Laurence Tribe

President Donald Trump, by his simultaneous existence as a real estate tycoon and President, continues to test the US Constitution in ways that the founding fathers didn't anticipate and for which the current legal and political systems are completely unprepared. The founders didn't specifically anticipate a hotelier President pushing his golf resort as the ideal location for an international meeting of heads of state. ... Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, who thinks Trump should be impeached, tried to give Trump a lesson Twitter about emoluments recently. "Memo to POTUS: There are TWO Emoluments Clauses. The one you're violating when you line your pocket by having Pence stay at your resort & commute is the Domestic EC. The one you're planning to violate by having the G7 stay at the Doral w/out Congress's consent is the Foreign EC."

Representative Jamie Raskin slammed President Donald Trump, accusing him of violating the emoluments clauses of the Constitution by directing "hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars" to his personal businesses. Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, made the remark during an interview with CNN on Monday, saying that the president's actions were "absolutely impeachable." ... Constitutional legal scholar Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard University, slammed Trump over both issues in a series of tweets last week. He, like Raskin, pointed out that these were clear violations of the Constitution's emoluments clauses. "The Foreign Emoluments Clause is the core anti-corruption clause of Art I. The Domestic Emoluments Clause is the core anti-profiteering clause of Art II," Tribe explained. "Congress' consent (or lack of it) is key to the first. It's irrelevant to the second. Trump is violating both."

A former New York Court of Appeals judge who is a conservative Republican and a professor who is a liberal Democrat are teaching a new course at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law that examines the impact President Donald Trump is having on the Constitution. ... It is not the only law school course that examines the issues through the lens of the Trump presidency. University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law is offering “Law and Lawlessness in the Age of Trump” this semester. Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe taught “Constitutional Law 3.0: The Trump Trajectory” in the spring of 2018. And the University of Washington School of Law was one of the first to offer a Trump course shortly after his election, “Executive Power and Its Limits.”

Joseph R. Biden Jr. was on the brink of victory, but he was unsatisfied. Mr. Biden, the 44-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was poised to watch his colleagues reject President Ronald Reagan’s formidable nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert H. Bork. ... Mr. Biden was seated behind a desk in a spacious living room adjoining his study at his Wilmington, Del., home. A few aides sat or stood around the room, where pizza was in generous supply. Squared off against Mr. Biden was Robert H. Bork — or rather, a convincing simulacrum played by the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. Mr. Tribe and Mr. Biden would spar for hours in a series of sessions that August, joined occasionally by other legal experts who would help Mr. Biden hone his queries on subjects from antitrust regulation to sexual privacy. “Biden’s questions were really smart, and they also needed some sharpening,” Mr. Tribe said in an interview, citing Mr. Biden’s tendency to “ask one thing and mean something slightly different.”

While in Ireland this week to attend meetings in Dublin, Vice President Mike Pence is staying at the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel in Doonbeg, approximately 180 miles away from Dublin. Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short said the VP was staying at the President’s property due to logistical and security reasons, though he also admitted Trump “suggested” he stay at the resort. In the wake of President Donald Trump indicating that he planned to hold next year’s Group of Seven (G-7) summit at his Doral golf resort in Miami, constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe on Tuesday decried both decisions, saying each violated a separate clause of the U.S. Constitution. “Memo to POTUS: There are TWO Emoluments Clauses,” Tribe wrote. “The one you’re violating when you line your pocket by having Pence stay at your resort & commute is the Domestic [Emoluments Clause]. The one you’re planning to violate by having the G7 stay at the Doral w/out Congress’s consent is the Foreign [Emoluments Clause].”

Who would have thought a play title as prosaic as “What the Constitution Means to Me” would in 2019 resound with such passion and urgency? But that’s been the intense reaction to Heidi Schreck’s celebrated performance piece, a Broadway hit this past season and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for drama...Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School: "To me, the Constitution is more verb than noun. Less a bequest from a few inspired but flawed white men than a challenge to build 'a more perfect Union,' a fairer and more equal nation, from their hopes and ideals — and from the dreams of those who marched and fought and died to make those ideals real."

Attorney General William P. Barr has booked a ballroom in President Trump’s hotel for his annual holiday party, an event that he could spend tens of thousands of dollars on and that drew criticism from ethics experts. ...Ethics experts said that Mr. Barr had not crossed the sort of ethical bright line that he would have if he were to be given a steep discount to rent space at the Trump hotel. Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a vocal critic of the Trump administration, said he did consider the contract a “tasteless” decision that would harm Mr. Barr’s reputation, but not an impeachable offense.

