Laurence Tribe

An op-ed by Albert W. Alschuler and Laurence H. Tribe (corrected version). Federal law bars billionaire Robert Mercer from giving as much as $6,000 to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Thirty-nine years ago, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court upheld limits on contributions to candidates. But federal law did not block Mercer from giving $11 million to a super PAC whose mission is to urge voters to support Cruz. A federal statute formerly limited contributions to super PACs to $5,000, but in 2010 a federal court held this statute unconstitutional.

With the semester coming to a close, some Harvard Law School students are continuing their push for changes they say will improve the school’s treatment of minority students, about a month after a high-profile racially charged incident shook campus...On Friday, more than a dozen students hosted a “teach-in” in the lobby of the office of Law School Dean Martha L. Minow, on whom students have called to do more to address their concerns. For roughly an hour, students sat in the office and discussed the possibility of creating a critical race theory program at the school, according to Alexander J. Clayborne, one of the students organizing the protests. Clayborne said they spoke with Minow...In an emailed statement, Minow wrote that she has been meeting with students and faculty members to “ensure inclusive and fair consideration of any ideas for change,” adding that she met with students for several hours last week and again Monday. Law School Dean of Students Marcia L. Sells, too, wrote in a statement that she and Minow have been working closely with students to discuss “what processes can work to achieve change at HLS.”...Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe argued in an email that changing the seal of a school is very different from changing a title. “Renaming the position of ‘House Master’ to something less problematic like ‘Dean of the House’ is a lot easier than changing the school’s seal, which isn’t within the control of any dean or even the university president,” Tribe wrote.

In the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino, California, prominent conservative politicians have again squashed momentum to step up gun regulation, using the Second Amendment to make their case for maintaining the status quo....Mic spoke with several top constitutional lawyers who reject outright the notion that the Second Amendment prohibits increased limitations on access to guns. Instead, they argue that the Constitution actually allows for a number of gun regulations which have been proposed in Congress, including universal background checks and bans on assault weapons..."The right to bear arms was thought to ensure well-regulated state militias," Harvard constitutional law professor Richard J. Fallon told Mic. "Regulation of firearms was permissible as long as it did not interfere with state militias."...Other constitutional lawyers go even further, saying that although conservatives may not want to admit it, Heller actually paved the way for more gun control restrictions. "I believe 'assault weapons' are indeed what the court had in mind when it wrote in Heller about 'dangerous and unusual weapons," Harvard Law professor and renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe told Mic. "I believe military-style assault weapons will never be protected by the court in the name of the Second Amendment."

An op-ed by Albert W. Alschuler and Laurence H. Tribe. Federal law bars billionaire Robert Mercer from giving as much as $6,000 to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. Thirty-nine years ago, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court upheld limits on contributions to candidates. But federal law did not block Mercer from giving $11 million to a super PAC whose mission is to urge voters to support Cruz. A federal statute formerly limited contributions to super PACs to $5,000, but in 2010 a federal court held this statute unconstitutional...No sane legislator would vote in favor of our regime of campaign financing, and no legislator ever has. The United States has this topsy-turvy regime because the federal courts have held that the First Amendment requires it.

...The Food and Drug Administration sees lab-developed tests as the Wild West of medicine, citing examples of inaccurate tests it claims put patients at risk. The agency is trying to toughen its supervision next year after largely leaving the business alone for decades and focusing most of its oversight on traditional testing methods. Lab-developed test providers are fighting back. They say their tests are accurate and even lifesaving. Industry officials say heightened regulation could stifle innovation...Also on the industry’s side are Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, and Paul D. Clement, a former U.S. Solicitor General who now is in private practice and a lecturer at Georgetown University Law Center. They say the FDA “lacks the statutory authority to regulate laboratory-developed testing services,” according to a report earlier this year paid for by the trade group.

Donald Trump has faced a torrent of criticism after releasing a policy proposal that would ban all Muslims from entering the United States.  His fellow Republicans haven't held back: Marco Rubio called it "offensive," and Jeb Bush called it "unhinged." A number of others — politicians, pundits, experts and regular folks — have called it unconstitutional. ..Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, says he's certain that Trump's proposal would violate the Constitution. Yes, he says, some court decisions have found that the some parts of the protective mantle of the Constitution don't extend to foreigners. But according to Tribe's interpretation, some of the most well-known protections — such as theFirst Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process — are not limited by nationality or geography. "The [Fifth Amendment] applies to U.S. conduct with regard to any 'person,' wherever located and of whatever citizenship," Tribe writes in an email. "And [the First Amendment] is a flat prohibition on actions that the U.S. government may take, including those actions that respect 'an establishment of religion' or prohibit 'the free exercise thereof.' "

