Lincoln Caplan

A condemned inmate returns to his cell in the east block of death row at California’s San Quentin State Prison

Montage | March-April 2025

The Supreme Court and Mass Incarceration

A legal scholar’s harsh assessment of the Supreme Court’s rulings on crime

Humanities & Arts |

Jimmy Carter and James Agee ’32

Why this “sovereign prince of the English language” touched the president’s heart

An illustration of a graduate in a cap and gown shouting into a megaphone labeled with a "U," facing a man shouting into a megaphone with an American flag design. The background is bright yellow.

Features | September-October 2024

Academic Freedom and Free Speech

Robert Post explains how they differ—and why it matters, especially now

Students protest the Supreme Court decision.

John Harvard's Journal | September-October 2023

After Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court upends admissions.

Photo montage showing Harvard’s Widener Library and the edifice of the Supreme Court divided by a gavel.

University News |

The Supreme Court Affirmative Action Rulings: An Analysis

The underlying arguments project clashing worldviews of race and appropriate remedies.

The current Supreme Court justices

University News |

Harvard Defends Race-Conscious Admissions at the Supreme Court

Should the law continue to reflect that the United States is anything but colorblind?

Official portrait of Justice Elena Kagan

Features | November-December 2022

Justice Elena Kagan, in Dissent

Ebbing trust in the Supreme Court, and what to do about it  

Image of Gardner Cox’s unconventional 1960 Felix Frankfurter portrait

Montage | September-October 2022

Is the Supreme Court’s Role Undemocratic?

Justice Felix Frankfurter, to great controversy, said yes.

Photo of Bloody Sunday during voting rights march, Selma, Alabama

Features | January-February 2022

Both Sides Now

Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s bifocal view of the civil-rights movement

Illustration showing U.S. flag pulled different directions by an oligarch and ordinary citizens

Montage | January-February 2022

A Democracy of Opportunity

Liberals must learn from conservatives how to interpret the Constitution in all its dimensions.

Portrait of Harvard Law School dean—and perfectionist—Ezra Thayer circa 1910, who found the school’s dire finances overwhelming.

Montage | January-February 2021

Review of Kimball and Coquillette, “The Intellectual Sword,” by Lincoln Caplan

The making of the modern Harvard Law School

Photograph of Professor Noah Feldman at House impeachment hearings, December 4, 2019

Features | September-October 2020

Constitutional scholar Noah Feldman profiled by Lincoln Caplan

Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman’s constitutionalism is a branch of the humanities.