Laurence Tribe

...The tragedy in Parkland was the 18th school shooting this year. Over the past 17 years, there have been more than 185 shootings at schools and universities, according to a report by the Chicago Tribune. But this time, the response has been different. In the 14 days since Nikolas Cruz, 19, allegedly set off a school fire alarm and gunned down victims as they left their classrooms, their fellow students and scores of others around the country have staged walkouts and other protests demanding that lawmakers and the Trump administration do something to curb the epidemic of violence...But Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, told Courthouse News that a legal challenge to an order banning bump stocks wouldn’t fly. “Nor do I think any new constitutional amendment dealing with guns makes the slightest bit of sense,” he said.

Leaving the gun debate to others, I propose that we focus on something more easily fixable about the Florida shooting: the epic failure of data integration that allowed this tragedy to happen...Data management might raise the hackles of civil libertarians. But Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told me we should be able to satisfy those concerns: “None of the data points you’re talking about involve anything terribly private. The fact that he was doing target practice and shooting cats in the neighborhood and squirrels was hardly a private matter. The fact that he posted his desire to be a professional school shooter, he was exposing that to the world. He was essentially crying out, ‘Somebody stop me!’ And it is unfortunate, unfortunate puts it mildly, that the dots were not adequately connected. We shouldn’t underestimate the magnitude of the task the FBI has. They get hundreds and thousands of leads, some of which may be at least as alarming as this but don’t end up in school shootings. But, I do think we can do better than we’ve done.”

An op-ed by Jonathan Capehart: I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but I’ve been nursing one since the start of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. My dark theory involves Russian tampering with actual votes. ...“You’re far from nuts,” replied Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe (emphasis his), who elaborated on the concrete constitutional point made by Toobin. “There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that would remotely permit redoing a fraudulently stolen presidential election – whether in the days of Mayor [Richard] Daley and JFK monkeying with the votes in Illinois in 1960, or in the days of [Vladimir] Putin’s grotesque intervention throughout America in 2016, which I’m sure altered the result although the latest indictments pointedly avoid that issue and Mueller’s mandate doesn’t encompass it,” Tribe told me. “What this means is that, in addition to the impossibility of ever knowing for sure whether the [2016] outcome…was altered by Putin’s information war on our democracy, the truth is that, even if we could be certain that it was, we’d have no constitutional remedy.”

In an interview with Michael Smerconish, HLS Professor Laurence Tribe discusses why restrictions on guns are fully compatible with the Second Amendment.

Students, faculty, and administrators at the Law School say they are pleased Harvard’s 29th president will be one of their own. University President-elect Lawrence S. Bacow, who will take office after President Drew G. Faust steps down in June, graduated from the Law School with a J.D. in 1976. He also holds two degrees from the Kennedy School...John F. Manning ’82, dean of the Law School, wrote in an emailed statement that he is “delighted” with Bacow’s appointment and “look[s] forward to working with him.”...Manning’s predecessor as dean, Martha L. Minow, wrote in an email that she thinks Bacow’s legal training has equipped him well to lead universities like Tufts, and now, Harvard. “Larry Bacow is not only a proven, effective leader in higher education who passionately cares about access, inclusion, and excellence; he is also genuinely perceptive and wise,” she wrote...“Larry Bacow wasn’t my student, but I wish he had been,” [Laurence] Tribe wrote in an email. “He’s a wonderful choice as Harvard’s next President and I look forward to getting to know him. Just listening to one of his long-form interviews is a source of inspiration and comfort. His background and vision seem ideal for this difficult time of turmoil and transition.”...Jyoti Jasrasaria ’12 [`18], a third-year law student who chaired the student committee that advised the presidential search, said the committee reached out to students across the University, including law students, to solicit input about the search. “Personally, I think, based on the outreach that I did to students along with the rest of the committee over the course of the past few months, that what we have seen and heard from Larry Bacow so far it seems like he is going to be a really good president,” Jasrasaria said...Historically, the Law School has shown a tendency to strike out on its own and occasionally depart from University-wide policy. Jacob R. Steiner [`18], a third-year Law student who served as a Law School representative on the student advisory committee, said he thinks Bacow’s experience at HLS will translate into a deeper understanding of the school’s specific needs and a stronger relationship between the Law School and the University.

