Harvard Law School

PORTLAND, Maine - Beatrice Mayo practiced law in Maine for more than half a century before retiring in 1994. But she never spent a day in law school. After high school, Mayo went to work for an attorney in Augusta and took an interest in his law books. She took the bar exam in 1940. "She was a very smart lady, and I think she was well enough prepared that she passed it on the first try," Lloyd Lindholm recalled of his aunt, who died late last year at 92. As for her lack of a law degree, he said: "I don't think she ever felt it was a deterrent.

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago. But for at least six straight years during Warren's tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

Joseph James Hurley, who, as first assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, was involved in the inquest into Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s role in the death of a woman off Chappaquiddick Island, died May 6 of Alzheimer’s disease at Twin Oaks Care and Rehabilitation Center in Danvers. The Framingham resident, who was known for his quick wit and curiosity about the law, was 88. “He was a lawyer’s lawyer,’’ said Hurley’s former assistant and cousin, Joseph Blute of Natick.

During her long career as a law school professor, Democratic U.S. Sen. hopeful Elizabeth Warren has sometimes presented herself as having Native American ancestry. How often she did that, in what context, and why has become the thorniest debate in Massachusetts' contentious Senate contest as Warren tries to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, said she came to identify herself as having a Native American background, in part, through "family lore.

Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer. The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard. When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, Warren advisers saw it as a...

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren - who said Friday she didn't realize Harvard Law School had been promoting her as a Native American faculty member in the 1990s - was listed as a minority professor in American law school directories for nine years before she landed at Harvard, documents show. The Association of American Law Schools desk book, a directory of law professors from participating schools, includes Warren among the minority law professors listed, beginning in 1986 and continuing through 1995.

The book was written in a hurry. It had to be, because William Stuntz was dying, and the story he wanted to tell was long and complicated. It would be the Harvard Law School professor's final major work, a sweeping indictment of the system he had been studying for 25 years. Stuntz was 49 when he found out he had stage four colon cancer. For the remaining three years of his life, he worked on the book whenever he could: in his office at Harvard; at his family's home in Belmont; even at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, where he would sit with...

During her long career as a law school professor, Democratic U.S. Sen. hopeful Elizabeth Warren has sometimes presented herself as having Native American ancestry. How often she did that, in what context, and why has become the thorniest debate in Massachusetts' contentious Senate contest as Warren tries to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. Warren, a Harvard Law School professor, said she came to identify herself as having a Native American background, in part, through "family lore.

Matthew Schoenfeld was Googling himself last year to prepare for a job hunt when he saw the newspaper article. It wasn't a local-boy-makes-good story, though it could have been. Schoenfeld had indeed made good. He was so well-liked by his Harvard Law School professors that they nominated him for a plum job as Lawrence Summers' research assistant, and so well known to his classmates that the annual school skit hailed him as a "networking prodigy. " ("Somewhere in your wallet," read the skit program, "there is a Matt Schoenfeld business card.

Elizabeth Warren was not born at Harvard Law School. Before she was as a bankruptcy expert and a Wall Street watchdog, she was the fourth child of an Oklahoma carpet-seller-turned-maintenance-man whose heart attack cost her family their financial security and their car. Now a Democratic candidate for the US Senate, Warren is employing her biography to bolster her credibility as a champion for the middle class, reminding voters where she found...

The Massachusetts Democratic Party today filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee, arguing that Senator Scott Brown abused public resources by using video shot by a government employee to promote his reelection campaign. The Globe reported last week that the video - of Brown sinking an underhanded, half-court basketball shot - was recorded by his Senate communications director, during an official event, and after that employee had flown to and from Massachusetts on an airline ticket bought by the taxpayers.

The chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party has laid out a stinging indictment of Elizabeth Warren, saying Senator Scott Brown's projected Democratic opponent in this fall's election appears to have perpetrated academic fraud on Harvard University. Robert Maginn, in a three-page letter Sunday to Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, said Warren may have deceived the school where she was hired to teach law by unjustly claiming Native American heritage. The chairman demanded an investigation.

The chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party has laid out a stinging indictment of Elizabeth Warren, saying Senator Scott Brown's projected Democratic opponent in this fall's election appears to have perpetrated academic fraud on Harvard University. Robert Maginn, in a three-page letter Sunday to Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, said Warren may have deceived the school that hired her to teach law by unjustly claiming Native American heritage. The chairman demanded an investigation.

Elizabeth Warren fumbled through her worst stretch as a Senate candidate this week, setting off a debate among strategists over whether the controversy over her claims to Native American ancestry would linger when the November election is closer. The Warren campaign will not say when top advisers learned that she considered herself part-Native American, but it was an element of her biography that seemed to catch them off guard. When news emerged last Friday that Harvard Law School had publicly touted Warren as a Native American professor in the Harvard Crimson in the 1990s, Warren advisers...

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday that she listed herself as a minority in directories of law professors in the hopes of networking with other "people like me" — meaning those with Native American roots. Asked whether she considers herself to be a minority, the Democrat said, "Native American is part of my family. It's an important part of my heritage. " But she said she was recruited for her teaching jobs based on her performance, not on her minority status.

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren - who said Friday she didn't realize Harvard Law School had been promoting her as a Native American faculty member in the 1990s - was listed as a minority professor in American law school directories for nine years before she landed at Harvard, documents show. The Association of American Law Schools desk book, a directory of law professors from participating schools, includes Warren among the minority law professors listed, beginning in 1986 and continuing through 1995.