Laurence Tribe

Chief Justice John Roberts was once in the vanguard as the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back the Voting Rights Act. But as his more conservative colleagues showed Monday in restoring a Republican-drawn Alabama congressional map, Roberts is no longer in control. ... “Not even Chief Justice Roberts, author of the infamous Shelby County decision, could bring himself to join the radical right majority in draining the Voting Rights Act of all meaning and leaving it a hollow shell,” Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe tweeted.

Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, has suggested that Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, may be "trying to hide" something after a report this week revealed phone records show that the GOP congressman spoke with former President Donald Trump for about 10 minutes on the morning of January 6, 2021. ... "Just a casual 10-minute chat with the president on the morning of the insurrection. Why would anyone expect Rep. Jordan to recall that—or care about what was said?" Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard University, tweeted.

The Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is asking the FBI for security assessment after former President Trump calls for protests. Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Ireland`s newest folk hero Patrick Murphy publicly told Vladimir Putin and the Russian navy to stay away from Irish fishing grounds when conducting their war games at the end of this coming week. John Hume was a noble and brave politician. ... LAURENCE TRIBE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: He essentially confessed publicly, and openly, without any coercion, without any pressure, to having committed the crime of conspiracy to engage in sedition. Seditious conspiracy, because the United States government, punishable by 20 years in prison, because he quite specifically said that he thought he had a right to overturn the election, and that Vice President Pence had better straighten up and overturn the election for him.

Following Donald Trump’s rally in Texas in which he defended the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters, the former president issued a statement repeating the claim that his vice president, Mike Pence, had the authority to overturn the 2020 election results. ... Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, said via email that efforts to re-emphasize the limited role of the vice president “in no way demonstrate that the vice president has more than a largely ceremonial role to play in that capacity.”

An op-ed co-authored by Laurence Tribe: On Saturday, Trump is set to throw red meat to his base — and continue gearing up for a possible 2024 presidential run — at the Houston-area "Save America" rally. In this alternate reality, the ongoing investigation into his election scheming is all a witch hunt, those "alternate electors" were just trying to help America, and he and his fellow plotters are the real victims. Back in the real world, the Justice Department announced on Tuesday it was investigating the Trump campaign’s bogus elector slate scheme, which has quickly become a focus of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6. The scheme began in December 2020 and involved Republicans in seven states’ sending Congress forged and fraudulent alternate electoral slates naming Donald Trump the winner of the presidential election.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, and President Joe Biden has promised to nominate a Black woman in his place. Laurence Tribe, Harvard professor emeritus, speaks with Jim Braude about Breyer’s legacy, and what his absence will mean on the Supreme Court.

In a column for MSNBC, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut claim Donald Trump's rally in Texas on Saturday will be all about putting on a brave face as the House committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection closes in on the former president and his plot to steal the 2020 presidential election. ... Writing, "On Saturday, Trump is set to throw red meat to his base — and continue gearing up for a possible 2024 presidential run — at the Houston-area 'Save America' rally. In this alternate reality, the ongoing investigation into his election scheming is all a witch hunt, those 'alternate electors' were just trying to help America, and he and his fellow plotters are the real victims," the two added Trump has good reason to be nervous about what is happening outside his circle of adoring fans.

John W. Dean, who served as White House counsel under former President Richard Nixon, blasted former President Donald Trump's suggestion at a Saturday rally that he will pardon those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, saying such an action is "the stuff of dictators." ... Other legal experts quickly raised alarms about Trump's remarks as well. "I have no doubt Trump is serious about this. He is saying he'll dismantle the legal system retroactively," Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, tweeted.

After Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death in 2016 left a seat vacant on the US Supreme Court, the 11-year-old daughter of federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson drafted a letter to then-president Barack Obama recommending her mother as a replacement. That effort proved unsuccessful, but six years later, Jackson is among the frontrunners to become the newest justice on America’s highest court, after the retirement of Stephen Breyer later this year. ... Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Jackson’s alma mater, said: “It will be challenging, to say the least, for the Republican senators who voted for her . . . to explain why suddenly they are not in favour of her elevation to the Supreme Court.”

The White House is about to launch a lightning attempt to replace Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, who is expected to leave a vacant seat on the bench just months before midterm elections that could tilt the balance of power in the Senate. President Joe Biden’s administration is facing pressure to move quickly to ensure they do not lose progressive seats on America’s highest court, which is split 6-3 between conservative and liberal justices. ... “It’s absolutely indispensable that someone be nominated as soon as the resignation makes possible,” said Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

The Rev. John Udo-Okon, a Pentecostal minister in the Bronx, has a lot of congregants who are sued by debt collectors and don’t know what to do. Like most of the millions of Americans sued over consumer debt each year, Pastor Udo-Okon’s congregants typically cannot retain a lawyer. When they fail to respond to the suit, they lose the case by default. ... Laurence Tribe, the liberal legal icon who headed an access-to-justice initiative in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, said in an interview that demanding a law degree to help someone fill out a simple form serves largely to protect lawyers from competition. He said of Upsolve’s suit, “If you want a test case to bring sanity as well as constitutional values to a process in which the legal profession has edged out both, this is it.”

