A Harvard Law School professor best known for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and for helping parents sue chemical companies in a case popularized by the film “A Civil Action” has a new cause: poker.

Charles Nesson wants governments to relax restrictions on poker players. He has formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society with some of his students to promote poker as a fun learning tool and to redefine it as a game of skill, rather than a game of chance.

“I’d like to legitimate poker as an educational instrument,” Nesson said. “It’s a great way to learn and practice the skills of seeing what things look like from another person’s point of view.”

Locally, Nesson wants to loosen Massachusetts’ limits on small-scale poker tournaments. He’s still angry that an annual student-run charity tournament was canceled last spring because organizers did not know they needed a permit.

He’s also lobbying Congress to overturn or amend a U.S. law that effectively bans online gambling.

“Obviously the distinction is that in games of chance, you’re not using your brain,” he said. “You may be entertaining yourself but you’re not really engaging in a developmental activity, whereas (in) games of skill you develop skill. You learn to be smart, you learn to win.”

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Author Contact Info: Ken Maguire, Associated Press