Laurence Tribe

Harvard University leaders, faculty and staff enslaved more than 70 individuals during the 17th and 18th centuries when slavery was legal in Massachusetts, according to a report chronicling the university’s deep ties to wealth generated from slave labor in the South and Caribbean — and its significant role in the nation’s long history of racial discrimination. ... Laurence H. Tribe, emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard, wrote on social media that the report, “while over a century late, represents an important and valuable start.” In a phone interview, he said the country is engaged in a meaningful dialogue on this subject. But there are people who want to suppress such efforts at a national reckoning, and “have the view that the less we talk about race, the faster we’ll get over the problems of race,” as seen in recent voting-rights and affirmative-action cases. “There’s a different view that says that we can’t really get past where we are without coming more fully to terms with how we got here.”

The case involved an Austin ordinance that classified signs differently depending on whether they had some connection to the site where they were located — that is, “on-premise” or “off-premise” signs. That distinction prompted two outdoor advertising companies (Reagan National Advertising of Austin and the Lamar Advantage Outdoor Co. Austin) to challenge the law on First Amendment grounds when their permits to digitize some of their off-premises billboard signs were denied. The case thus involved a First Amendment content-discrimination issue and whether strict scrutiny analysis should apply. ... → That said, Professor Laurence Tribe agreed with the spirit of the Thomas dissent as evidenced by a tweet he released commenting on the case: “SCOTUS made a total mess of 1st Am law. Only the 3 dissenters, pointing to the agreement of scholars as far apart as Michael McConnell and me on the key legal point, came close to offering coherent guidance.”

A United States appellate court has confirmed the legality of ‘scraping’ information from web sites, in a dispute with implications for the data privacy and freedom of information, and which looks likely to be appealed again. The Ninth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals has ruled against Microsoft-owned social network LinkedIn on its dispute with hiQ Labs, over its right to prevent scraping of publicly available data by third parties, the remit of data use legislation and the potential for anti-competitive conduct. ... The team advising hiQ included Renita Sharma and Terry Witt of Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, assisted by Aaron Panner and Gregory Rapawy of Kellogg Hansen Todd Figel & Frederick, Brandon Wisoff of Farella Braun + Martel, along with academic and Harvard professor emeritus Laurence Tribe. Academic and hiQ’s counsel Tribe said: “Despite a trip up the judicial ladder all the way to the US Supreme Court and back down again, and despite the intervening developments and detours, the underlying legal issues and the relevant factual landscape are remarkably unchanged,” adding that he found the judge’s opinion “entirely persuasive”.

Amid criticism of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s narrow scope in the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation, the DOJ has hired a career federal prosecutor to help decide whether to investigate MAGAland’s election steal schemes. It’s all part of the DOJ’s broader probe into the Capitol attack, signaling officials may be becoming increasingly interested in post-election events beyond just the violence itself, according to the New York Times. ... Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, who spoke to TPM last month about Garland’s slow pace in the Jan. 6 probe, tweeted on Wednesday that Windom’s appointment shows that the attorney general is “NOT asleep at the switch.”

Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, joined Cheddar News to talk about the legal underpinnings of the ruling to lift the federal travel mask mandate. "Judge Mizelle decided that she would issue a nationwide injunction, which she and other conservatives have criticized in the past," he said. "That didn't stop her from doing it this time. She did it by just wiping away the CDC's rule, and she did it, have to say, in an opinion that was, well, I'll be honest, really stupid."

A judge’s decision to let an effort to block Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from running for office proceed could open a new avenue of attack against some of the GOP’s most controversial lawmakers. ... Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, argued that the case against Greene was well-crafted and is helped by what he called “incontrovertible factual evidence” of her role in the attack. “Having taken an oath of allegiance to our Constitution, she acted in coordination with co-conspirators close to the defeated President Trump to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and reverse its results,” Tribe told The Hill. “That the result she sought wasn’t achieved is irrelevant. Hers is a paradigm case for an adjudication of permanent disqualification from ever again holding public office.”

