Laurence Tribe


Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at the Harvard Law School of Harvard University. Tribe's scholarship focuses on American constitutional law. He also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters. and co-founder of the American Constitution Society. He is the author of American Constitutional Law, a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times.

Early life and education

Tribe was born in Shanghai, China, the son of Paulina and George Israel Tribe. His family is Jewish. His father was from Poland and his mother was born in Harbin, to immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was raised in the French Concession of Shanghai.
Tribe attended Abraham Lincoln High School, San Francisco, California. He holds an A.B. in mathematics, summa cum laude from Harvard College, and a J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. Tribe was a member of the Harvard team that won the intercollegiate National Debate Tournament in 1961 and coached the team to the same title in 1969.

Career

Tribe served as a law clerk to Mathew Tobriner on the California Supreme Court from 1966–67 and as a law clerk to Potter Stewart of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1967–68. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty as an assistant professor in 1968, receiving tenure in 1972. Among his law students and research assistants while on the faculty at Harvard have been President Barack Obama, Chief Justice John Roberts, US Senator Ted Cruz, Chief Judge and Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Another notable research assistant for Tribe was U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee and lead manager for the Impeachment of Donald Trump.
In 1978, Tribe published the first version of what has become one of the core texts on its subject, American Constitutional Law. It has since been updated and expanded a number of times.
In 1983 Tribe represented Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon in the appeal of his federal conviction on income tax charges.
Tribe represented the restaurant Grendel's Den in the case Larkin v Grendel's Den in which the restaurant challenged a Massachusetts law which allowed religious establishments to prohibit liquor sales in neighboring properties. The case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1982 where the court overturned the law as violating of the separation of church and state. The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well criticizes the opening of his brief as a "thicket of confusing citations and unnecessary definitions" stating that it would have been "measurably strengthened" if he had used the "more lively imagery" that he had used in a footnote later in the document.
In the 1985 National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, Tribe represented the National Gay Task Force who had won an Appeals Court ruling against an Oklahoma law that would have allowed schools to fire teachers who were attracted to people of the same sex or spoke in favor of civil rights for LGBT people. The Supreme Court deadlocked which left the Appeals Court's favorable ruling in place, declaring the law would have violated the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court ruled against Tribe's client in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986 and held that a Georgia state law criminalizing sodomy, as applied to consensual acts between persons of the same sex, did not violate fundamental liberties under the principle of substantive due process. However, in 2003 the Supreme Court overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas, a case for which Tribe wrote the ACLU's amicus curiae brief supporting Lawrence, who was represented by Lambda Legal.
Tribe testified at length during the Senate confirmation hearings in 1987 about the Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination, arguing that Bork's stand on the limitation of rights in the Constitution would be unique in the history of the Court. His participation in the hearings raised his profile outside of the legal realm and he became a target of right-wing critics. His phone was later found to have been wiretapped, but it was never discovered who had placed the device or why.
Tribe's 1990 book Abortion: Clash of Absolutes, was called "informative, lucidly written and cogently reasoned" in a review in the Journal of the American Bar Association.
In 1992, Tribe reargued Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Liggett tobacco company.
Tribe was part of Al Gore's legal team regarding the results of the 2000 United States presidential election. Due to the close nature of the vote count, recounts had been initiated in Florida, and the recounts had been challenged in court. Tribe argued the initial case in Federal Court in Miami in which they successfully argued that the court should not stop the recount of the votes which was taking place and scheduled to take place in certain counties. David Boies argued for the Gore team in a related matter in the Florida State Courts regarding the dates that Secretary of State of Florida Katherine Harris would accept recounts. When the original Federal case, Bush v. Gore, was appealed, Gore and his advisers decided at the last minute to have Boies instead of Tribe argue the case at the Supreme Court. The court determined that recounts of votes should cease and that accordingly George W. Bush had been elected President.
Since the mid-1990s, Tribe has represented a number of corporations advocating for their free speech rights and constitutional personhood. Tribe represented General Electric in its defense against its liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, in which GE and Tribe unsuccessfully argued that the act unconstitutionally violated General Electric's due process rights.
In 2014, Tribe was retained to represent Peabody Energy in a suit against the Environmental Protection Agency. Tribe argued that EPA's use of the Clean Air Act to implement its Clean Power Plan was unconstitutional. Tribe's legal analysis has been criticized by other legal commentators, including fellow Harvard Law School professors Richard J. Lazarus and Jody Freeman, who described his conclusion as "wholly without merit". His advocacy for corporations like Peabody has been criticized by some legal experts.