Every single day, Donald Trump offers up a fragrant, colorful, teeming bouquet of reasons to believe he is unfit to hold the office of president. And every single day, the nation shrugs and waits for something to be done about it. (Really, congressional Democrats take a long summer break and largely shrug, and hope that the election will take care of this specific problem for them.) ... Larry Tribe of Harvard Law School puts it this way in an email to me: "The case for impeaching and removing Trump to protect our republic from the irreversible injury likely to be inflicted by his ongoing “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” is now so compelling that only the delusional—or those utterly ignorant of our Constitution’s sole mechanism for defending the country from a lawless tyrant—could fail to agree. The only real question is whether attempting to remove Trump by impeachment is so certain to fail, and to backfire by increasing the odds of his remaining in office for a second term, that the effort would be self-defeating. But that excuse for not doing what’s obviously right as a constitutional matter is no longer tenable even if it might once have been: An impeached Trump who escapes conviction in the Senate after the evidence is laid out in public House hearings will be weaker in 2020 than a Trump who can brag that not even a Democratically controlled House could bring itself to impeach him. And GOP Senators who give him a pass will be easier to defeat than ones who’re spared any need to be counted."

The Russia report compiled by Robert S. Mueller III regarding Russian interference and obstruction details 10 categories of conduct that are more than sufficient grounds for impeaching President Trump. However, quite apart from the acts listed in the report, Trump has gone on a tear committing additional acts that betray his oath of office and should be included in any impeachment hearing. ... Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe observes, “The president’s post-Mueller report stonewalling of Congress by directing all present and former White House employees to defy congressional subpoenas appears to be impeachable conduct under the Nixon Article III standard.” He adds, “Beyond that, the president’s deliberate ongoing defiance of the foreign emoluments clause by accepting financial benefits from foreign governments — and by inviting further such benefits — without congressional consent is impeachable, as is his dereliction of duty vis-a-vis Russia’s continuing attacks on our electoral sovereignty.”

We are now at the point where President Trump’s own officials are basically admitting that he has dangled pardons to underlings, as part of an apparent effort to get them to build his border wall in time for reelection. ...As law professor Laurence Tribe points out to me, this raises its own issues, constitutional and otherwise, because it in effect concedes that Trump’s concern in ordering these “takings” of land “isn’t even the public interest but his private political prospects.”

At recent panel discussions in New York, the cast and creators of two top Broadway plays, To Kill a Mockingbird and What the Constitution Means to Me, discussed the plays’ development and relevance, as well as the actors’ participation...The Constitution panel featured its playwright and star, Heidi Schreck, and Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who appeared with journalist Dahlia Lithwick...“People need to understand what the stakes are in a society run by big brother,” warned Tribe.

Attorney General William P. Barr has booked a ballroom in President Trump’s hotel for his annual holiday party, an event that he could spend tens of thousands of dollars on and that drew criticism from ethics experts. Mr. Barr booked the Presidential Ballroom at the Trump International Hotel for a 200-person holiday party that he holds every year. It could cost more than $30,000, according to a Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a nongovernment function. His decision to hold the event at the Trump hotel comes as the Justice Department works to defend Mr. Trump against charges that he is trying to profit from the presidency...Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a vocal critic of the Trump administration, said he did consider the contract a “tasteless” decision that would harm Mr. Barr’s reputation, but not an impeachable offense.

President Trump stepped into another controversy of his own making Monday by suggesting the U.S. could host world leaders at his golf resort outside Miami for next year's Group of Seven (G-7) summit. If Trump were to make his resort the meeting venue, his critics argue it would be another clear violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which prohibits presidents from accepting payments from foreign countries, U.S. states or the federal government. ... Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, tweeted that Trump’s pitch was “Emolumentally clear! Trump keeps proving that he is deliberately violating the Constitution’s main safeguard against financial corruption and compromise of presidential decisions by foreign powers.”

... How did special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony before Congress help or hurt the quest to impeach Donald Trump? Did Mueller reveal the entire truth about Donald Trump and his inner circle's collusion with Russia, obstruction of justice and other probable crimes? Are the Democrats approaching the impeachment of Donald Trump in a tactically and strategically sound manner? How would the framers of our Constitution respond to Donald Trump's behavior as president? Have the Constitution's structural flaws allowed Trump to undermine American democracy and the rule of law? In an effort to answer these questions and many others, I recently spoke with Laurence Tribe, a leading scholar of constitutional law and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Tribe is the author of several books, including his most recent (co-written with Joshua Matz), "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment."