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority said Monday afternoon it was reviewing the decision by a federal judge in Florida voiding the national mask mandate on airplanes and public transit. “The MBTA is continuing to follow CDC guidelines and will review the court order. The MBTA is also reaching out to its federal partners to get further guidance,” MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in an e-mail Monday afternoon. Massport spokeswoman Jennifer Mehigan referred questions to the US Transportation Security Administration. ... Mizelle also was criticized by Laurence Tribe, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School. He said the decision was “misguided” and noted that the American Bar Association had found in 2020 that Mizelle, who was 33 at the time, was “not qualified” because of inexperience.

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe joins MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to explain his belief that current U.S. law allows Pres. Biden to liquidate tens of billions of dollars Russia has in the U.S. in foreign exchange reserves which officials have already frozen.

An op-ed co-written by Laurence Tribe: As Vladimir Putin vows to continue his genocidal invasion of Ukraine, investigators at the Treasury Department and Justice Department are scrambling to seize Russian yachts, mansions and the other spoils of his despotic regime. Meanwhile, in Washington, Representatives Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Joe Wilson of South Carolina have advanced a bipartisan measure to clarify exactly how much power the executive branch has to liquidate those assets. These efforts are laudable and important. But they are neither bold enough nor swift enough to provide what Ukraine needs.

Former President Donald Trump will arrive in North Carolina for a "Save America" rally on Saturday as he and his allies—including his son Donald Trump Jr.—face accusations of "treason" and planning a "coup." Supporters of the former president are converging on Selma to attend the right-wing event at The Farm at 95, which is about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh. While thousands of Trump supporters regularly attend his rallies, the venue for this event can only hold about 400 attendees. The rally, which is scheduled to start at 7 p.m., will be live-streamed on YouTube by Right Side Broadcasting Network as well as through the website Rumble. ... Laurence Tribe, a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, said he agreed with Rangappa's assessment. ".@AshaRangappa_ has this just right," the legal scholar tweeted, sharing her post. "Most others have missed this key point: Junior's revelations kill the 'innocent state of mind' defense, leaving compelling proof of corrupt intent for each of the several federal felonies the plotters close to the defeated president committed."

Two days after the 2020 election, Donald Trump Jr texted the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, with strategies for overturning the result, CNN reported. “This is what we need to do please read it and please get it to everyone that needs to see it because I’m not sure we’re doing it,” Trump Jr reportedly wrote, adding: “It’s very simple … We have multiple paths[.] We control them all.” One leading legal authority called the text “a smoking rifle”. CNN said the text was sent on 5 November 2020, two days before Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election and the next president. ... Responding to news of Donald Trump Jr’s communication with Meadows, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, said on Twitter: “This text is a smoking rifle.”

In a historic vote today, the U.S. Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to join the U.S. Supreme Court. “What a great day it is for the United States of America, for our system of government, and the grand march of the fulfillment of the sacred covenant we have as an American people: e pluribus unum – out of many, one,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, a pastor of Martin Luther King’s church in Georgia, on the Senate floor. “Ketanji Brown Jackson’s improbable journey to the nation’s highest court is a reflection of our own journey, through fits and starts, toward the nation’s ideals.” ... In 1987, then-Sen. Joe Biden invited constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe to help him prepare for the confirmation hearings of President Ronald Reagan’s controversial Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. They spent hours together, with the liberal Harvard professor playing the role of Judge Bork in mock murder boards. “It was kind of an awkward fit,” admits Professor Tribe, now a professor emeritus at Harvard.

A major presidential scandal isn’t complete without missing evidence, though Donald Trump seems to have been the first president to swallow his own words, literally. The former president had a habit of tearing drafts and signed documents into small pieces to be thrown away—or flushing them down a toilet. And there have even been reports that, on occasion, he consumed them. ... The comparisons to Richard Nixon were immediate and inevitable—but they missed a key difference: What happened in those seven hours should ultimately be knowable, at least at some level. The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe tweeted that the gap in the record made “the infamous 18-minute gap in Nixon’s tapes look like nothing in comparison.” While that brazen presidential manipulation of the historical record ultimately didn’t help Nixon stave off the collapse of his presidency—indeed it likely backfired by creating skepticism toward the president among elite Republicans after its revelation—the gap in a crucial White House tape to this day remains stubbornly difficult to fill in. By contrast, the newly reported Trumpian gap may actually be easier to fill in, and therefore less of a threat to the historical record than Nixon’s.

