Vol. 56, Issue 1 - Howard University School of Law

Letter from the Editor-in-ChiefHoward University. It is an institution defined by its boldness. Since1867, Howard has been audacious. General Oliver Otis Howard and sixteenother founders dared to open a co-educational, nonsectarian universityfor all. Countless bold moments ensued, from the establishment of a lawschool for African Americans in 1869 to that same law school’s submissionof an amicus brief in the Fisher v. University of Texas case, and fromCharles Hamilton Houston’s zealous mission to train a cadre of social engineersto that same cadre’s successors speaking out about the Troy Davisand Trayvon Martin tragedies in 2011 and 2012. History has shown thatthis institution breeds unabashed, unapologetic change-seekers.It is no surprise that the Howard Law Journal possesses a spark of itsmother entity’s audacious flame. Its 1955 genesis and its subsequent coexistencewith Howard University School of Law make the Journal unique.Today, the Journal serves as a platform for diverse viewpoints on a broadrange of topics. Our pages are lenses of hindsight, insight, and foresight onlegal issues and principles of morality and justice. Many of our authorsecho Houston’s social engineering philosophy, while—in the spirit of variedintellectual discourse and creativity—many others speak from a completelydifferent paradigm. So what is the unifying theme? One readthrough issue one of Volume Fifty-Six makes the answer readily apparent:all who publish here dare to contribute something bold and new to legalscholarship.Robert Bejesky leads our first issue by providing a profound andhaunting look into the psychology and flawed rationales justifying foreignpolicy decisions about the war in Iraq in his article, Cognitive Foreign Policy:Linking Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Our next article is Eric Schepard’s WhyHarlan Fiske Stone (Also) Matters, a poignant piece that gives voice to theoft-forgotten legal giant Harlan Fiske Stone, analyzes his virtues and faults,and ultimately poses what Stone might think about today’s legal issues anddecisions. Then, our own Visiting Assistant Professor Ajmel Quereshi continueswith The Search for an Environmental Filartiga: Trans-BoundaryHarm and the Future of International Environmental Litigation, in whichhe assesses whether the notion of trans-boundary harm can help practitionersframe Alien Tort Statute claims to effectively combat international environmentalissues.Next, Nicole Grant, Howard University School of Law alumna andformer Managing Editor of the Howard Law Journal, ushers us into anexploration of cyberbullying with Mean Girls and Boys: The Intersection of