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday joined a host of prominent figures in sharply questioning how Jeffrey Epstein died in an apparent suicide in federal jail, insisting that he was not dabbling in conspiracy theories even as he echoed them.... Other prominent figures, including former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Representative Al Green, a Democrat of Texas, and Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, all said on Monday that they did not need to wait for an official investigation to assert that something did not add up.... Professor Tribe, who teaches constitutional law at Harvard and who has a social media following of more than half a million people, said on Twitter on Saturday that “you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see an evil cover-up to protect lots of powerful men here.”

Over half a century ago, Congress struck a blow for gender equality when it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... In a brief prepared for several former solicitors general, Joshua Matz, a lawyer in New York, and Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, begin by reminding the court that the meaning of a law “is distinct from how people may have expected the statute would apply when it was enacted”. Citing Oncale v Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.—a 1998 Supreme Court decision recognising that Title VII bars sexual harassment of male employees—the authors recall the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s clarion call to textualism: “it is ultimately our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed”. The brief then turns to the “plain text” of Title VII and observes how it protects LGBT people. It’s not necessarily because “sex” means “sexual orientation” or “gender identity”, the brief argues, but because an employer logically cannot fire someone on one of these bases without paying close attention to their perceived or actual sex, and applying stereotypes governing how people of that sex should present themselves or whom they should be attracted to.

Under a new California law signed into law on Tuesday, President Donald Trump will be ineligible to appear on the state’s presidential primary ballot unless he first discloses his tax returns. ... Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School since 1968 who is widely considered to be one of the most influential constitutional scholars in American history, immediately took to Twitter to preemptively rebuff arguments that the law unconstitutionally placed additional requirements on persons seeking the presidency. “California isn’t adding any requirements for the presidency — which it couldn’t do — but just ensuring that its voters are fully informed about all aspirants. This should survive the predictable constitutional challenge,” Tribe wrote. Also inclined to opine on the newsworthy legislation, Lawrence Lessig, the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, said the California law “plainly” violates the U.S. Constitution. “Hey Dems, just stop. This law is plainly unconstitutional,” Lessig wrote on Twitter.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: The devil is a notoriously misleading advocate. Lawyers and pundits who revel in advancing arguments that they might like to act on but wouldn’t be caught dead making in a courtroom or legal brief seem to take perverse pleasure in making those demonstrably flawed arguments as “devil’s advocates.” Among the best recent examples is the way some lawyers and others who promote their views of sexual matters in public venues have been making the outlandish claim — as devil’s advocates, they say — that the age of consent to sex for youngsters, and young girls in particular, ought to be lowered if we’re to be consistent with the state laws and judicial rulings enabling younger women and girls to have safe and legal abortions without the consent of parents, guardians or other adults.

Dahlia Lithwick is joined by Michele Goodwin, Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, for a wide-reaching conversation about race and gender and the stories America tells itself so it can sleep at night. ... This week’s show also features excerpts from a live discussion Dahlia moderated at 92nd Street Ywith Heidi Schreck (What the Constitution Means to Me) and professor Laurence Tribe (Harvard Law School).

After so much waiting—a hundred and twenty-four days, to be precise, since Robert Mueller’s report was delivered—perhaps it was bound to be a disappointment.   ... On Tuesday night, Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who had been one of the President’s toughest critics and an outspoken proponent of impeachment, tweeted that he expected Mueller’s testimony to “shatter” the “mirage” of no collusion, no obstruction that has been Trump’s mantra since the report was released. By early Wednesday afternoon, Tribe recognized that it hadn’t happened. “Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster,” he wrote. “Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.” Tribe felt better by the late afternoon, arguing that Mueller was issuing a “loud wakeup call” on Russian interference. But the damage was done.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: Don’t let anybody fool you: We are engaged in an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to quote the Constitution. The inquiry began on Friday, July 26. No fireworks, no fanfare — omitted for fear of frightening the natives. But the message was loud and clear in the House Judiciary Committee’s court petition for access to redacted material in the Mueller report, and its intention to compel testimony from relevant witnesses. Articles of impeachment have been formally referred to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration, House counsel Douglas Letter said in the Friday filing to U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. That consideration, the committee has now informed the court, is underway, as is consideration of whether to recommend its own articles of impeachment.