Laurence Tribe

A group of lawyers on Tuesday filed a motion in federal court in New York asking a judge to force the Trump administration to disclose a list of any individuals detained by his ‘extreme vetting’ Executive Order. The motion also seeks the return of any individuals who were removed from the United States as a result of the order. The lawyers, in court paperwork filed Tuesday afternoon, accuse the Trump administration of failing to comply with prior judicial orders issued in the case..."If the allegations in this legal memorandum — allegations that are shocking but seem entirely plausible on their face and appear to be supported by the affidavits and other materials referenced in the memo — are indeed true, then the President and those acting under his direction have a great deal to answer for and are skirting ever closer to outright defiance of lawful judicial orders or perhaps even crossing the line. Needless to say, such defiance is powerful grist for the awesome mill of impeachment,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe told LawNewz.com.

When it comes to the study of the Constitution, there is no one better to talk to than Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe...Listen to the podcast to find out why I called Tribe the Beyonce of constitutional law professors, hear what he thinks Democrats should do about the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the high court and what he expects the justices to do if presented with the legal excesses of Trump.

If the #DeleteUber campaign taught the tech industry anything, it’s that trying to stay neutral on President Trump’s refugee ban can quickly turn into a marketing catastrophe. Little wonder then that late last night, 97 tech companies—including Apple, Facebook, Google, and, yes, Uber—filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit arguing against the ban. In the face of the outcry against Trump’s executive order, such a grand gesture makes for good optics. But legal experts say the brief is about more than Silicon Valley’s public image. In this case, tech’s support could help the plaintiffs prevail against Trump...the case is probably headed to the US Supreme Court, where business has influenced major decisions in the past. “In the most important affirmative action case decided by the Supreme Court in recent years, Grutter v. Bollinger, a brief from the Business Roundtable and another from the military are known to have made a significant difference,” says Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School.

...Democrats should take a page out of the Republican playbook and fight President Trump over his nominee to the Supreme Court, not the nominee himself. And the very practical reason for this tactic came to light during my interview with renowned Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. In the theater that will be the battle over federal judge Neil Gorsuch, only one person watching the drama will matter: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Just due to the age of the justices, Tribe thinks there could be three vacancies that need to be filled during Trump’s presidency. But Tribe focused on Kennedy. And because he is the Supreme Court’s swing vote, the battle to seat his successor is bound to make all other confirmation fights look tame. But, as Tribe explained, Kennedy’s decision to retire could hinge on how messy the Gorsuch confirmation battle gets.

Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a renowned professor at Harvard Law School, believes that President Donald Trump‘s handling of the litigation surrounding his controversial executive order on immigration could end up being grounds for impeachment...Tribe is specifically referring to allegations that the Trump administration purposely slow walked a Virginia judge’s order to provide travelers detained at Dulles airport last weekend with lawyers...This could well be deliberate and knowing failure by the President to comply with a facially lawful court order,” Professor Tribe explained to LawNewz.com.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. As our Supreme Court weighed the First Amendment implications of brutal video games back in 2011, Justice Samuel Alito cut in with a sarcastic jab: “Well, I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them?” This wasn’t the first time that scientific advances had divided these super-conservative justices—and that speaks to a crucial point. While the confirmation hearings for Judge Neil Gorsuch will involve familiar debates over how to read the Constitution, judicial orientations toward new technology can scramble the fields in surprising ways.

Did President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration ban Muslims from the country on the basis of their religion?...Laurence Tribe, a prominent liberal constitutional scholar at Harvard University, called the order "barely disguised religious discrimination against Muslims and religious preference for Christians." The order by its own terms establishes preferential treatment for refugees identified with "minority religions" in their country of origin.

President Trump's executive order has been halted temporarily -- but what does it mean long-term for visa holders? Lawrence discusses with constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe and ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe tells Greta Van Susteren that President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees is “unconstitutional from the top down.”

When Barack Obama and Neil Gorsuch were contemporaries at Harvard law school as the eighties rolled into the nineties, they found themselves on a tense campus riven with ideological discord...Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe called Gorsuch “a very, very bright judge” whom he also recalled from his university days was not just learned but “very personable”. He says he knew Obama better at the time, as he was his research assistant, and got to know Gorsuch better later on, after he became a judge...At Oxford, he studied under John Finnis, the controversial Catholic conservative professor and strident proponent of natural law. “That’s telling,” said Harvard law professor Charles Fried. Fried had taught Obama and knew Gorsuch because he was a prominent member of the Federalist Society at the university, of which Fried was a faculty adviser.

