Laurence Tribe

It's been eight months since President Biden established a commission to study proposals to reform the U.S. Supreme Court. ... That commission delivered its report to the president this past week. And while it studied a long list of potential reforms, like increasing the number of justices and imposing term limits, it did not make any recommendations to the president. Given so much at stake as the Supreme Court is set to decide on major issues like abortion rights, we wanted to talk about what comes next, so we called two members of the commission. Laurence Tribe is professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, where he teaches constitutional law. And Judge Thomas Griffith is a former federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

An op-ed by Nancy Gertner and Laurence H. Tribe: We now believe that Congress must expand the size of the Supreme Court and do so as soon as possible. We did not come to this conclusion lightly. One of us is a constitutional law scholar and frequent advocate before the Supreme Court, the other a federal judge for 17 years. After serving on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court over eight months, hearing multiple witnesses, reading draft upon draft of the final report issued this week, our views have evolved. We started out leaning toward term limits for Supreme Court justices but against court expansion and ended up doubtful about term limits but in favor of expanding the size of the court. We listened carefully to the views of commissioners who disagreed. Indeed, the process was a model for how people with deeply diverging perspectives can listen to one another respectfully and revise their views through genuine dialogue. We voted to submit the final report to President Biden not because we agreed with all of it — we did not — but because it accurately reflects the complexity of the issue and that diversity of views. There has never been so comprehensive and careful a study of ways to reform the Supreme Court, the history and legality of various potential reforms, and the pluses and minuses of each. This report will be of value well beyond today’s debates. But make no mistake: In voting to submit the report to the president neither of us cast a vote of confidence in the Supreme Court itself.

A bipartisan commission tasked by the White House with exploring possible Supreme Court reforms voted unanimously Tuesday to submit the group’s final report to President Biden. The 34-member group sounded a neutral tone across its report's nearly 300 pages, referencing “profound disagreement” over a controversial proposal to expand the number of justices, for instance, while declining to adopt a position. Instead, the study traces the history of the court reform debate and delineates arguments for and against various proposals, occasionally noting areas of bipartisan support, as in the case of imposing term limits on the justices.  ... Some of the commission’s more progressive members made clear Tuesday that their votes in favor of the group’s findings should not be misinterpreted as an endorsement of the high court’s status quo. “In voting to submit this report to the president, I am not casting a vote of confidence in the court’s basic legitimacy,” said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. “I no longer have that confidence.”

A bipartisan commission appointed by President Biden unanimously adopted a report detailing controversies over the Supreme Court and assessing proposals to address them, but few expected the 294-page document to resolve political divisions concerning the judiciary that have intensified in recent years. At Tuesday’s meeting, members of the commission universally praised the report-writing process for its civil dialogue and regard for all views. However, the final report was neither designed to nor did it produce consensus or any recommendations. ... “The report is so measured in tone that it would make an excellent basis for classroom discussion, which is a mixed compliment,” said University of Texas law professor Sanford Levinson. “Its obvious concern with being relatively impartial means that it is unlikely to generate any genuine political movement.” ... “There has never been so comprehensive and careful a study of ways to reform the Supreme Court; the history and legality of various reforms; and the pluses and minuses of each,” said a liberal commissioner, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. “But in voting to submit this report to the president, I am not casting a vote of confidence in the court’s basic legitimacy. I no longer have that confidence,” he said, citing “the dubious way some justices got there” and “the anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian direction of its decisions about matters like voting rights, gerrymandering, and the corrupting effects of dark money,” all areas where conservative views prevailed. Mr. Tribe said the process had persuaded him to endorse expanding the court, a position he previously had viewed skeptically.

A bipartisan panel of legal scholars examining possible changes to the Supreme Court voted unanimously Tuesday to submit to President Biden its final report, which describes public support for imposing term limits but “profound disagreement” about adding justices. Biden assembled the commission in response to demands from Democrats to restore what they called ideological “balance” on the court, now with three liberals and six conservatives, including three justices picked by President Donald Trump. In advance of the 34 to 0 vote, commissioners from across the political spectrum aired their differences about specific proposals for overhauling the court even as they praised the collegial process of assembling the nearly 300-page document. “I’m more convinced than ever that change is necessary,” said retired federal judge Nancy Gertner, a nominee of President Bill Clinton. “The court has been effectively packed by one party and will remain packed for years to come with serious consequences to democracy. Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe said he had come to embrace the idea of expanding the bench because “all is not well with the court,” which he asserted, “no longer deserves the nation’s confidence.” “Even if expanding it would momentarily shake its authority,” Tribe said, “that risk is worth taking.”

A White House Commission studying changes to the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to send its report to President Joe Biden after sidestepping the most controversial proposals to expand the court’s membership or limit the justices’ terms. Members, who voted 34-0 Tuesday, emphasized that their approval of the final report doesn’t signal support for all the proposals examined by the panel. ... Some may be disappointed that the report doesn’t make specific recommendations, said former U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner, who said she supports changes to the court. “But that was not our charge,” Gertner said. Instead, “the tasks set before us was to capture that deep, live, and consequential debate, fully and fairly, without short changing either side,” said Harvard Law School Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo. ... The commission concluded that the least controversial changes, like term limits, were the hardest to enact, said Harvard Law School Professor Larry Tribe. And the most controversial—expanding the number of justices—the easiest to do, he added.

