Laurence H. Tribe

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University. The title “University Professor” is Harvard’s highest academic honor, awarded to fewer than 75 professors in the University’s history. Tribe taught at Harvard Law School since 1968; received tenure at 30; and was voted the best professor by the graduating class of 2000. Born in China to Russian Jewish parents, Tribe entered Harvard at 16; graduated magna cum laude with a summa cum laude in Mathematics (1962) and magna cum laude in Law (1966); clerked for the California and U.S. Supreme Courts(1966-68); was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2010; helped write the constitutions of South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the Marshall Islands; has received eleven honorary degrees, most recently a degree honoris causa from the Government of Mexico in 2011 that was never before awarded to an American and D, Litt. degree from Columbia University in 2013; has prevailed in three-fifths of the many appellate cases he has argued (including 35 in the U.S. Supreme Court); was appointed in 2010 by President Barack Obama to serve as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice and in 2021 by President Joseph R. Biden to serve on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States; and has written 115 books and articles, including his treatise, American Constitutional Law, cited more than any other legal text since 1950.  Former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold wrote: “[N]o book, and no lawyer not on the [Supreme] Court, has ever had a greater influence on the development of American constitutional law,” and former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig tweeted in January 2023, “Laurence H. Tribe has been the Nation’s preeminent constitutional scholar for the past half-century.”

Honorary Degrees

• Gonzaga University LL.D. (Honorary) 1980
• University of the Pacific LL.D. (Honorary) 1987
• American University LL.D. (Honorary) 1987
• Illinois Institute of Technology LL.D. (Honorary) 1988
• Colgate University LL.D. (Honorary) 1997
• Hebrew University LH.D. (Honorary) 1998
• New York University LL.D. (Honorary) 2008
• University of Miami LL.D. (Honorary) 2010
• University of New Hampshire School of Law LL.D. (Honorary) 2011
• Government of Mexico degree honoris causa 2011
• Columbia University D.Litt. (Honorary) 2013