Laurence Tribe

It’s as if they never heard the case at all. The supreme court’s 4-4 split Thursday in United States v Texas leaves in place a lower court’s ruling that blocked Barack Obama’s immigration plan. When the court is equally divided, no precedent is set and the lower court’s opinion stands...To avoid wasting time on something that might end up evenly split, Johnson said that he thinks the court “will avoid really important cases”...Laurence H Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, concurred in a recent public lecture. Tribe said, “Nobody wants to grant [a writ of certiorari] in the case where the court will just waste its precious time, where in the end it will be deadlocked.” If the court vacancy continues into next year, Tribe cautioned that it may appear that the justices are in agreement, but that may just be a result of accepting less controversial cases, and it will be hard to tell how many could have split 4-4. He said: “No one will be able to count how many there are, because it will be the dog that didn’t bark.”

If state Rep. Byron Rushing, a Democrat from Boston's South End, has his way, laws that criminalize adultery, vagrancy, fornication, sodomy, blasphemy, Communism, and more will soon be repealed...Getting rid of the outdated laws is low on the list of priorities currently being juggled by the Legislature, Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe told WGBH News. "The danger that such laws will be pulled out of the drawer and enforced against unwitting members of disadvantaged groups is often overlooked," Tribe said. "The effort to clean up and update outmoded and partly or wholly unconstitutional laws as Byron Rushing is doing remains an important one, not least because the presence of dead wood in our lawbooks contributes to a corrosive cynicism and a scofflaw attitude," Tribe said.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Scott Greytak. The Federal Election Commission, the federal agency charged with overseeing US elections and yet paralyzed by partisanship, will host a first-of-its-kind public forum Thursday on the threat posed by foreign-influenced corporations that spend on American elections. The meeting comes less than one month after the kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced it would make a $3.5 billion investment in Uber, the US-based ride-hailing service and ubiquitous election spender. Now, as the specter of foreign influence comes to haunt even our local elections, the government entity with the most to do — at a time when its power is declining — has put the issue squarely before the public-policymaking consciousness.

If there's one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on when it comes to guns, it's their proclaimed respect for the Second Amendment. Ah, but then there's the trickier matter of what they think those 27 words mean. Lawyers, scholars, judges, politicians and ordinary Americans have been puzzling over that question for much of two centuries...Harvard Law scholar Laurence Tribe says it's time for partisans to stop oversimplifying. Supporters of strong gun regulation act as if Supreme Court rulings affirming the right to bear arms were "just aberrations," he says, and opponents act like any regulation is a slippery slope to the day when "Big Brother will be breaking down our doors and taking away all our guns."

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe and Joshua Matz. With 24 cases still to decide this term and only eight justices to decide them, the Supreme Court has mustered all its resources to find (or manufacture) consensus. Many rulings — even those with lopsided majorities — hint strongly of compromise. So far, the justices have mostly decided not to decide, drafting narrow opinions that leave big questions unanswered. It is in vogue to treat this term as a one-off, yet another result of madhouse election-year politics. On that view, the court just needs to tread water a while longer. In the meantime, each of us can hope that justices who share our particular vision will end up with a majority. But when “exceptional” circumstances endure long enough, advance powerful political interests and are tolerated by the public, they can easily become the new normal.

ISPs wired and wireless have submitted a paper to the FCC by constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe that says the commission's broadband privacy proposal threatens speech rights. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, CTIA and USTelecom commissioned the paper, which they submitted Friday, the deadline for initial comments in the proceeding. "The FCC’s proposed rules would violate the First Amendment," Tribe concluded. "At minimum, they raise a host of grave constitutional questions and should not be adopted." The FCC is proposing to require ISPs to get affirmative (opt in) permission from subs to share information with third parties in most instances, a requirement not placed on edge providers like Google and Facebook for their own data collection and monetizing. Tribe is a voice of experience on the CPNI (customer proprietary network information) issue, the groups point out, having successfully challenged the voice CPNI order in US West Communications, Inc. v. FCC. He says the FCC proposal clearly triggers First Amendment scrutiny and clearly does not fare well in that examination. "The proposal runs afoul of fundamental First Amendment limits on the FCC’s authority to regulate customer information," he said.

Donald Trump’s list of 11 potential Supreme Court nominees seemed intended to reassure some of longtime conservatives still jittery about his populist-fueled candidacy. However, what immediately caught the eye of many legal observers was the absence of many judges considered legal luminaries on the right. While Trump's list pulled in five judges from various state supreme courts, he passed over some of those long considered top contenders for any future Republican Supreme Court pick, like 6th Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh and former Solicitor General Paul Clement...“The missing names ... are even more interesting than the names on the list,“ said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, once considered a top Supreme Court possibility for Democrats.

Conservative claims that Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s rulings prove he is anti-business are "silly" "nonsense," according to administrative law experts...“If you look at cases involving direct regulation by government agencies, his pattern of voting in those cases is entirely standard,” said Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School. “It’s the common approach because ever since the Chevron decision the idea has been that Congress can’t always address all of the details that arise in the regulatory state so they give a lot of leeway to expert agencies in deciding how best to carry out the underlying purpose that Congress had in enacting statutes. Therefore, the idea is when agencies resolve those ambiguities in ways that are at least rational and don’t cross any boundaries that are laid down, federal judges usually defer.”

