File Sharing Lawyer's Stunts Shock Peers

Enough already with Harvard and Yale: blogger

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court and White House may as well be decorated in ivy, complains David Bernstein. "Once Elena Kagan gets confirmed, every Supreme Court Justice will have attended Harvard or Yale law schools," he writes. And Kagan—whose bachelor's degree, for the record, is from Princeton—was nominated by a Harvard-educated president who beat Yale and Harvard opponents to succeed a Yalie who himself succeeded ... oh, you get the picture. More»

Tipsters give inside story of Stephanie Grace, Yelena Shagall

(NEWSER) - Who and what was behind the outing of Stephanie Grace, the Harvard Law student whose possibly racist email from November recently became a nationwide scandal? Turns out the whole thing might be due to a fight over a boy. Gawker claims Grace wrote the e-mail to two former friends after a dinner debate on affirmative action, and one of those friends—Yelena Shagall—publicized the e-mail 6 months later after getting in a fight with Grace. More»

(NEWSER) - The Internet keeps functioning thanks to the efforts of an army of unsung heroes, a Harvard cyberlaw expert told a tech conference yesterday. The professor used as an example Pakistan's attempt last year to take YouTube offline—the site went down across the world, but volunteers from a tech forum had it back up within hours. "It's like when the bat signal goes up and Batman answers the call," Jonathan Zittrain tells the BBC. More»

Law school network continues to propel Obama's rise

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama has tapped his Harvard Law School connections to staff his transition team, with 20 of his classmates among the dozens of grads shaping the next administration, Politico reports. “The numbers seem very large to me,” said one presidential historian (from Princeton) about what looks like the most crimson administration since that of JFK, Harvard College '40. More»

Spoof kudos for 'mad' scientist projects

(NEWSER) - Researchers who proved Diet Coke is an effective spermicide, a nation's declaration that plants have rights, and a study that proved dog fleas can jump higher than cat fleas have won Harvard University's annual Ig Nobel Prizes. The spoof awards recognize projects that "first make people laugh, and then make them think," reports the Boston Globe. More»