Since Republican front-runner Donald Trump called Monday for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” he has been met with widespread criticism from politicians, policymakers and experts. Rivals slammed the discriminatory proposal as “reprehensible,” “unhinged,” and even “fascist” — while legal scholars noted it is almost certainly unconstitutional. While a blanket plan for religious discrimination violates several general provisions of the U.S. Constitution, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe stresses that Trump’s attempts to justify his plan’s legality Monday actually further revealed its shortcomings. The legal scholar had the following exchange with MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber.

It is widely regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in America's history. But the internment of Japanese citizens during WWII would be Donald Trump's best hope of passing his ban on Muslims entering the US. Constitutional experts said that internment was the closest precedent that Trump could turn to were he to try and implement his policy - even though it would be 'constitutionally dead on arrival'...Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, said that the attempt to use the 'shameful and now universally reviled' internment of Japanese-Americans showed 'just how desperate Trump's supporters are to find some precedent for his wild idea'. He said: 'The court of history has long since condemned both that decision and Justice Black's pretense that the removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast was truly a 'pressing public necessity' rather than an egregious example of the 'racial antagonism' that Black purported to condemn. The US government, through the Solicitor General, has since formally apologized for its role in getting the Supreme Court to uphold the racist curfew and expulsion orders.'

Spoiler alert: no. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslim immigrants from the United States, a nation founded by immigrants, does not just offend American sensibilities — it would violate U.S. and international law, according to experts. Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the American Constitution Society, said Tuesday that Trump’s proposed ban would be illegal, exceptionally difficult to implement and damaging to national security. “Donald Trump’s plan to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. — even as recently pulled back to make exceptions for U.S. citizens abroad, whether in the military or otherwise, who happen to be Muslims — would be illegal and therefore unconstitutional, as well as being a nightmare to administer,” Tribe said in an email to Yahoo News.

Donald Trump proposed a system of religious discrimination for U.S. immigration policy on Monday, advocating a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” according to a written campaign statement. The incendiary proposal was swiftly denounced by Trump’s rivals in both parties, and as a policy proposal, it is probably illegal. “I believe Trump’s unprecedented proposal would violate our Constitution,” said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, “both the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses and the equality dimension of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.” Tribe, a constitutional law expert, said Trump’s proposal also conflicts with the Constitution’s general prohibition on religious tests outside of the immigration context. “It would also conflict with the spirit of the No Religious Test Clause of Article VI,” Tribe told MSNBC Monday evening. Beyond the law, Tribe said it was also notable that using religious discrimination for immigration would be “impossible to administer” and “stupidly play into the hands of extreme Islamic terrorists.”

Americans, if your postprandial football game or James Bond movie marathon is interrupted — again and again — by presidential primary ads on Thursday, do not blame Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened a gusher of campaign cash. Blame instead a little-reported lower-court decision argued just days after Citizens United, which gave rise to the phenomenon of the super PAC, and which the Supreme Court, surprisingly, has never reviewed....Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe last week called it “comical” that super PAC contributions would be treated differently than contributions to the candidates themselves, since the supposed independence of the committees is little more than a fig leaf...The situation may be comical, but it’s also deeply damaging; Tribe called it “the plutocratic takeover of our politics.” Along with two other constitutional scholars who spoke on a panel convened by the campaign reform organization Free Speech for People (and which I moderated), Tribe believes that the SpeechNow decision is vulnerable to being overturned should a challenge be brought to the Supreme Court.

Half the state governors in America are constitutionally ignorant or shamefully demagogic. Most likely it's the latter, but some may be both..."I've gotten past the point of being astounded by grandstanding," constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe told me. "I'm sure they know better. But by their calculations, they have nothing to lose by joining a bandwagon that can't move. "It's not something a governor who cares about the law would do in great conscience, but I wonder how many governors really give a damn." I asked Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor who has argued scores of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, whether governors have any control over immigration. "None," he replied. "Absolutely none. Federal law is supreme."

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks, more than half the nation's states are vowing to bar Syrian refugees. But do they have the legal authority to do so? Harvard Law professors say the answer is clear: No.