Call this the tale of two different sets of state attorneys general: one group represents coal producing and consuming states and the other speaks for states that adversely affected by those who burn coal. While it’s all playing out in the nation’s legal arenas, the efforts are surely political. After all, the office of attorney general is known as the “aspiring governors.”  ,,, “The absence of EPA legal authority in this case makes the Clean Power Plan, quite literally, a ‘power grab,’” says Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, in testimony before Congress last year.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. A one-line opinion. That's what the Supreme Court gave us this week, in what many expected to be one of the biggest cases of the year. At stake in Freidrichs v. California Teachers Association was the ability of public-sector unions to collect fees from non-joiners unwilling to pay for the unions' collective bargaining efforts. Some thought the fate of the American labor movement hinged on the outcome. The court had mountains of materials to consider. But it said only this: "The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court." If the Republican Senate keeps stonewalling Judge Merrick Garland's nomination, pretending that it can discharge its advice and consent duty by doing nothing, get used to hearing that sentence. This year, contraception, abortion, voting rights, religious freedom and affirmative action are on the court's docket. Next year and beyond we can expect cases on guns, campaign finance and the balance between security and privacy. But an incomplete court will deadlock 4-4 on many of these issues.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. In nearly five decades teaching law, I’ve been lucky enough to know many Supreme Court justices. I’ve counted them among my friends, colleagues, students, and research assistants. I’ve seen that success on the court requires diverse traits: deep knowledge of the law, humility about the judicial role, an understanding of and concern for law’s real-world impact, and the ability to build coalitions on the bench. Having known Chief Judge Merrick Garland for over 40 years, I’m confident he possesses all these qualities and more. He will be among our nation’s finest justices, and I strongly encourage the Senate to end its obstructionism and confirm him to the court.

An article by Laurence Tribe. Suppose that Trump continues to rack up delegates in the Republican primaries but resistance to his candidacy is growing in the party’s barely surviving establishment. At the Republican convention—to be held 18-21st July in Cleveland, Ohio, to choose that party’s presidential nominee—not all state delegates are obliged by the rules to vote for the candidate who won their state’s primary. Moreover, the selection of those delegates is also an internal party matter—and many in the Republican Party are wary of Trump. Thus, Trump could win the largest number of votes in the Republican primary process, but still not obtain the party’s nomination to run for President. Political commentators are speculating about a contested Republican convention between Trump and a Republican establishment favourite like John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio, or even Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a more doctrinaire conservative than the relatively unpredictable Trump. All sorts of procedural gambits could be deployed at the convention in a pitched battle to determine the party’s nominee.

The intense political wrangling over Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court has overshadowed the traditional purpose of Senate confirmation — a serious look at the career and life of the contender...But who is Merrick Garland, and how did he come to be the kind of judge selected to navigate this unprecedented confirmation fight? Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe has unique experience to answer the question. He taught both Garland and Obama when they were students at the prestigious school. He continues to advise the White House on legal issues. Tribe discussed Garland's nomination with MSNBC.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor and former teacher of Merrick Garland, discusses Garland’s record and his nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama. He spoke with June Grasso and Michael Best on Bloomberg Radio’s “Bloomberg Law.”

Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, has achieved a rare distinction in a polarized era. He has sat on a prominent appeals court for almost two decades, participated in thousands of cases, and yet earned praise from across the political spectrum...Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said Judge Garland’s dissenting opinion was “particularly admirable.” “That dissent is a fine example of an opinion that combines impeccable legal analysis with a deep sense of humanity,” he said.

President Obama has selected moderate federal appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by last month’s sudden passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, the White House has confirmed, setting up an epic battle with Republicans who have vowed not to hold a vote on any nominee. ..."Judge Garland is a brilliant jurist whom I've admired ever since he was my constitutional law student," Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe, a foremost scholar on constitutional law who had Garland as a student, told the Herald in an email this morning. "His modesty, humility, and moderation make him a particularly suitable choice for these divided times."

Gearing up for what will likely be a major political battle, on Wednesday President Obama, J.D. ’91, nominated Merrick B. Garland ’74, J.D. ’77, to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of influential Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, L.L.B. ’60, last month....Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at HLS, discussed the nomination with the Gazette via email, along with the upcoming clash between the Obama administration and the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee, many of whose members want the next president to fill the court seat...TRIBE: Merrick Garland is a brilliant jurist whom I’ve known well and admired greatly ever since he was my student in advanced constitutional law in 1975-76.

Be wary of any promises from Republican presidential candidates to abolish federal entities such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department, legal scholars told Bloomberg BNA, because they will not come true...“This is just red meat to their supporters, of course, and cannot be unilaterally accomplished,” Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School, told Bloomberg BNA. “Presidents can ask Congress for skeletal agency budgets, try to stymie or slow agency work or control them and weaken regulation through centralized White House review, but they cannot eliminate agencies or zero out budgets by fiat, which is what these candidates are promising.” ...Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor and legal scholar, told Bloomberg BNA in an e-mail that the agency's origins are “legally irrelevant” to whether it could now be abolished. “The fact that an executive order by President Nixon preceded the Acts of Congress constituting the current EPA, delegating regulatory powers to that agency, authorizing its expenditures and appropriating the funds in its budget doesn't make it vulnerable to unilateral presidential abolition,” Tribe said.