A high-stakes game of chicken between former Trump advisers and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection could enter a new phase Saturday, when former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark is expected to appear as ordered, but may invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to answer a broad swath of questions. ...Garland “clearly knew that many people he respects, including me, were growing impatient with what we saw as the glacial pace of the process leading to this indictment,” longtime Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe, who taught the future judge and attorney general, wrote in an email. “But he no doubt also knew that a number of experienced former federal prosecutors kept insisting publicly that several weeks was to be expected in a case of this magnitude and sensitivity.”

Happy the elephant will get her day in court, and potentially open the door for other animals to follow, with the help of high-profile advocates who contend the lumbering zoo resident deserves a fundamental legal right. In a potentially groundbreaking case, famed Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe has joined philosophers, theologians and a menagerie of others in arguing that Happy is a “legal person” with the corresponding right to seek freedom from what Tribe calls “her imprisonment” by the Bronx Zoo. “Now fifty years old, Happy remains in solitary confinement, unable to lead a physically, intellectually, emotionally and socially complex life despite her capacity to do so,” Tribe and several other prominent law professors wrote in a legal brief filed late last month. Tribe’s amicus brief is the latest of many to be filed with the New York state Court of Appeals, which sometime next year will hear the Nonhuman Rights Project argue that Happy, just like a person, enjoys habeas corpus protections (Greenwire, Dec. 18, 2020).

The Department of Justice announced this week that it would crack down on airline passengers who throw tantrums. Now, if Attorney General Merrick Garland would only get around to doing something about people who plot the overthrow of our government and a former president who’s serially obstructed justice and abused power we might be getting someplace. ... Revered legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, who taught Garland when the attorney general was a student at Harvard Law School, suggests we give his former student a little more time, but not an unlimited amount. He hears the clock ticking too. Tribe told me, “If Merrick Garland hadn’t authorized the Bannon indictment when he did, I’d certainly have gotten mad long since. At least with respect to someone like me, he bought a few weeks with that indictment—but not a few months.” “All things considered,” he continued, “I’ll be both disappointed and angry if we find ourselves going into January 2022 without strong evidence—in a town that leaks like a sieve—that DOJ is moving full speed ahead on holding Trump and his enablers, facilitators, funders and co-conspirators criminally accountable for the coup d’état they tried to pull off and the violent insurrection they mounted against the Capitol to delay, obstruct and, if possible, subvert the solemn electoral proceeding there underway.”

An article by Jill Lepore: Amicus briefs have been filed on Happy’s behalf by a legion of the country’s most respected lawyers, philosophers, and animal behavioralists, including Laurence Tribe, Martha Nussbaum, and the much-celebrated scientist Joyce Poole, who has studied elephants for nearly as long as Happy has been alive, and who co-directs ElephantVoices, a nonprofit research center that studies elephant communication, cognition, and social behavior. Briefs in support of the WCS, on the other hand, as Tribe pointed out to me in an email, have been filed instead by “groups with a strong economic self-interest,” such as the National Association for Biomedical Research, which claims that establishing personhood for Happy risks the future of all laboratory testing on all animals. ... In 2016, after the NhRP filed a second habeas corpus petition for Kiko, Harvard’s Laurence Tribe submitted an amicus brief, ​​disputing the court’s claim that Kiko could not be a person on the ground that persons bear both rights and duties. The court’s definition of personhood, he argued, “would appear on its face to exclude third-trimester fetuses, children, and comatose adults (among other entities whose rights as persons the law protects).”

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe: Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon surrendered to federal authorities on Monday, and was later released on his own recognizance after surrendering his passport. Bannon has been charged with two counts of contempt of Congress thanks to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s commitment to restoring the rule of law. By demonstrating that severe sanctions follow the flouting of subpoenas, whether from Congress or the courts, the Justice Department has sent a clear message to other witnesses that Bannon’s path of defiance can result in very real consequences — including possibly jail.

Norm Eisen, former ethics czar and lawyer who helped Democrats during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, reassured those demanding accountability for corruption under former President Donald Trump in a new interview with Business Insider. ... Trump is facing tax charges from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office as well as possible voter fraud charges by Fulton County DA Fani Willis. After a 8 months in office, Garland hasn't made any public moves on anything involving the former president, his staff or corrupt cabinet officials who were never charged after investigations by the Office of Special Counsel. "Atlanta is moving faster than DC. Where oh where is Merrick Garland? The DOJ seems strangely AWOL," Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe asked in a tweet.

Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss the new ruling that Donald Trump must turn over records to the Jan. 6 committee and why he believes Merrick Garland “should have acted already” in the criminal contempt referral of Steve Bannon. ...Tribe: ...I was finishing reading the remarkably powerful opinion by Judge Chutkan. It`s a 39-page opinion dissecting closely all of the arguments that have made by Donald Trump`s lawyers claiming that even though he`s no longer the president, he has executive privilege to prevent the turning over of hundreds of government documents, presidential documents, presidential logs, information about what he knew and when he knew it from the concept that somehow he could prevent turning that over. She rejected that argument. We only have one president at a time and that president is not Donald Trump.

Watch: On Monday's edition of CNN's “OutFront,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe weighed in on Supreme Court arguments over the Texas abortion ban.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has emerged as one of the most conspicuous anti-science politicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, officially sued President Joe Biden's administration on Thursday in response to its vaccine mandate for federal contractors. “Because the government's unlawful vaccine requirements seek to interfere with Florida's employment policies and threaten Florida with economic harm and the loss of federal contracts, the State seeks relief from this Court,” read the 28-page lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Tampa. The document singled out Biden's Sept. 9 address announcing vaccine mandates, implying that the administration also believes the government should not mandate vaccines but is ignoring the law because the president's “patience” has been “wearing thin" and he is angry “at those who haven't gotten vaccinated.” It also argued that complying with Biden's mandates would cause economic harm to the state. ... “I would say this DeSantis lawsuit is between manifestly groundless and utterly frivolous,” Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told Salon by email. “The executive actions DeSantis has sought to depict as lawless are well within the president's statutorily delegated authority.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland has re-established a Justice Department office that aims to expand services for people who can’t afford lawyers, making good on a promise by President Joe Biden. The Office for Access to Justice, included in a new agency flow chart Garland signed on Thursday, is part of his broader plan to expand legal services in the federal government for low-income Americans. ... The plan is “a solid start,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who led the office under Obama, said in a statement. “It remains to be seen how effectively those plans will be implemented, but I have every reason to be optimistic.”

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe rejects former President Donald Trump’s arguments against the release of documents relating to the U.S. Capitol riot as “truly laughable.” Trump this week filed a lawsuit seeking to block or at least delay the release of records to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 violence, which he was impeached for inciting. The ex-president called it an “illegal fishing expedition” and cited executive privilege, even though he’s no longer in office. On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Tribe said Trump’s claim “that he is not trying to hide the truth, but just preserve the Constitution, is really quite laughable.” Tribe also dismissed Trump’s view that it would be “unconstitutional” for President Joe Biden’s view of executive privilege to override his own. That was “mistaken,” said Tribe. “And his argument that there is no legitimate legislative purpose is truly laughable,” Tribe added.

Former president Donald Trump is suing to block the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol from receiving records for its inquiry into the events of that day as well as Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Trump and his attorneys argue that the records requests are overly broad and have no legislative purpose, and they criticize President Biden for not asserting executive privilege to block the handover of those documents. ... Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, called the suit a “very weak complaint” and scoffed at a key argument in the lawsuit. “The idea that Congress has no legitimate purpose in making this request is almost insane. In fact, no purpose could be higher on the totem pole than protecting the Republic from a coup,” he said. Tribe said that there was one part of the lawsuit that did not seem frivolous: The complaint about overbroad requests for documents. He predicted that a judge might agree to narrow the scope of requested documents.

An op-ed by Laurence H Tribe, Erwin Chemerinsky, Jeffrey Abramson and Dennis Aftergut: Sadly, predictably and appallingly, on October 14, a three judge panel of the US court of appeals for the fifth circuit has allowed Texas’s “Bounty-Hunter” anti-abortion law to go back into effect while the court considers the case on the merits. Every day that the fifth circuit panel’s unlawful order keeps the statute in operation brings irreversible injury to women in Texas. US Attorney General Merrick Garland has properly decided to seek emergency relief from the US supreme court. The justice department is right to accuse the State of Texas of seeking to destroy not only abortion rights but also the foundation of our constitutional Republic. In a nation whose history is fraught with battles between states’ rights and national sovereignty, the case of United States v Texas raises issues basic to our national compact.

Nearly two years after getting away with obstruction of Congress while he was president, Donald Trump may get away with it again, this time as a former president trying to block an investigation into the insurrection he incited. ... That history, Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe said, would go a long way toward proving the “corrupt intent” that prosecutors would need to show. “The former president’s corrupt and self-serving motive of concealing his role in the attempted coup and the ensuing insurrection by invoking an executive privilege that is no longer his to invoke should be possible to establish,” Tribe said. “With that motive established, there’d be a strong case for charging Trump’s interference with the special committee’s Jan. 6 inquiry as a criminal obstruction of Congress and of justice.”

Since Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives in 2019, they have doggedly used Congress’s power to compel documents and testimony from Donald Trump and those in his orbit – and more often than not, they have butted up against a Trumpian wall of disparagement, denial, and delay. ... According to Harvard Law School Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, executive privilege does not exist for former presidents. “We have only one president at a time,” Mr Tribe told The Independent, “and the constitutional presumption is that the incumbent president is the best judge of the factors bearing on whether and when to invoke executive privilege to withhold documents or testimony.”