Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe
Born	(1941-10-10) October 10, 1941 Shanghai, China
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	Harvard University
Scientific career
Fields	Constitutional law
Institutions	Harvard Law School
Notable students	Kathleen Sullivan Barack Obama John G. Roberts Elena Kagan

Laurence Henry Tribe (born in Shanghai, 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 serves as a consultant for the law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

Tribe is widely recognized as a liberal scholar of constitutional law and as a practitioner before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a treatise in that field, and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 35 times.

Biography

Education

Tribe attended Abraham Lincoln High School in 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). Tribe was a champion policy debater at Harvard, and later a college coach and high school summer institute teacher.

Career

Tribe served as a law clerk to Matthew 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.

In addition to his record as a scholar, Tribe is noted for his extensive support of liberal legal causes. He has argued many high-profile cases, including one for Al Gore during the disputed U.S. presidential election, 2000. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Tribe's client in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, holding 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, he was vindicated in 2003, when the Supreme Court overruled Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas. He wrote the ACLU's amicus curiae brief supporting Lawrence, who was represented by Lambda Legal.

Tribe continues to strongly support liberal political causes. He is one of the co-founders of the liberal American Constitution Society, the law and policy organization formed to counter the conservative Federalist Society.

He actively supported the candidacy of President Barack Obama and described Obama as "the best student I ever had," a phrase he also used to describe Kathleen Sullivan. Alongside Harvard's Cass Sunstein, Tribe served as judicial adviser to Obama's campaign. In February 2010, he was named "Senior Counselor for Access to Justice" in the Department of Justice; he will lead an effort to increase legal access for the poor.

Tribe also represented General Electric in its defense against its liability under 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.

Plagiarism Scandal

In 2004, Tribe admitted to plagiarism after reports surfaced that material published by Tribe in 1985 was lifted from material originally published by Henry J. Abraham in 1974. The revelation came only three weeks after Charles J. Ogletree, one of Tribe's peers at the law school publicly confessed to plagiarism and sparked controversy when critics began to view these transgressions along with earlier incidents as evidence of a trend at Harvard Law. Six months later, after an investigation headed by former Harvard President Derek Bok, Harvard President Lawrence Summers and Law School Dean Elena Kagan reprimanded Tribe for "a significant lapse in proper academic practice", but concluded that Tribe's error was unintentional. Lawrence R. Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law, criticized Summers' and Kagan's statement, saying "Harvard University is now probably the only school in the country with a University Professor who is an admitted plagiarist."

Family

Tribe has two children, Mark and Kerry, who are both internationally recognized visual artists.

Cases

A complete list of the 34 cases Tribe has argued in the U.S. Supreme Court as of the end of 2005 is as follows:

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

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

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

Publications

Books

• 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 (1976) (ed.)
• 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)

Articles

• 'The Curvature of Constitutional Space: What Lawyers Can Learn From Modern Physics' (1989) 103 Harvard Law Review 1

See also

• Bill Clinton Supreme Court candidates