Laurence Tribe a Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School explains the reasons for the foreign emoluments clause. The lawsuit against the Trump Administration focusing on the emoluments clause. The favors Trump receives from abroad and why that is an ongoing constitutional violation. What happens when the President does not follow the law? Why discriminating on the basis of religion is unconstitutional. The many ways the Muslim ban is unconstitutional. At what point are we in a constitutional crisis? Is impeachment the only answer.

Less than two weeks ago, Donald Trump stood in the shadow of the US Capitol and took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Now, 11 days later, critics steeped in constitutional law from across the ideological spectrum are already saying the new president has violated sections of that document...“I wouldn’t say he’s bumping into the Constitution, he’s crashing through it,” said Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who has joined litigation against the new president on a separate matter. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime.”

The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to be the next Supreme Court justice came as little surprise Tuesday night after days of speculation that he was the president’s leading candidate...Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe said via email of the nominee “that he’s extremely smart, knows federal law and procedure inside and out, writes elegantly and with nuance, is at the top of his game analytically, and totally idolizes the late Justice Scalia and what he identifies as Scalia’s almost regal indifference to the practical human consequences of his rulings.”

Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, talks with Rachel Maddow about the remarkable nature of Donald Trump's firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, and the threat Trump's action represents to the independence of the Department of Justice.

An old-fashioned word spoken by America’s Founding Fathers is suddenly back en vogue: Emoluments. The reason? President Donald Trump’s vast business empire — and his refusal to place that empire in a blind trust. The Emoluments Clause is a provision in the Constitution that prohibits federal officials from receiving money or gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. As Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe recently wrote in a legal brief, Trump “appears to be on a direct collision course with Emoluments Clause.”...“The Founders viewed it as absolutely central to our nation’s sovereignty and survival,” said Tribe, a leading constitutional law scholar.

Did President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration ban Muslims from the country on the basis of their religion? That will be a central question when federal judges dig more deeply into the constitutionality of the order, signed on January 27. If the answer is yes, it appears vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge...Laurence Tribe, a prominent liberal constitutional scholar at Harvard University, called the order “barely disguised religious discrimination against Muslims and religious preference for Christians.” The order by its own terms establishes preferential treatment for refugees identified with “minority religions” in their country of origin.

On Monday, ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued President Donald Trump for violating the Emoluments Clause, a constitutional provision that prohibits federal officials from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign state without congressional approval....But in a conversation on Monday, [Laurence] Tribe told me he’s optimistic that the courts won’t punt on the case. “This is a perfect example of something where the courts are quite ready to weigh in,” he said. “It’s clear that the old approach—treating every politically sensitive question as a potential ‘political question’—is gone. Once we get to the merits, the court will not say, ‘Ah, but we can’t decide that question; it’s only for Congress to decide.’ The Constitution states very clearly that foreign emoluments are absolutely forbidden unless Congress chooses to give its consent. And Congress has not given consent.”

Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe has joined a legal team suing President Donald Trump, arguing that Trump’s ownership of the Trump Organization violates a clause of the United States Constitution...Tribe said in an interview that current arrangements fails to fix violations of the Emoluments Clause. “The Emoluments Clause has nothing to do with how busy you are managing, it’s about whether you own something,” Tribe said. “As long as he maintains ownership of this vast business empire that can be benefited financially in dozens and hundreds of ways by many countries that want to gain his favor, he hasn’t avoided the Emoluments Clause.”

Unlike his predecessor, Donald Trump did not teach constitutional law before becoming president. Yet owing to some of his positions on individual rights, Mr Trump’s ascension to the presidency promises new opportunities for Americans to become more familiar with their founding document. A lawsuit filed on January 23rd in a federal district court in New York may add a rather obscure constitutional provision to the layman’s legal vocabulary: the foreign emoluments clause...The formidable team assembled to pursue this legal action includes...Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor. The 45th president’s plan to hand his businesses over to his two adult sons rather than selling them off, according to Mr Tribe, makes him subject to “the patronage of foreign powers”. Just days into his presidency, “[i]t is already clear that nothing short of judicial force” will resolve Mr Trump’s conflicts of interests, Mr Tribe added.

It's been a busy few days for the Trump Administration—the latest executive order he has signed formally withdraws the US from the TPP trade deal. But Donald Trump is also having to contend with continued criticism over his business dealings—with a group of leading constitutional and legal experts slapping him with a lawsuit overnight...Guest: Larry Tribe.