Amid a growing controversy involving questions of accuracy and fairness, the makers of The Hunting Ground, a documentary indictment of campus sexual assaults, are defending the film, which is set to air on CNN on Nov. 22...On Nov. 19, law professors at Harvard, where another of the film’s documented incidents took place, attacked the filmmakers’ accuracy in a widely publicized joint letter that focused on the victim’s inebriation and the absence of violence in the assault. The professors wrote in a letter that was posted on The Harvard Law Record website that the film gave the impression that the accused student "like others accused in the stories featured in the film, is guilty of sexual assault by force and the use of drugs on his alleged victims, and that he, like the others accused, is a repeat sexual predator.” The professors, including prominent faculty members Jeannie C. Suk, Laurence Tribe and Randall Kennedy, noted that there have been "extensive investigations and proceedings" examining the case against the student -- at Harvard Law School, in a criminal case before the grand jury, and in criminal trial before a jury.

Governor Charlie Baker joined more than two dozen other governors Monday who said they did not want Syrian refugees to resettle in their states, citing security concerns after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris....Under federal law, the president, after consulting with Congress, sets the number of refugees admitted every year and the government works with the United Nations and nonprofits to resettle refugees around the United States. “Neither Massachusetts nor any other state can fence Syrian refugees out of the state,” said Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law scholar. “We are a union and must sink or swim together.”

Republican fury over illegal immigration and border security took on a new dimension Monday as a growing number of governors, presidential candidates and members of Congress rushed to oppose or even defy President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees. Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant...Governors can ask the State Department, the primary agency managing the refugee program, not to send Syrians to their states. But some legal scholars were adamant that the governors’ efforts to bar Syrians on their own were unconstitutional. “This is an exclusively federal issue,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University. “Under our Constitution, we sink or swim together,” he said.

The veracity of one of this year’s most talked about documentaries, “The Hunting Ground,” has been attacked by 19 Harvard Law School professors, who say the film’s portrayal of rape on college campus is distorted, specifically when it comes to their school’s handling of one particular case...“The documentary has created an important conversation about campus sexual assault,” said Diane L. Rosenfeld, a Harvard law lecturer who also appears in the film and did not sign the letter. “We need to be rolling up our sleeves and really figuring out what kind of preventative education programs to develop which create a culture of sexual respect.” But in their letter, the law professors, who include Laurence H. Tribe, Randall L. Kennedy and Jeannie C. Suk, said the film “provides a seriously false picture both of the general sexual assault phenomenon at universities and of our student,” specifically a male Harvard law student whose case is included in “The Hunting Ground.”...“This is a young human being whose life has been mauled by this process for years, and now he has to walk around campus with people saying, ‘Oh, you’re a repeat sexual offender,’ and he’s not,” said Janet Halley, one of the letter’s authors. “It’s not a documentary. It’s propaganda."

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. The principle of “equal dignity in the eyes of the law” articulated by the Supreme Court’s extraordinary same-sex marriage ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges earlier this year — that all individuals are deserving in equal measure of personal autonomy and are entitled not to have the state define their personal identities and social roles — lays the groundwork for an ongoing political and legal dialogue about the meaning of equality and an evolving understanding of the indignities that our Constitution cannot tolerate. In securing these dignitary rights of all people, Obergefell is an important landmark. But it cannot be the last word if Obergefell’s push for equal dignity for LGBTQ individuals is to point a way forward in the unending struggle for equal rights for all. If that doctrine is to signal the beginning of the end for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression – in the workplace, in housing and education, in athletics and public accommodations, in immigration and adoption, and in the construction of families — then the struggle will have to be waged not just in the courts but in regulatory and legislative bodies, as well as in the cultural arena of public discourse.

Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 argued Monday that holding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 2010 case Citizens United v. FEC primarily responsible for campaign finance issues is “a dangerous oversimplification.” In a large Law School classroom where attendees outnumbered seats, a discussion dubbed “If Citizens United Isn’t the Problem, What’s the Solution?” centered on the 2010 ruling that the government could not restrict independent political expenditures by nonprofit corporations. “The American people are disgusted by the current state of campaign finance,” Tribe said, but he argued that focusing the narrative of American political ills on Citizens United would increase political cynicism and alienation without addressing real issues.

With the Supreme Court poised to reconvene the first Monday in October, let’s clear the air about last term’s supposed turn to the left: It didn’t happen....Laurence Tribe, the preeminent appellate advocate and co-author of Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, warns against the entire endeavor of “trying to measure the left/right swing of the Supreme Court by bracketing its annual terms.” Lumping decisions together from one April Fool’s Day to the next would be no less arbitrary. “This is a set of nine justices whose views can best be represented by vectors pointing every which way,” Tribe says.