Charles Nesson

Charles Nesson, the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard University, has shaped legal education and cyberlaw for over five decades. After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1963, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice under John Doar before joining Harvard Law School's faculty in 1966. His pioneering work includes co-founding the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society in 1997, establishing him as an early architect of Internet law. His academic contributions span evidence law, criminal procedure, tort theory, and digital technology, with influential publications including "Problems, Cases and Materials on Evidence" and groundbreaking articles on constitutional hearsay and evidence spoliation. Throughout his career, Nesson has integrated innovative technology into legal education, teaching courses in evidence, criminal law, trial advocacy, and cyberlaw. His mathematical background from Harvard College (1960) has informed his analytical approach to legal problems, particularly in evidence law and probability theory. As a litigator, he gained prominence representing Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case and the plaintiffs in the W.R. Grace litigation, which became the basis for the book and film "A Civil Action." His current work continues to focus on the intersection of law, technology, and justice, particularly in developing new approaches to online learning and dispute resolution.