Laurence Tribe

We’ve known for several weeks that John Roberts, as the presiding officer in any impeachment trial, is likely to have a major role in deciding the fate of Donald Trump’s presidency. The past few days, though, have crystallized just how significant a part the chief justice will play; not just in the Senate trial itself, but in determining what evidence House investigators will be able to collect even before there is a vote on whether or not to impeach Donald Trump...What will it do to the court’s credibility if Roberts opts to let his court play defense for this president based on Calvinball-grade legal arguments about shooting people in the street? In regard to the lower courts, one might expect there to be some set of rules governing when and how the judicial branch decides to fast-track litigation with such major implications for our democracy and the rule of law. Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told me, however, that the decision to hasten or slow-walk vital litigation turns on nothing more than the temperament and preferences of individual district court and appeals court judges who happen to be assigned a case.

The White House tried to justify its refusal to comply with Democrats' subpoenas by claiming that their impeachment inquiry is unconstitutional. Laurence Tribe explains to Lawrence O'Donnell why that White House argument is "legally vacuous" and would rebuffed by the courts for putting the president above the law.

Since the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began, most Republicans in Congress have made the argument that the president’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating a political opponent was not a quid pro quo or an abuse of power. But after a partisan House vote last week opening up a public phase of the inquiry — and a parade of government officials who testified to Congress that there was a quid pro quo — some in Mr. Trump’s party are testing out a new refrain: Even if a quid pro quo existed, it is not grounds for impeachment. They are merely concerned...Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor and an author of “To End a Presidency,” a book on impeachment, said the gamble that the most vocal Republicans appeared to be taking was that Mr. Trump — who as a candidate boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it — had succeeded in essentially saying “so what?” before...“I think the logic is the logic of the big lie,” Mr. Tribe said. “That if you repeat something often enough loudly enough to people who are not being critical in their analysis of what they’re hearing, you may just get away with it.”

Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe on Friday spoke with CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in a wide-ranging discussion, beginning with Tribe’s formative academic years as a mathematician and ending with an in-depth discussion of President Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure in office. Tribe, who wrote the 2018 book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” — which he co-authored with attorney Joshua Matz, the latest addition to House Democrats’ impeachment legal team — has made no secret of his opposition to President Trump. The constitutional scholar on Friday made his case for impeachment, addressing some of the common defenses against it as he went.

President Trump has sought to intimidate witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, attacking them as “Never Trumpers” and badgering an anonymous whistleblower. He has directed the White House to withhold documents and block testimony requested by Congress. And he has labored to publicly discredit the investigation as a “scam” overseen by “a totally compromised kangaroo court.” ... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard Law School who has informally advised some Democratic House leaders, said Trump’s actions are unprecedented. “I know of no instance when a president subject to a serious impeachment effort, whether Andrew Johnson or Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, has essentially tried to lower the curtain entirely — treating the whole impeachment process as illegitimate, deriding it as a ‘lynching’ and calling it a ‘kangaroo court,’” Tribe said.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a resolution that formalizes the impeachment probe against President Trump. The resolution outlines the next steps of the inquiry, authorizing the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct open hearings and the president and his attorneys to cross-examine witnesses. ... For a discussion of the significance of the resolution, Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe, who's long called for Trump's impeachment, joined WBUR's Morning Edition.

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Thursday on a resolution that moves its impeachment probe against President Trump into a new phase. The vote could clear the way for articles of impeachment against the president for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine unless that country investigated Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's family. For a look at the significance of the move, Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe joined WBUR's Morning Edition host Bob Oakes.

The Post reports, “House Democrats unveiled new procedures for the impeachment inquiry of President Trump on Tuesday, responding to Republican demands for due process by setting out rules for future public hearings delving into whether Trump should be removed from office.” This will be the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s (D-Calif.) show...Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “The procedures this resolution would put in place are well adapted to bringing the truth to light in a way that respects historical precedent, gives the president and his defenders a full and fair opportunity to challenge his accusers and to present his defense, gives members on both sides of the aisle an equal chance to test the evidence and finally gives the American people the opportunity they have been waiting for to decide whether the sitting president has shown himself to be a danger to the republic.”

