Laurence Henry Tribe (born October 10,1941) is an American legal scholar known for his studies of United States constitutional law. Tribe was a professor at Harvard Law School from 1968 until his retirement in 2020. He currently holds the position of Carl M. Loeb University Professor Emeritus.
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.[25]
Tribe represented the restaurant Grendel's Den in the case Larkin v. Grendel's Den,Inc.,in which the restaurant challenged a Massachusetts law that allowed religious establishments to prohibit liquor sales in neighboring properties. The case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1982 and the court overturned the law as violating the separation of church and state.[26]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.[27]
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 gay people. The Supreme Court deadlocked,which left the Appeals Court's favorable ruling in place,declaring the law would have violated the First Amendment.[28]
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.[28]
Tribe in 1987
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.[29] His participation in the hearings raised his profile outside of the legal realm and he became a target of right-wing critics.[29] His phone was later found to have been wiretapped,but it has never been discovered who had placed the device or why.[29]
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.[7]
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.[31]David Boies argued for the Gore team in a related matter in the Florida State Courts regarding the dates that Secretary of State of FloridaKatherine Harris would accept recounts.[31] 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.[31] 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.[32] Tribe represented General Electric in its defense against its liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response,Compensation and Liability Act ("Superfund"),in which GE and Tribe unsuccessfully argued that the act unconstitutionally violated General Electric's due process rights.[32][33]
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.[34] 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".[35][36] His advocacy for corporations like Peabody has been criticized by some legal experts.[32]
On September 25,2020,Tribe was named as one of the 25 members of the "Real Facebook Oversight Board",an independent monitoring group over Facebook.[37]
Political involvement
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.[38]
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.[43] 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."[43]
In 2004,Tribe acknowledged having plagiarized several phrases and a sentence in his 1985 book,God Save this Honorable Court,from a 1974 book by Henry Abraham.[45][46] 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.[47]
Tribe has stirred controversy due to his promotion of conspiracy theories about Donald Trump's fitness for the presidency.[48][49] Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan harshly criticized Tribe,saying that he "has become an important vector of misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter."[48] 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".[50] Tribe removed the posted tweets following the Palmer Report and contests the accuracy of the story of controversy.[48][49][50]
On August 8,2023,The New York Times reported that Kenneth Chesebro,who initially laid out "a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election",referred to comments by Tribe,to which Tribe responded that his referred comments were "a gross misrepresentation of my scholarship”by Chesebro,and were "taken out of context".[51]
On August 19,2023,several legal constitutional scholars,including conservative legal scholar J. Michael Luttig and Tribe,[52] have argued that the former U.S. President Donald Trump is now barred from presidential office under section 3 of the 14th Amendment because of his alleged support for the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[53][54][55]
In 2025,Tribe argued that the power that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency attempt to exercise over the US federal government is illegal. Tribe says that Musk "absolutely" faces a conflict of interest in his roles as a government contractor and federal employee.[56]
Cases
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The following is a list of cases Tribe has argued in the Supreme Court, as of the end of 2005:
Technology: Processes of Assessment and Choice (1969)
Environmental Protection (1971; co-author with Louis Jaffe)
Channeling Technology Through Law (1973)
The American Presidency: Its Constitutional Structure (1974)
American Constitutional Law (treatise; 1978, 1979, 1988, and 2000)
The Supreme Court: Trends and Developments (1979, 1980, 1982, 1983)
God Save This Honorable Court: How the Choice of Supreme Court Justices Shapes Our History (1985)
Constitutional Choices (1985)
Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990)
On Reading the Constitution (1991; co-author with Michael Dorf)
The Invisible Constitution (2008)
Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution (2014; co-author with Joshua Matz)
To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment (2018; co-author with Joshua Matz)
Articles
Tribe, Laurence H. (1970). "An Ounce of Detention: Preventive Justice in the World of John Mitchell". Virginia Law Review. 56 (3): 371–407. JSTOR1071797.
— (1971). "Trial by Mathematics: Precision and Ritual in the Legal Process". Harvard Law Review. 84 (6): 1329–93. JSTOR1339610.
— (1973). "Technology Assessment and the Fourth Discontinuity: The Limits of Instrumental Rationality". Southern California Law Review. 46 (3): 617–60.
— (1973). "The Supreme Court, 1972 Term — Foreword: Toward a Model of Roles in the Due Process of Life and Law". Harvard Law Review. 87 (1): 1–53. JSTOR1339866.
— (1976). "Intergovernmental Federalism in Litigation, Taxation, and Regulation: Separation of Powers Issues in Controversies about Federalism". Harvard Law Review. 89 (4): 682–713. JSTOR1340218.
— (1977). "Unraveling National League of Cities: The New Federalism and Affirmative Rights to Essential Government Services". Harvard Law Review. 90 (6): 1065–1104. JSTOR1340227.
— (1980). "The Puzzling Persistence of Process-Based Constitutional Theories". Yale Law Journal. 89 (6): 1063–80. JSTOR796023.
— (1985). "Constitutional Calculus: Equal Justice or Economic Efficiency?". Harvard Law Review. 98 (3): 592–621. JSTOR1340870.
— (1989). "The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn from Modern Physics". Harvard Law Review. 103 (1): 1–39. JSTOR1341407.
— (1995). "Taking Text and Structure Seriously: Reflections on Free-Form Method in Constitutional Interpretation". Harvard Law Review. 108 (6): 1221–1303. JSTOR1341856.
1 2 Kenneth Jost (May 1990). "Roe Revisited (ABA Review)". ABA Journal. American Bar Association. pp.110–. Archived from the original on May 8, 2019. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
1 2 Johnson, Carrie (February 26, 2010). "Prominent Harvard law professor joins Justice Department". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 27, 2012. Retrieved April 6, 2012. Tribe has served as lead counsel in 35 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, testified before Congress dozens of times and wrote a major treatise on constitutional law.
↑ Blumenkranz, Carla (September 22, 2008). "Radical Speak Performance Artist Mark Tribe Breathes New Life Into Old Politics". New York. 41. New York Magazine Company: 66.
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