1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Harvard Law Review investigated for alleged…

Law Schools

Harvard Law Review investigated for alleged ‘spoils system’ that uses race in article selection

By Debra Cassens Weiss

April 29, 2025, 12:13 pm CDT

The federal government has opened an investigation into the Harvard Law Review “based on reports of race-based discrimination permeating the operations of the journal,” according to an April 28 press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At issue is whether the law review’s policies for membership and article selection violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, color and national origin in education programs receiving federal funding.

Allocating opportunities and recognition based on race, rather than merit, is unacceptable, the press release said.

Reuters, Bloomberg Law, ABC News and the Harvard Crimson have coverage.

The civil rights offices of the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services are conducting investigation.

“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” said Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in the press release.

The investigation follows a report by the Washington Free Beacon concluding that race “plays a far larger role in the selection of both editors and articles” than previously acknowledged by the Harvard Law Review. The Washington Free Beacon article was based on leaked internal documents.

The press release cited alleged statements by editors at the Harvard Law Review in which they appeared to favor minority writers. In one instance, an editor allegedly voiced concern that four of the five people who wanted to reply to an article about police reform “are white men.” In another alleged incident, an editor suggested that an article should get expedited review because the author was a minority.

The Harvard Law Review is a student-run organization that is legally independent from the Harvard Law School, according to a statement by a Harvard Law School spokesperson cited by publications covering the investigation.

The school is “committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations,” the statement said.

The investigation was launched amid the federal government’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard University, which has sued in response.

See also:

Lawsuits target law reviews at Harvard and NYU, saying they favor women and minorities

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

1. Home
2. The Modern Law Library
3. This Harvard Law prof thinks constitutional…

The Modern Law Library

This Harvard Law prof thinks constitutional theory is a terrible way to pick a judge

By Lee Rawles

March 5, 2025, 9:04 am CST

What if we are asking the wrong questions when selecting American judges? Mark Tushnet thinks our current criteria might be off.

“We should look for judges who are likely to display good judgment in their rulings, … and we shouldn’t care whether they have a good theory about how to interpret the Constitution as a whole—and maybe we should worry a bit if they think they have such a theory,” the Harvard Law School professor writes in his new book, Who Am I to Judge? Judicial Craft Versus Constitutional Theory.

In looking at what qualities were shared by great U.S. Supreme Court justices, Tushnet identified five that he thinks were of especial importance:

1. Longevity and age

2. Location in political time

3. Prior experience in public life

4. NOT A JUDGE (“I put this in capital letters because it’s common today to think that justices have to have been judges,” Tushnet writes. He doesn’t see having a past judicial career as disqualifying but points out that many great justices were not sitting judges when appointed.)

5. Intellectual curiosity

In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Tushnet and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how he thinks that people should be evaluated for judicial positions, his experience as a clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, what makes a well-crafted opinion, and why he thinks that any overarching theory about the Constitution will fall short.

In This Podcast:

Mark Tushnet

Mark Tushnet is a William Nelson Cromwell law professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. Tushnet, who graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School and was a law clerk to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law. His research includes studies of constitutional review in the United States and around the world. He is the author of more than a dozen books, has edited eight others, and has written numerous articles on constitutional law and legal history.