The Post reports: “House Democrats said Monday that the House will vote Thursday to formalize procedures for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Democrats said the move would ‘ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward’ as the inquiry continues.” Contrary to the claims of Republicans partisans and some sloppy reporting, this does not authorize the inquiry. The impeachment proceedings are already underway. The main purpose is to set forth how the inquiry will proceed and undercut Republican complaints of lack of transparency...So why bring this up now, especially after a court held in Democrats’ favor? One possibility is that in preparing an article of impeachment on obstruction of Congress, Pelosi does not want to leave a crack open whereby Trump’s lawyers would say, well, he had a good-faith belief the impeachment process was not officially underway. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe approves of Pelosi’s move. “This resolution makes perfect sense now that the House leadership has wisely decided to forgo further judicial jockeying and to move expeditiously to public hearings,” he argues. “Calling the Trump administration’s bluff this way will make it clear that the continued stonewalling of the administration — and of those current and former officials who use the administration’s gag order as an excuse for seeking what amount to advisory judicial opinions on whether to comply with congressional subpoenas — is just a stalling tactic, not a good-faith effort to resolve conflicting obligations when confronted with a subpoena from Congress and a directive from the White House to defy that subpoena.”

An article by Patrick McDonnell ('21), Jacques Singer-Emery ('20), and Nathaniel Sobel ('20): Then-Rep. Gerald Ford once defined an impeachable offense as “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” But legal scholars have concluded that impeachment is considerably more law-governed, and constrained, than Ford suggested. They draw on clues from the Founders, the text and structure of the Constitution, and the history of presidential impeachments (and near-impeachments) to make varying arguments about the impeachment power and the range of impeachable offenses. For this post, we read eleven of the leading scholarly works on impeachment so that you don’t have to...And of a more recent vintage, we cover a collection of Trump-inspired works, including books by Cass Sunstein, Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a revered Supreme Court justice who spent her early legal career fighting for women’s rights. But one justice gave her original performance before the high court only passing marks. “Prof. Ruth Ginsburg. C-plus,” Justice Harry Blackmun wrote on loose-leaf paper during her first Supreme Court argument, Frontiero v. Laird, in January 1973. “Very precise. Female. Reads.” Perhaps alone among his colleagues, Justice Blackmun made detailed assessments of Supreme Court advocates, grading them like law students and often noting their hometowns, law schools and even their ethnicities. Several of those attorneys later joined the Supreme Court. ... Among private attorneys, the late E. Barrett Prettyman Jr., who had clerked for three Supreme Court justices, earned an exceptional 3.1 average over 14 arguments. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe pronounced himself pleased when informed by the Journal of his own 3.1 GPA, also over 14 cases. “It seems quite fair and in some cases generous,” Mr. Tribe said, adding that he wasn’t sure he deserved a Blackmun 6 in a 1989 bankruptcy case, Granfinanciera SA v. Nordberg. “I didn’t do very well,” he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham's resolution to the Senate condemning the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has "absolutely no substance," said a constitutional scholar, and is full of "phony objections." The resolution brought by the South Carolina Republican is co-signed at the time of writing by 46 of his party colleagues in the Senate. It accuses House Democrats of a lack of due process and transparency in their impeachment inquiry. ... "Senator Graham's resolution has absolutely no substance," Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and professor of constitutional law at Harvard, and a prominent critic of Trump, told Newsweek. "I looked at it carefully to see if any of its process complaints made sense historically, legally, or morally. I could find nothing in it worthy of being taken seriously. "And the fact that it focuses entirely on phony objections to a completely fair and traditional process speaks volumes about how little the Republican senators have to say in defense of what the president has done in shaking down a vulnerable ally for his own personal benefit."

A person familiar with the matter stunningly confirmed the following on Thursday: the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the nation’s highest law enforcement organization, is now criminally investigating whether former special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia probe was based on improper activity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Legal experts were astonished. ... Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe told Law&Crime that he also has his doubts about the legitimacy of the probe, suggesting that it could be a ploy to distract from impeachment. “Durham’s reputation is very solid, but then so was Barr‘s before he came into the Trump orbit. In any event, it’s hard for me to imagine what federal crime Barr purports to be investigating,” he said. “It looks very much like this is simply a way of giving President Trump some talking points about the Russia probe being under criminal investigation.”

Professor Laurence Tribe told Anderson Cooper if there were ever an example of a high crime or misdemeanor the call President Trump had with Ukrainian President Zelensky is it. Tribe said Wednesday night the Ukraine call makes the "Nixon situation" look silly in comparison. "If there were ever a model case for an impeachable offense, a high crime and misdemeanor that includes bribery this is it," Tribe declared. "This is just the most transparently clear abuse of power and an impeachable offense that I can remember in the history of the United States," Tribe said. "And I've studied it pretty thoroughly. This makes the Nixon situation look silly by comparison. This is way more serious."

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe shares with CNN's Anderson Cooper why he thinks President Donald Trump's decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine amounts to an impeachable offense.

