This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: no updates since the Joel Tenenbaum case in August 2009, other than adding two sentences and many housekeeping/copy edit efforts - no idea if this person is active/retired/alive. (November 2023)
"Nesson" redirects here. For the French poet, see Pierre de Nesson.
In 1971, Nesson defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case.[1] He was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case against W. R. Grace and Company that was made into the book A Civil Action, which was, in turn, made into the film of the same name.[4] Nesson's nickname in the book, Billion-Dollar Charlie, was given to him by Mark Phillips, who worked with him on the W.R. Grace case.[5]
Nesson attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, studying mathematics. He took the law school boards junior year, earning a nearly perfect score, but he was initially rejected early admission from Harvard Law School for his grades.[5] After improving his grades, Nesson was accepted. Nesson surprised himself by achieving and retaining a ranking of first out of five hundred students.[5] He is rumored to have achieved the highest grade point average since Felix Frankfurter (later a Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States) graduated in 1907.[5] In 1962 he received the Sears Prize of US$750 (equivalent to $7,600in 2023) for the highest grade average in the first and second years of law school.[7]
Nesson joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1966, and was tenured three years later.[1] In 1998, he co-founded Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
Career
In 2006, Nesson taught CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion with Rebecca Nesson and Gene Koo.[9] He teaches courses in the law and practice of evidence, Trials in Second Life, where he is represented by his avatar "Eon",[10] and a reading group on Freedom with Fern Nesson[11][2] He also teaches a class on the American Jury.
Nesson led projects to "reify university as a meta player in cyberspace", to advance restorative justice in Jamaica, and to legitimize and teach poker and the value of strategic poker thinking.[2] For the last one, he made an appearance on The Colbert Report in January 2008. When Colbert joked that Nesson may have a gambling problem, he responded, "My gambling problem is that poker gets lumped in with gambling."[12]
In 2009, Nesson acted as defense lawyer for Joel Tenenbaum, who was accused of downloading and sharing 31 songs on the Kazaa file-sharing network; the jury came to a $675,000 verdict against Tenenbaum. Many of Nesson's less conventional actions during the case, including an "almost obsessive desire for transparency and documentation", drew criticism. Nesson had encouraged Tenenbaum to admit that he had downloaded and shared the 31 songs after he had denied it in depositions.[15]
As of 2015[update], Nesson was pro bono counsel to the Westmoreland Hemp & Ganja Farmers Association in Jamaica.[citation needed]
Reasonable Doubt and Permissive Inferences: The Value of Complexity, 92 Harvard Law Review 1187 (1979)
The Evidence or the Event? On Judicial Proof and the Acceptability of Verdicts, 98 Harvard Law Review 1357 (1985)
Agent Orange Meets the Blue Bus: Factfinding at the Frontier of Knowledge, 66 B.U.L. Rev. 521 (1986)
Incentives to Spoliate Evidence in Civil Litigation: The Need for Vigorous Judicial Action, 13 Cardozo L. Rev. 793 (1991)
Constitutional Hearsay: Requiring Foundational Testing and Corroboration under the Confrontation Clause, 81 Va. L. Rev. 149 (1995), with Yochai Benkler
Following his tenure at Harvard, Nesson married Fern Leicher Nesson, one of his students, and bought a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the Harvard campus, where they were living as of 2009[update]. The Nessons have two daughters, Rebecca and Leila.[5]
"CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion". Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, The President and Fellows of Harvard College (blogs.law.harvard.edu). 2006-09-22. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
"Professor Charles R. Nesson". Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School, The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
Charles Nesson (2006-05-12). Beyond Broadcast Conference: Closing Remarks. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: WGBH Educational Foundation, Cambridge Community Television. Archived from the original(Real Video, Real Audio, MP3 audio) on 2006-10-04. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
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