Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe
Born	Laurence Henry Tribe (1941-10-10) October 10, 1941 Shanghai, China
Nationality	American
Fields	Constitutional law
Institutions	Harvard Law School
Alma mater	Harvard University
Notable students	President Barack Obama Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justice Elena Kagan Kathleen Sullivan
Spouse	Carolyn Ricarda Kreye (1964-present; 2 children)

Laurence Henry Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. He also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters.

Tribe is a liberal scholar of constitutional law and cofounder of American Constitution Society. He is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), 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 (née Diatlovitsky) and George Israel Tribe. His father was from Poland and his mother was born in Harbin, to a family of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He was raised in the French Quarter of Shanghai. Tribe attended Abraham Lincoln High School, San Francisco, California. He holds an A.B. in mathematics, summa cum laude from Harvard College (1962), and a J.D., magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1966), 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 Barack Obama (a research assistant for two years), Chief Justice John Roberts (as a law student in his classes), and Elena Kagan (as a research assistant).

In 1978 he published the first version of what has become one of the core texts on the 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's law which allowed religious establishments to prohibit liquor sales. 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 Appeal's 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 Appeal's 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 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, 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 wire tapped, but it was never discovered who had placed the device or why.

His 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.

Tribe was part of Al Gore's legal team regarding the results of the United States presidential election, 2000. 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.

In 2004, Tribe acknowledged having plagiarized several specific phrases and a sentence in his 1985 book, God Save this Honorable Court, to a 1974 book by Henry Abraham. After an investigation, Tribe was reprimanded by Harvard for "a significant lapse in proper academic practice" but concluded that Tribe's error was unintentional.

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 ("Superfund"), 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 liberal legal experts.

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.

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.

Personal life

Tribe married Carolyn Ricarda Kreye in 1964. 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 a list of cases Tribe has argued in the U.S. Supreme Court, as of the end of 2005:

Case	Citation	Year
Richmond Newspapers v. Virginia	448 U.S. 555	1981
Heffron v. International Society for Krishna Consciousness	452 U.S. 640	1981
Crawford v. Board of Education	458 U.S. 527	1982
Larkin v. Grendel’s Den	459 U.S. 116	1982
White v. Massachusetts Council	460 U.S. 204	1983
Pacific Gas & Electric v. California	461 U.S. 190	1983
Hawaii Housing Auth. v. Midkiff	467 U.S. 229	1984
Northeast Bancorp v. Fed. Reserve	472 U.S. 159	1985
National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education	470 U.S. 159	1985
Fisher v. City of Berkeley	475 U.S. 260	1986
Bowers v. Hardwick	478 U.S. 186	1986
Pennzoil v. Texaco	481 U.S. 1	1986
Schweiker v. Chilicky	487 U.S. 412	1988
Granfinanciera v. Nordberg	492 U.S. 33	1989
Sable Communications v. FCC	492 U.S. 115	1989
Adams Fruit v. Barrett	494 U.S. 638	1990
Rust v. Sullivan	500 U.S. 173	1991
Cipollone v. Liggett	505 U.S. 504	1992
TXO v. Alliance Resources	509 U.S. 443	1993
Honda Motor Co. v. Oberg	512 U.S. 415	1994
U.S. v. Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone	516 U.S. 415	1996
Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party	520 U.S. 351	1997
Vacco v. Quill	521 U.S. 793	1997
Amchem Products v. Windsor	521 U.S. 591	1997
Baker v. General Motors	522 U.S. 222	1998
AT&T v. Iowa Utilities Board	525 U.S. 366	1999
Ortiz v. Fibreboard	527 U.S. 815	1999
Bush v. Gore I	531 U.S. 70	2000
New York Times Co. v. Tasini	533 U.S. 438	2001
U.S. v. United Foods	533 U.S. 405	2001
FCC v. NextWave	537 U.S. 293	2002
State Farm v. Campbell	538 U.S. 408	2003
Nike v. Kasky	539 U.S. 654	2003
Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association	544 U.S. 550	2005

Tribe has argued 26 cases in the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals:

Case	Citation	Circuit	Year
Worldwide Church of God v. California	623 F.2d 613	9th Cir.	1980
Grendel's Den v. Goodwin	662 F.2d 102	1st Cir.	1981
Pacific Legal Foundation v. State Energy Resources	659 F.2d 903	9th Cir.	1981
United States v. Sun Myung Moon	718 F.2d 1210	2d Cir.	1983
Romany v. Colegio de Abogados	742 F.2d 32	1st Cir.	1984
Westmoreland v. CBS	752 F.2d 16	2d Cir.	1984
Colombrito v. Kelly	764 F.2d 122	2d Cir.	1985
Texaco v. Pennzoil	784 F.2d 1133	2d Cir.	1986
U.S. v. Bank of New England	821 F.2d 844	1st Cir.	1987
U.S. v. Gallo	859 F.2d 1078	2d Cir.	1988
U.S. v. GAF Corporation	884 F.2d 670	2d Cir.	1989
U.S. v. Western Electric Company	900 F.2d 283	D.C. Cir.	1999
Fineman v. Armstrong World Industries	980 F.2d 171	D.C. Cir.	1992
U.S. v. Western Electric Company	993 F.2d 1572	D.C. Cir.	1993
Lightning Lube v. Witco Corporation	4 F.3d 1153	3d Cir.	1993
Hopkins v. Dow Corning Corporation	33 F.3d 1116	9th Cir.	1994
Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone v. U.S.	42 F.3d 181	4th Cir.	1994
Georgine v. Amchem Products, Inc.	83 F.3d 610	3d Cir.	1996
BellSouth Corp. v. F.C.C.	144 F.3d 58	D.C. Cir.	1998
SBC Communications v. F.C.C.	154 F.3d 226	5th Cir.	1998
City of Dallas v. F.C.C.	F.3d 341	5th Cir.	1999
U.S. West v. Tristani	182 F.3d 1202 PDF (90.5 KB)	10th Cir.	1999
U.S. West v. F.C.C.	182 F.3d 1224 PDF (220 KB)	10th Cir.	1999
Southwest Voter Registration v. Shelley	344 F.3d 914 PDF (23.0 KB)	9th Cir.	2003
Pacific Gas and Elec. v. California	350 F.3d 932 PDF (144 KB)	9th Cir.	2003
General Electric v. E.P.A.	360 F.3d 188 PDF (49.8 KB)	D.C. Cir.	2004

Publications

Books

• Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution (2014; co-author with Joshua Matz)
• The Invisible Constitution (2008)
• American Constitutional Law (treatise; 1978, 1979, 1988, and 2000)
• On Reading the Constitution (1991; co-author with Michael Dorf)
• Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990)
• Constitutional Choices (1985)
• God Save This Honorable Court: How the Choice of Supreme Court Justices Shapes Our History (1985)
• The Supreme Court: Trends and Developments (1979, 1980, 1982, 1983)
• When Values Conflict: Essays on Environmental Analysis, Discourse, and Decision (editor; 1976)
• The American Presidency: Its Constitutional Structure (1974)
• Channeling Technology Through Law (1973)
• Environmental Protection (1971; co-author with Louis Jaffe)
• Technology: Processes of Assessment and Choice (1969)

See also

• Bill Clinton Supreme Court candidates

Bibliography

• Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez, Math on trial. How numbers get used and abused in the courtroom, Basic Books, Chapter 2 (2013); ISBN 978-0-465-03292-1.

External links

• Laurence Tribe essays at ScotusBlog