To an unsettling degree, a large swath of 2022 GOP candidates are deriving energy for their campaigns from the myth that the underlying “cause” of the Jan. 6 rioters was in some sense just. But this mythmaking is on a collision course with another powerful force: the House select committee’s examination of those events, and the actual facts about them that the committee will likely reveal. ... Meanwhile, Justice Department prosecutions of rioters are now pursuing “seditious conspiracy" charges. As Laurence H. Tribe explains, this shows the department believes some of the plotters “specifically intended to overturn the election” and "prevent the lawful transition of power.”

When reports first trickled out that Justice Neil Gorsuch refused to wear a mask in the courtroom, and that as a result his fellow Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor needed to work through Zoom as a result, the backlash was swift and unsurprising. No doubt with an eye toward protecting its reputation as an august body above petty partisan bickering, the court and its representatives quickly moved to squash the rumors. While it is still unclear what exactly has happened, the justices would like you to think everyone remains respectful to each other, while skeptics and leaks insist tensions are at a historic high. ... "There was no obvious division between Democrats and Republicans on the question of how deeply government regulation can affect the workplace or one's bodily integrity," Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, told Salon. "Those were things that cut across party lines. Now what we have is a lot of political ideology with partisan affiliation, and we have the court moving in the direction of that ideological and partisan leaning when it pushes back against OSHA's regulation."

An obscure 19th-century provision of the U.S. Constitution that barred members of the Confederacy from holding political office is back in the national conversation — and some are hoping it can keep Donald J. Trump and his allies off the ballot. ... Laurence Tribe, an influential law professor at Harvard University, has held private conversations with several members of Congress on the topic as they puzzle through how statutes written in the 1860s might apply in an entirely new context. And while Tribe’s view is that Jan. 6 was indeed an insurrection, it is by no means obvious how courts will interpret the 14th Amendment without clearer signals from Congress.

News that University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Dean Theodore Ruger intends to pursue sanctions against controversial law professor Amy Wax has sparked a debate about academic freedom, with members of the legal academy nationwide weighing in on both sides. ... “The racist anti-Asian statements by Professor Amy Wax are so beyond the pale that she should be shunned by colleagues and students alike, no less than if she had urged the exclusion of Blacks, Jews, or Women from American life,” wrote Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School.

Coming up on today's show: ... Laurence Tribe, university professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, talks about the Supreme Court and U.S. democracy, previewing his participation in the 92nd St. Y's conference on Thursday.

We’ve reached a turning point on the road to accountability for those who led the Jan. 6 insurrection, whether they stormed the physical congressional barricades or not. ... By Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard and Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor

The Justice Department’s decision to charge Oath Keepers with seditious conspiracy last week makes clear that prosecutors consider the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol part of an organized assault to prevent the peaceful transfer of presidential power. ... “The other shoe has yet to drop — that is: When will the Justice Department promptly and exhaustively investigate the part of the coup attempt that I believe came perilously close to ending American constitutional democracy, basically, without a drop of blood?” said Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar and outspoken Trump critic.

The seditious conspiracy indictment handed up against Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and 10 others stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol shows prosecutors are upping the ante in the sprawling probe, legal experts said Thursday. ... “Good to see DOJ moving up the ladder, but going after the crime that can be established without proof of force or violence — the failed conspiracy to get officials like the VP to overturn the electoral vote count — needn’t start on the lower rungs,” tweeted Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor.

Members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol Hill insurrection are weighing what options they have to compel their fellow members of Congress to cooperate with their probe. ... Legal scholar and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe told CNN, "The Speech and Debate Clause and the Arrest Clause protect members from certain inquiries and procedures originating outside Congress, but only political considerations restrict use of the subpoena power by Congress itself to compel sitting members to testify or produce documents needed by a committee like the Special House Committee."

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut: In a Jan. 5 speech to the nation, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “We will, and we must speak through our actions.” Garland’s well-crafted words told Americans what they needed to hear. We maintain hope that he will swiftly investigate the leaders behind the violent Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack by a pro-Trump mob that sought to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 Electoral College vote. But he must also spearhead an investigation into the earlier, bloodless coup attempt that failed to overturn the election and thus made force the only option to interrupt the transfer of power. Unfortunately, little in the attorney general’s words provided any firm basis for that hope.