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President Donald Trump, not using Twitter. Courtesy: White House [/caption] The @realdonaldtrump Twitter account has caused headaches for companies and federal agencies alike, keeping corporate public relations teams on alert for a negative social media shout-out and forcing government lawyers to address the consequences the president’s tweets can have on pending court cases.President Donald Trump's tweets are official statements, according to the U.S. Justice Department. But do Trump's tweets, fired off at all hours, amount to orders carrying the weight of law? A new Harvard Law Review study concludes—as many scholars have opined in recent weeks—they do not.The Harvard article, focused on Trump tweets from July that purported to ban transgender people from serving in the military, takes a deep dive into presidential communication. The piece looks at presidential intent in messaging, tone and language. [falcon-embed src="embed_1"] "The conviction that the tweets were not law is rooted in beliefs about what law does and should look like and how it is and should be made," according to the article, which was unsigned and published online last week.Trump subsequently issued a presidential memorandum, prompting the U.S. Defense Department in August to say it would "carry out" the policy direction in consult with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Trump's memo was law, not his tweets, according to the Harvard study."A complete account of why the memorandum was legally effective but the tweets were not requires grappling with our commitments to values like accountability and to ideals like the rule of law," the Harvard article said.Among other things, the Harvard article looked at how Trump's transgender directive was issued. From the article:

"Consider that President Trump tweets from a personal account, @realDonaldTrump. Communicating binding directives through a personal account on a nongovernmental platform is inconsistent with the principle that executive directives maintain across administrations because they 'issue[] from the Office of the Chief Executive.' The President could alter or delete a tweet in seconds; instruments from official channels tend to be stickier."

Tweets, the article said, also fall short of common expectations how the federal government gives notice of policy changes. Documents in the Federal Register, on the other hand, have the benefit of being easy for the public to find and “appear legal.” “Even the White House’s website version of the [presidential memorandum] is formatted to feel legal in a way the tweets do not,” the article states. “That said, the proliferation of legal instruments less formal than executive orders, as well as the adoption of new platforms for government communication, suggests that expectations about what law looks like and where to find it are fluid.” Law firms including Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and Foley Hoag went to court in Washington to challenge the new transgender policy with a complaint that pointed to Trump's tweets. Other lawsuits also noted Trump's tweets.