Aexander hamilton warned in 1788 that impeachment risks “agitat[ing] the passions of the whole community” and spurring “pre-existing factions” to “animosities, partialities, influence and interest”. The process, he wrote, carries the “greatest danger” that “real demonstrations of innocence or guilt” will amount to little in the face of raw political calculations. But the constitution carves a path around the maelstrom, Hamilton insisted: the United States Senate will have the “sole power to try all impeachments” sent its way by the House of Representatives. ...Keeping the Senate proceedings “civil and orderly”—a task that the constitution assigns to the chief justice—may be a struggle, says Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor and co-author of “To End a Presidency”. The previous chief justice, William Rehnquist, said of his role in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton in 1999 that “I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.” John Roberts, the chief today, faces a more partisan environment but, Mr Tribe says, will seek to emulate his predecessor.

Laurence Tribe on Wednesday suggested that Democrats are now in possession of the “smoking Howitzer” with which to impeach President Donald Trump. The Harvard constitutional law professor told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he believed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was “wise to hold off” until last month to begin an impeachment investigation, after she had “what amounts to not just a smoking gun, but a smoking Howitzer.”

Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Tuesday attempted to defend President Donald Trump against the onslaught of increasingly inculpatory evidence emerging from Democrats’ impeachment inquiry by claiming that abusing the power of the presidency is not a crime. Appearing on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle, Whitaker argued that Trump’s conduct was not criminal and therefore not impeachable...Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars, described Whitaker’s comments as “the epitome of ignorance.” “Matt Whitaker’s statement that ‘abuse of power is not a crime’ is the epitome of ignorance – ignorance of the Constitution, ignorance of the purposes and history of the Impeachment Clause, ignorance of America’s history, ignorance of the law,” Tribe told Law and Crime. “Impeachable offenses, which the Constitution quaintly calls ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors,’ are offenses against the nation and its Constitution, not necessarily violations of criminal statutes.”

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is the closest thing to a Ken Starr that exists for President Trump's impeachment inquiry — at least for now — lawmakers and committee staff tell Axios. The bottom line: In the absence of an independent or special counsel to manage the Ukraine investigation, Schiff has taken on a dual-hat role, as both a key committee chairman and chief investigator. Much like Starr, Schiff is there at the crux of key interviews behind closed doors and efforts to gather evidence that may further the impeachment inquiry. What they’re saying: Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard and a Trump critic, told me Schiff would have been less likely to play this role — and might have had a harder time justifying it — if not for Attorney General Bill Barr. "If Attorney General Barr had accepted [a CIA lawyer’s attempt to make a] criminal referral and opened a meaningful inquiry, presumably with the appointment of a special counsel, he would’ve been in a position to say that the current congressional inquiry had to be put on hold." Tribe says, in hindsight, Trump may have wished that process had been put in place because it might have pre-empted the congressional inquiry and run out the clock between now and the election. "Now it’s too late. The irony is that, by trying to play the role of Roy Cohn to Donald Trump, William Barr has basically screwed his boss. If Trump had half a brain, he would be, well, pissed."

Jamarria Hall stood outside Osborn High School, where he graduated at the top of his class in 2017, now saying that time there was four years lost. Hall knew something was wrong the moment he stepped in the door his freshman year in 2014: the moldy smell of the school hallway, dead mice in the bathroom, water falling from the classroom ceilings into buckets or onto students' heads. Teachers failed to show up for class for days, Hall said, and students were sent to the gymnasium to watch movies. Classrooms lacked textbooks...The long-term impact of a substandard K-12 public education is among several legal arguments raised in a high-profile civil lawsuit before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit on Thursday. It was filed by Hall and six other Detroit school students...Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University who is not part of the litigation, said the Detroit case gives the federal court system a chance to consider what he called the "massive body of evidence" demonstrating what under-funded schools do to the children attending them, including making them a "permanent underclass," a term referenced in a prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving education. Tribe said every state makes K-12 education mandatory and basic education has been recognized unanimously by the Supreme Court as “necessary to prepare citizens to participate effectively and intelligently" in an open political system.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Ron Fein: President Trump’s favorite sheriff is back in court. On Wednesday, lawyers for former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio will argue a strange federal appeal in San Francisco. Part of what makes it strange: The court was so concerned about the Department of Justice’s position in the case that it appointed an outside special prosecutor. The House’s impeachment inquiry ought to pay attention...It’s tempting for the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry to zero in on Ukraine. The case for focusing the nation’s attention on abuse of power is compelling, but the committee needs to consider broadening whatever article of impeachment accuses the president of abusing his presidential authority to encompass abuses unrelated to the Ukraine fiasco. This broader article should include such abuses as unjustifiably refusing to cooperate with the impeachment process authorized by the Constitution; corruptly seeking to undermine all legitimate inquiries into how the president ascended to his high office in the first instance; and blatantly misusing the pardon power, not to temper justice with mercy, but rather to cover up executive misconduct or to facilitate violations of individual rights. The arguments in Arpaio’s case on Wednesday should remind us that the Constitution is too important to leave only to the courts.