Laurence Tribe

Personhood and abortion rights ballot measures will take center stage on Tuesday as voters in three states – North Dakota, Colorado and Tennessee - seek to determine when life begins and, potentially, the role government has in limiting abortions. Although recent polling shows that only North Dakota’s measure is likely to pass, that may be enough for personhood and right-to-life advocates. ..."It's [the North Dakota law] that’s dangerous from the perspective of women’s rights. Even though this law doesn’t successfully unravel anything about Roe v. Wade, it could still make abortion less widely available,” says Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law.

When President Obama signs an executive order giving temporary deportation relief and work authorization for millions of undocumented immigrants, Republicans across the country and on Capitol Hill will blow up. But there’s not much they can do about it that will make a difference....In a one-word statement, distinguished Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence H. Tribe told TIME that the GOP claim was “unlikely” to have standing.

The connections among liberty, government power, speech, campaign finance, technology, and privacy.

Assessing the Roberts Court’s divergent tack on race and gay rights.

Coercion versus a wink and a nudge. What the Supreme Court did in deciding “Obamacare” and why the results are not as surprising as one might think.

The inspiration and aspiration for Uncertain Justice and the rewards of working with Joshua Matz, a co-author fifty years his junior....In this six-part interview, Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, discusses his background, from his birth in Shanghai, China during World War Two and his early interest in mathematics to teaching presidents and Supreme Court Justices and arguing cases before the Supreme Court; the inspiration and purpose of his latest book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution , written with former student Joshua Matz; and understanding essential, accessible points of the Supreme Court, principles in constitutional law and leading issues of the day — “Obamacare,” racial equality, gay rights, campaign finance, and the relation of privacy and technology.

Two important cases — Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia (public access to trials) and Larkin v. Grendel’s Den, Inc. (the First Amendment Establishment Clause and a church’s power to control a liquor license) — in a long career and assessing the problem and real impact of the Supreme Court taking on Bush v. Gore...In this six-part interview, Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, discusses his background, from his birth in Shanghai, China during World War Two and his early interest in mathematics to teaching presidents and Supreme Court Justices and arguing cases before the Supreme Court; the inspiration and purpose of his latest book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution , written with former student Joshua Matz; and understanding essential, accessible points of the Supreme Court, principles in constitutional law and leading issues of the day — “Obamacare,” racial equality, gay rights, campaign finance, and the relation of privacy and technology.

...In this six-part interview, Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School, discusses his background, from his birth in Shanghai, China during World War Two and his early interest in mathematics to teaching presidents and Supreme Court Justices and arguing cases before the Supreme Court; the inspiration and purpose of his latest book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution , written with former student Joshua Matz; and understanding essential, accessible points of the Supreme Court, principles in constitutional law and leading issues of the day — “Obamacare,” racial equality, gay rights, campaign finance, and the relation of privacy and technology.

Joshua Matz didn't bother waiting to write about the Supreme Court until he went to work there. He teamed with a renowned Harvard law professor to finish a book about the court before he started his year as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy...In "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution," Matz and Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe argue that on a range of big issues, political gridlock and societal change have increased the court's influence. ..."He was impressive enough that I felt I should call Justice Kennedy, not just write a letter, but call him and emphasize what an unusual catch Joshua would be," Tribe said in a telephone interview.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. When I decided to join Students Matter, the group that spearheaded a lawsuit that invalidated California's teacher tenure, dismissal and "last in, first out" layoff laws, I expected negative reactions from fellow progressives. Sure enough, the day of the announcement, lots of incredulous and even hostile e-mails appeared in my inbox, accusing me of betraying the Democratic Party, our allies in organized labor and even my own K-12 public school teachers. These negative reactions are rooted in a misunderstanding of what is at stake as lawsuits similar to Vergara v. California spread to the other states with similar laws.

After losing in U.S. district court in May, opponents of the Cape Wind energy project in Nantucket have taken their case to the U.S. District Court of Appeal and added a new voice to their legal team. Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, who also works with Washington D.C. law firm Massey & Gail LLP, is representing the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound...In his appellate court brief, Tribe argues that the judge’s ruling was “gravely flawed.” In an email exchange with reporter >Mary Moore, Tribe explains why.

An article by Laurence Tribe. At the Supreme Court, the spotlight often jumps from justice to justice...Yet the coverage often passes over two of the court’s more junior members, Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor. Too often we hear only that both justices are predictable partisans, neither idiosyncratic nor unique, representing the new extremes of right and left on the court. But while they do frequently disagree on hot-button issues, neither is so easily reduced to caricature. Closer analysis reveals distinct perspectives that strongly differentiate them from their fellow justices and unexpected commonalities that unite them—and can bend the whole gravitational field of the court in their direction. So ignore them no more: Understanding Alito and Sotomayor, both where they divide and where they converge, is essential to understanding the future of the Supreme Court.

The District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington on Thursday said the full 11-member court will rehear (PDF) the controversial case that ruled Americans could not receive subsidies to help pay for plans on federally run health insurance exchanges. Oral arguments will begin Dec. 17...Laurence Tribe, a liberal constitutional law scholar at Harvard Law School, agrees that the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking the case “would go down substantially” if the full D.C. Circuit sides with the Obama administration. “This is unlikely to be the kind of issue that the Supreme Court would be eager to take up in the absence of a circuit conflict,” Tribe said in an e-mail.

Plaintiffs have filed their opening brief in an appeal of a federal judge's decision to throw out a lawsuit that contended that state regulators' approval of a contract to sell power from Cape Wind to NStar was unconstitutional. The suit was filed against Cape Wind, state officials and NStar by the town of Barnstable, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound and several individuals and businesses. ... According to the brief, co-written by noted constitutional lawyer and Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe, the U.S. Supreme Court has established that the amendment does not preclude valid challenges to the "ineffectiveness" of past state actions or policies.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe: The United States Supreme Court has said that “the constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine.” Powerful and essential, and it needs to be administered to everyone, including physicians and those regulating their practice. Recent decisions by two federal appeals courts suggest, to the contrary, that the doctor’s office is becoming a First Amendment-free zone…Still, both judicial opinions are troubling for the same reason: They broadly paint medical care as “conduct,” not “speech,” and thereby entirely exempt occupational-licensing laws from the usual First Amendment scrutiny.

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday signed on as an adviser to Students Matter, the group that won a lawsuit in June striking down California’s teacher tenure law. Adding the liberal Tribe to its roster continues the momentum of the group that has sought to redefine teacher tenure as harmful to poor and disadvantaged young people.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe talks about his new book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, which is a forensic look at the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts and the dynamics among the nine "supremes."

How to make sense of the U.S. Supreme Court? “Judicial opinions…can defy easy comprehension,” write Loeb University Professor Laurence Tribe, who often argues cases there, and Joshua Matz, J.D. ’12, in Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution (Henry Holt, $32). “It doesn’t help that in controversial cases, the Court frequently erupts in a confusing cacophony of competing writings. Nor do its opinions always offer a comprehensive and transparent view of the Court; sometimes they are downright misleading.” They attempt to deal with the uncertainties. From the prologue: H. L. Mencken reputedly said, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” Understanding the Supreme Court undoubtedly qualifies as a “complex problem.”

Two days before his term as ABA president comes to an end, James R. Silkenat made one more impassioned plea for action by the legal…

A federal appeals panel on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi law that would have shut the sole abortion clinic in the state by requiring its doctors to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals, something they had been unable to do…Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, said that the principle of state responsibility enunciated by the circuit court “is deeply established and fully entrenched.” “It goes not only to the issue of reproductive freedom but to the very character of the federal union,” he said.