A conversation featuring Professor Laurence Tribe and Congressman Adam Schiff.

The news that the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation is reaching beyond the Capitol rioters has added fuel to a long-running debate about the pace of the investigation.  One side has criticized the Justice Department for not investigating Donald Trump and his inner circle for subverting the 2020 election. The lack of any public signs of a broader, more aggressive investigation for over a year, they say, shows a troubling lack of urgency. ... To Laurence Tribe, an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, the recent reports of Trump-adjacent investigations brought welcome news — if slightly belated. “It’s obviously better late than never,” he said, acknowledging that the grand jury activity reported by The Washington Post and New York Times may have started sooner than the reports let on. “Memories can fade, people can adjust their testimony in light of interim discoveries,” Tribe said. “It would be ideal if this had not waited as long as it apparently has.”

MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell speaks to Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe about the mounting pressure that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is facing after text messages his wife sent in the lead-up to the January 6th Capitol riot were made public.

The Justice Department’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 includes $34 million to hire 80 attorneys for the investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection. The department has already brought more than 750 cases, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco made clear at a news briefing on Monday that the department is not stopping there. ... The Justice Department will need to make good on its vow to follow the facts wherever they lead. As constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, there is no “honorable way for [Attorney General] Merrick Garland to avoid pursuing the path Judge Carter has not only clearly marked but blazingly illuminated. Short of klieg lights, Carter has pointed the way to criminal investigation and prosecution of the former president as forcefully as a federal judge properly can.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the pork industry’s challenge to California’s Proposition 12, a law that restricts certain confinement practices in industrial animal agriculture. The law, passed by nearly 63 percent of voters in a 2018 ballot measure, effectively bans “gestation crates”—narrow, metal enclosures with slatted floors that confine pregnant sows to only sitting and standing, and restrict them from turning around. The industry argues the crates, which have been used in large-scale hog farming for more than 30 years, minimize aggression and prevent competition for food. ... But it only takes four of the justices—not a majority—to agree to hear a case, and the pork industry’s legal argument is considered weak by many legal scholars because Prop 12 applies the same standard to products raised in California as it does to those in any other state. “I think the odds are not great for Prop 12, but I wouldn’t give up at all,” said Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe. “The Supreme Court’s decisions in this area—going all the way back to the 1920s—I think strongly support California.”

Former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner said that Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, "must be subpoenaed" by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack against the U.S. Capitol after her text messages with a top Trump administration official were reported this past week. ... "I agree fully with NYU's Stephen Gillers," Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe posted to Twitter on Friday. "Justice Thomas must take no part in the consideration of any case related to the 2020 election, the 1/6 Committee, the attempted coup, or the insurrection."

Legal experts quickly knocked former President Donald Trump's lawsuit filed Thursday targeting former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and a number of others—calling it "absurd" and "garbage." Trump's attorneys filed the lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida, claiming that Clinton and other members of the DNC "orchestrated an unthinkable plot—one that shocks the conscience and is an affront to this nation's democracy." The alleged plot in question involved falsifying records and manipulating data in an attempt to "cripple Trump's bid for presidency" during the 2016 election, they contend. ... "An absurd lawsuit by an absurdly litigious former president who has only himself to blame for being compromised by Putin and thus looking like he is compromised by Russia," Laurence Tribe, a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, tweeted on Thursday.

Virginia voted in 2020 to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, the 38th state to do so, pushing the measure past the required three-fourths majority to make ERA the 28th Amendment. It’s not recognized as such yet, but should be, according to two constitutional scholars. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, released today opinion letters from Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor emeritus, and Russ Feingold, president of the American Constitution Society. “My conclusion as a constitutional scholar is that the ERA is currently a valid part of the United States Constitution, that Congress should act concurrently to recognize it as such, and that even if Congress takes no such action the Archivist should publish it as the Twenty-Eight Amendment,” Tribe said.