The
Record was founded in 1946 by a group of returning
World War II veterans who were unhappy with conditions at the School, particularly a lack of student housing. The three primary founders of the
Record were
Charles O. Porter, who later served as a U.S. Congressman from Oregon, Charles Sweet, later a judge, and Paul Hellmuth, who became managing partner of the Boston law firm Hale & Dorr (now
WilmerHale). Among the former editors of the
Record is
Ralph Nader, who published his first article on unsafe conditions in the auto industry entitled, "American Cars: Designed for Death", in the
Record in 1958. The article was later expanded into Nader's seminal work on the subject,
Unsafe at Any Speed. After a year in which the
Record ceased publishing, Ralph Nader worked with a law student, Michael Shammas, to revive the paper for the 2015–2016 academic year. In 1959, Nader and co-editor David Binder traveled to
Cuba to report on the
Cuban Revolution in the
Record, which coverage included an exclusive interview with
Fidel Castro. Also in 1959,
William H. Rehnquist, then a young
Arizona lawyer, wrote an editorial in the
Record entitled "The Making of a Supreme Court Justice," in which he criticized the U.S. Senate for not questioning the judicial philosophy of
Supreme Court nominees. The article was later cited by members of the
Senate Judiciary Committee when he refused to answer questions during his confirmation hearings. In April 1971, the
New York Times reported that Harvard Law School professors
Alan Dershowitz and
Paul Freund had quit after picking up the story from the
Records April Fool's Day issue. In the 21st century, the
Record has won several awards from the
American Bar Association Law Student Division for outstanding writing, including the 2007 awards for Best Editorial and Best Feature Article. Although the print edition briefly paused circulating in 2012, in 2013 Harvard Law students Sima Atri and Michael Shammas revamped the paper with the guidance of former editor-in-chief Ralph Nader. The newspaper has an active staff of law students and routinely publishes articles by professors and law students around the country. In the 2015-2016 year, with Michael Shammas as editor-in-chief and Lindsay Church as co-editor-in-chief, the paper published stories that were referenced in
The New York Times,
American Lawyer,
Jerusalem Post,
The Washington Post,
The Wall Street Journal,
The Boston Globe, and other national and international news organizations. The paper also won the American Bar Association's 2016 "Best Law School Newspaper" Award. In addition to its print edition, the
Record operates a website. ==Notable editors and contributors==