Donald Trump has turned the political world upside down, again and again, like a kid flipping a coin. Every day we wake up to either a new scandal or several lingering ones. It is astounding. It is maddening. It is numbing...As the Harvard professor of constitutional law Laurence H. Tribe wrote on Twitter: “F.B.I. director Wray just testified in the Senate that — despite Russia’s ongoing intrusions into our electoral systems — Potus has never charged the F.B.I. with protecting U.S. elections from Russia! Let that sink in. That’d be like F.D.R. doing nothing in response to Pearl Harbor.” Let me be clear: Any president who refuses to protect Americans from a foreign threat is himself a domestic threat.

Politico reports: Jared Kushner, a White House aide and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, appears to have drawn more money out of three separate lines of credit in the months after he joined the White House last year, a newly released document shows...In sum, Kushner has huge and growing debt, many suspicious Russian contacts and a close relationship (perhaps second only to Ivanka’s) with Trump. “The more money Kushner owes, especially to lenders or guarantors who do not have America’s best interests at heart, the more he and his father-in-law the President are subject to compromising pressures at best and outright blackmail at worst,” constitutional lawyer Larry Tribe tells me.

The Trump Organization could soon finalize an agreement to partner on a large construction project in the Dominican Republic, according to a report from Fast Company. The news comes despite the fact that President Donald Trump pledged not to pursue foreign deals while he is in office in order to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Experts say that Trump is creating the perception that his administration is corrupt by failing to divest from his private businesses...Still, Larry Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law, said the project adds to a long list of Trump's conflicts of interest. “More opportunities for Trump to violate the Foreign Emoluments Clause and, for good measure, to break his promises to the world—along with his Oath of Office. Par for the course with this president," Tribe told Newsweek.

An op-ed by Norman Eisen, Caroline Fredrickson, and Laurence Tribe. As public scrutiny exposes deep flaws in the memo from the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, about alleged F.B.I. surveillance abuses, the committee’s Republicans are increasingly downplaying its significance. Mr. Nunes’s colleagues are right to seek some distance from this caper — not to mention other similar memos he has hinted at releasing. That’s because by writing and releasing the memo, the chairman may just have landed himself, and his staff members, in the middle of Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

State courts could be a new battleground for groups challenging voter maps after the U.S. Supreme Court opted against intervening in a partisan gerrymandering fight in Pennsylvania. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. refused Feb. 5 to set aside a Pennsylvania Supreme Court order striking down the state’s Republican-drawn congressional voting districts. GOP lawmakers had argued the state court usurped the General Assembly’s redistricting power in its Jan. 22 order...Alito’s move here also suggests the high court is hesitant to depart from its recent precedent and “thereby trigger something akin to another Bush v. Gore explosion in which the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be intruding on state sovereignty,” constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe, of Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg Law.

Republican antics concerning the memo drafted by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) threaten to damage our national security, the FBI and the entire congressional oversight process. Meanwhile, President Trump faces a constant drip-drip-drip of new revelations giving heft to a possible obstruction-of-justice charge...Taking a step back, the Nunes lunacy concerning release of the memo may well do more harm to Republicans and implicate both the White House and Nunes himself. Constitutional lawyer Laurence H. Tribe says, “Both the President’s release of the memo despite the warning of FBI Director [Christopher] Wray and the actions of Nunes in concocting a phony smear of Rosenstein seem to me to be important parts of an ongoing conspiracy to obstruct justice.”

The Justice Department has effectively shuttered an Obama-era office dedicated to making legal aid accessible to all citizens, according to two people familiar with the situation. The division, the Office for Access to Justice, began as an initiative in 2010 under former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to increase and improve legal resources for indigent litigants in civil, criminal and tribal courts...The office gained prominence when the Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe became a senior counselor, a position created by the Obama administration.

After reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, at the direction of the president, unsuccessfully applied pressure on FBI Director Christopher A. Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, McCabe has announced that he intends to depart earlier than planned...So what does this all mean? “If it turns out that McCabe was pressed to accelerate his planned early retirement by a month or so by Sessions or on behalf of Trump, this would strengthen the argument for a pattern of obstruction of justice,” constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe tells me. “But without proof of such pressure, this development isn’t likely to have major significance.”

...First, Trump’s failed attempt to fire Mueller was apparently known to many individuals, indicating both a lack of discipline on Trump’s part (what else did he say to these people?) and possible waiver of the any privilege...Second, “Attempted obstruction is obstruction even when the perpetrator backs down after failing to get his consigliere to do the deed for him,” constitutional lawyer Larry Tribe emails me. “In addition, it’s part of a persistent pattern of obstruction. And it’s also strong evidence of consciousness of guilt.”

Trump returns to U.S. amid bombshell report he tried to fire Mueller. Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe on why that firing would be a “crime” and whether Trump could now be indicted for obstructing justice.

The saga of Donald Trump and Robert Mueller took a dramatic new turn on Thursday night when the New York Times first reported that the president had ordered the special counsel to be fired in June last year...We asked legal experts whether they think Mueller now has enough evidence to pursue obstruction of justice charges against the president, or if a different outcome is more likely...[Laurence Tribe]: The president’s foiled effort to rid himself of the Mueller investigation in June 2017, and his now-exposed invention of patently phony excuses for doing so—much as he had invented fake reasons for firing Comey before admitting his actual Russia-related reason on national television—eliminates any possible defense that Trump was clueless about the relevant rules...[Alan Dershowitz]: A president cannot be accused of obstruction for merely exercising his constitutional authority regardless of his motive...[Alex Whiting]: In an obstruction case against President Trump, it is unlikely that there will be a single piece of smoking-gun evidence.

President Donald Trump possibly obstructed justice or intimidated a witness if he did indeed tell Steve Bannon not to answer certain questions during his interview with the House Intelligence Committee, according to Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who worked at the Department of Justice under President Barack Obama...“Instructing Bannon to invoke a non-existent ‘executive privilege’ for pre-presidential communications—if that’s what Trump in fact did—would be legally improper at the very best, and could well constitute a form of witness tampering, and, in conjunction with Trump’s pattern of interference with the official probes into his campaign and the transition, an obstruction of justice,” Tribe told Newsweek by email.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to take a “strong look” at the nation’s libels laws in the wake of the publication of the best-selling “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which portrays him as a dysfunctional leader presiding over an administration in chaos...Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, responded Wednesday by suggesting “President Trump seems not to know that under current law public officials like him can already sue for damage to reputation caused by knowingly false statements. “That standard, which is the one Trump says he’d like to enact, is the very one that was articulated by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan, decided in 1964,” Tribe said.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has told President Trump’s legal team that his office is likely to seek an interview with the president, triggering a discussion among his attorneys about how to avoid a sit-down encounter or set limits on such a session, according to two people familiar with the talks...“The risk is that Trump would either incriminate himself, commit perjury, or lie — unless he truly has committed no offense and has nothing to fear from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” constitutional lawyer Laurence H. Tribe tells me. “I regard that ‘unless’ as extremely implausible.” He adds, “That said, I would’ve have him plead the Fifth. That option isn’t realistically available to a sitting president, who simply can’t afford the steep political price that taking the Fifth would inevitably exact.”

Congressman Devin Nunes has been running around Washington acting like a guilty maniac for most of 2017. He used his role as the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try and sabotage the Trump/Russia investigation, and even got removed from legislation, which caused him to launch his own rogue investigation into clearing Trump. New evidence now suggests that Nunes was in on the Trump-Russia conspiracy from the beginning, and Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law Professor, thinks Nunes is going to be arrested for it...Trump put Devin Nunes on his transition team in hopes that he would help protect him against Nunes’ committee when they came digging for evidence.

A response to Laurence Tribe by Alan Dershowitz. My colleague Larry Tribe’s response is unfortunately not responsive to my arguments. He erects several straw men, which he proceeds to knock down, but he fails to respond to my most compelling arguments. Two striking examples: Larry correctly points out that congressional immunity is based explicitly on the text of the Constitution, but he fails to deal with my other primary example—judicial immunity.