newspaper |
| Format | Berliner |
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| Owner | The Harvard Law School Record Corporation |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Headquarters | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
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| Website: www.hlrecord.org | |
The Harvard Law Record is a student-run publication at Harvard Law School.
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[edit] Characteristics
The Record, a weekly publication, includes law school news and gossip, world and national news, and scholarly articles and op-eds written by law professors, lawyers, and students. The Record is an independent nonprofit corporation, funded through advertising, and does not receive student organization funding from the law school.
The Record is home to fictional law student Fenno, who since the 1950s has satirically chronicled the adventures of an anonymous law student, and has lampooned prominent members of the Harvard Law School community in the process.
[edit] History
The Record was founded in 1946 by a group of returning World War II veterans who were unhappy with conditions at the School, particularly a lack of student housing. The three primary founders of the Record were Charles O. Porter, who later served as a U.S. Congressman from Oregon, Charles Sweet, later a judge, and Paul Hellmuth, who became managing partner of the Boston law firm Hale & Dorr (now WilmerHale).
Among the former editors of the Record is Ralph Nader, who published his first article on unsafe conditions in the auto industry entitled, American Cars: Designed for Death, in the Record in 1958. The article was later expanded into Nader's seminal work on the subject, Unsafe at Any Speed.
In 1959, Nader and co-editor David Binder traveled to Cuba to report on the Cuban revolution in the Record, which coverage included an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro.
Also in 1959, William Rehnquist, then a young Arizona lawyer, wrote an editorial in the Record entitled "The Making of a Supreme Court Justice", in which he criticized the U.S. Senate for not questioning the judicial philosophy of Supreme Court nominees. The article was later cited by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he refused to answer questions during his confirmation hearings.
In April 1971, the New York Times reported that Harvard Law School professors Alan Dershowitz and Paul Freund had quit after picking up the story from the Record's April Fools Day issue.
In the last decade the Record has won several awards from the American Bar Association Law Student Division for outstanding writing, including the 2007 awards for Best Editorial and Best Feature Article.
[edit] Notable editors and contributors
- Jeremy Blachman, author of the Anonymous Lawyer blog and books
- Ruben Bolling, aka Ken Fisher, cartoonist and creator of "Tom the Dancing Bug"
- Debra Dickerson, author and commentator
- Murad Kalam, novelist
- Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and U.S. presidential candidate
- Charles O. Porter, U.S. congressman from Oregon
- William Rehnquist, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
- Jerome Shestack, former President of the American Bar Association
- James B. Stewart, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author
[edit] See also
- The Harvard Crimson, Harvard's undergraduate newspaper
- Harvard Law Review, a student-edited academic journal