Political involvement and controversy

Tribe is one of the co-founders of the liberal American Constitution Society, the law and policy organization formed to counter the conservative Federalist Society, and is one of a number of scholars at Harvard Law School who have expressed their support for animal rights.
Tribe served as a judicial adviser to the Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. In February 2010, he was named "Senior Counselor for Access to Justice" in the Department of Justice. He resigned eight months later, citing health reasons.
In December 2016, Tribe and notable lawyers Lawrence Lessig and Andrew Dhuey established The Electors Trust under the aegis of Equal Citizens to provide pro bono legal counsel as well as a secure communications platform for those of the 538 members of the United States Electoral College who were considering a vote of conscience against Donald Trump in the presidential election.
After the dismissal of James Comey in May 2017, Tribe wrote: "The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice." Tribe argued that Trump's conduct rose to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that are impeachable offenses under the Constitution. He added: "It will require serious commitment to constitutional principle, and courageous willingness to put devotion to the national interest above self-interest and party loyalty, for a Congress of the president's own party to initiate an impeachment inquiry."
Tribe is on the board of the Renew Democracy Initiative, an American political organization founded in 2017 to promote and defend liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad.
In 2004, Tribe acknowledged having improperly borrowed without attribution several phrases and a sentence in his 1985 book, God Save this Honorable Court, from a 1974 book by Henry Abraham. After an investigation, Tribe was reprimanded by Harvard for "a significant lapse in proper academic practice," but the investigation concluded that Tribe did not intend to plagiarize.
Tribe has stirred controversy due to his promotion of claims about President Trump's fitness for office. Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan harshly criticized Tribe, saying that he "has become an important vector of misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter." According to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, Tribe has been "an especially active booster" of the Palmer Report, "a liberal blog known for peddling conspiracy theories". Tribe removed the posted tweets following the Palmer Report and contests the accuracy of the story of controversy.
Controversially, Tribe has promoted unreliable sources and conspiracy theories about Donald Trump.

Personal life

Tribe married Carolyn Ricarda Kreye in 1964. They divorced in 2008. Their two children, Mark and Kerry, are visual artists.
On May 22, 2013, he was presented with an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Columbia University during its Class of 2013 commencement.

Cases

The following is a list of cases Tribe has argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, as of the end of 2005:
CaseCitationYear
Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia1981
Heffron v. International Society for Krishna Consciousness1981
Crawford v. Board of Education1982
Larkin v. Grendel’s Den1982
White v. Massachusetts Council1983
Pacific Gas & Electric v. California1983
Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff1984
Northeast Bancorp v. Fed. Reserve1985
National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education1985
Fisher v. City of Berkeley1986
Bowers v. Hardwick1986
Pennzoil v. Texaco1986
Schweiker v. Chilicky1988
Granfinanciera v. Nordberg1989
Sable Communications v. FCC1989
Adams Fruit v. Barrett1990
Rust v. Sullivan1991
Cipollone v. Liggett1992
TXO v. Alliance Resources1993
Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg1994
U.S. v. Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone1996
Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party1997
Vacco v. Quill1997
Amchem Products v. Windsor1997
Baker v. General Motors1998
AT&T v. Iowa Utilities Board1999
Ortiz v. Fibreboard1999
Bush v. Gore I2000
New York Times Co. v. Tasini2001
U.S. v. United Foods2001
FCC v. NextWave2002
State Farm v. Campbell2003
Nike v. Kasky2003
Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association2005

Tribe has argued 26 cases in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals:
CaseCitationCircuitYear
Worldwide Church of God v. California9th1980
Grendel's Den v. Goodwin1st1981
Pacific Legal Foundation v. State Energy Resources9th1981
United States v. Sun Myung Moon718 F.2d 12102nd1983
Romany v. Colegio de Abogados742 F.2d 321st1984
Westmoreland v. CBS752 F.2d 162nd1984
Colombrito v. Kelly2nd1985
Texaco v. Pennzoil2nd1986
U.S. v. Bank of New England1st1987
U.S. v. Gallo2nd1988
U.S. v. GAF Corporation884 F.2d 6702nd1989
U.S. v. Western Electric Company900 F.2d 283D.C.1999
Fineman v. Armstrong World Industries980 F.2d 171D.C.1992
U.S. v. Western Electric Company993 F.2d 1572D.C.1993
Lightning Lube v. Witco Corporation4 F.3d 11533rd1993
Hopkins v. Dow Corning Corporation33 F.3d 11169th1994
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone v. U.S.42 F.3d 1814th1994
Georgine v. Amchem Products, Inc.3rd1996
BellSouth Corp. v. F.C.C.D.C.1998
SBC Communications v. F.C.C.5th1998
City of Dallas v. F.C.C.5th1999
U.S. West v. Tristani 10th1999
U.S. West v. F.C.C. 10th1999
Southwest Voter Registration v. Shelley 9th2003
Pacific Gas and Elec. v. California 9th2003
General Electric v. E.P.A. D.C.2004

Publications

;Books