Laurence Tribe

If a U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage looks inevitable, perhaps it is. Since a pivotal high court ruling 13 months ago, gay-marriage advocates have tallied more than two dozen lower court victories without a single defeat. With this week’s decision in Virginia, two federal appeals courts have now backed same-sex marriage. Courts have consistently read last year’s ruling, U.S. v. Windsor, as undercutting any rationale for state bans. “I can’t think of any Supreme Court decision in history that has ever created so rapid and broad a lower-court groundswell in a single direction as Windsor,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School. “Nor can I think of any historical examples in which lower courts have so overwhelmingly and universally read a Supreme Court decision one way, only to have the court say ‘Never mind, you’ve all gotten it wrong.’”

A three-judge panel at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Affordable Care Act cannot provide subsidies to millions enrolled under the federal health care exchange because the law, as written, does not allow it…Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told the Financial Times that he would not "bet the family farm" on the law being vindicated on appeal. Tribe is a longstanding supporter of the Affordable Care Act. “It looks like the panel is quite divided over what to do with what might [have been] an inadvertent error in the legislation or might have been quite deliberate,” Tribe told the Financial Times. “But it’s very specific that only people that go onto a state exchange are eligible for the subsidies. And if that becomes the ultimate holding of the U.S. Supreme Court, where this is likely to end up — that’s going to have massive practical implications for the administrability of Obamacare.”

em>An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe. The moment the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, it became a litigation magnet. The lawsuits threatening to derail it were initially dismissed as ridiculous but became deadly serious by the time Chief Justice John Roberts’s decisive fifth vote two years later barely upheld the law’s individual mandate, while the Court’s decisive 7-2 vote left the health law’s Medicaid expansion in tatters. …But while Boehner’s empty threat makes headlines, a far more serious threat could deliver the death blow that the law’s opponents have been seeking. This new round of litigation attacks the health insurance exchanges at the heart of Obamacare.

Massachusetts lawmakers expressed support for a bill filed on Monday that they say would address safety concerns that arose when the United States Supreme Court last month struck down 35-foot buffer zones for demonstrators standing near entrances to abortion clinics…Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, said the new measure appeared to clear both of those lines of criticism. “It is a much more narrowly focused bill in terms of the conduct that it prohibits,” Mr. Tribe said. “It prohibits obstruction of access, which is not an expression of free speech.”

Women lawyers have argued before the U.S. Supreme Court since 1879, but in a forum where opposing counsel traditionally were called "brother," it took nearly a century for the female sex to gain third-person equality…"I would love to be able to say that I had noticed this," said one Stewart protégé who didn't, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. Mr. Tribe, who clerked for Justice Stewart during the 1967-68 term, adds that he's not surprised by Justice Stewart's egalitarian vocabulary. "He was as close to being a nonsexist as I could imagine back in that time," Mr. Tribe says.

Opponents of the proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm will appeal the dismissal of a federal lawsuit challenging the contract for the project with an all-star constitutional scholar. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe will represent the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in its appeal of a federal court decision, which dismissed a challenge Cape Wind’s contract with NSTAR. Tribe will be the “principal author of the appeal briefs by the Alliance and will probably present the oral argument of the Alliance in the First Circuit,” he told the Herald.

When having people over to dinner, it’s best not to discuss politics, religion – or guns. That’s something the actor Charlton Heston and Laurence Tribe, the Harvard constitutional scholar, figured out – sort of. But first, a little background. Tribe, the liberal legal expert who spoke with editors of The Fiscal Times this week about his new book, Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, includes a chapter about gun rights.

Cass Sunstein: The most important Supreme Court decision of the 2013 term may well be EPA v. Homer City, which upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s cross-state air pollution rule…Laurence Tribe: In a year in which the high court weighed in on presidential appointment power, public unions, abortion and religious freedom, many observers will say that the court is reshaping our politics and culture with sweeping pronouncements that inject it squarely into the most salient, controversial issues of the day…Martha Minow: Free speech and religious expression win; equality does less well; growing reliance on communications technologies and on government to address environmental harms informs the law; corporations and employers gain power relative to employees; tensions between branches continue, amid bold assertions of humility…Mark Tushnet: ...The court is constructing what in fancy terms we can call an ideology or philosophy of constitutional law. And, the current court’s philosophy is, broadly speaking, conservative, skeptical of expansive exercises of government power in the domestic arena, tending in a mildly libertarian direction.

In “Uncertain Justice,” Laurence Tribe, the Harvard Law School professor and a pre-eminent authority on the Constitution, and Joshua Matz, a recent graduate of that school and, beginning this fall, a clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy, refuse to either “stereotype the justices” or draw the familiar, categorical lines between the court’s liberals and conservatives, its Democratic and Republican appointees, its “activists” and apostles of “restraint.” Instead, Tribe and Matz set out to portray the Roberts court in what they see as its messy complexity.

The nation greets the coming of July each year with fireworks on the National Mall and, days earlier, explosive decisions at the U.S. Supreme Court…The theme of what one wag called "faux-nanimity" repeated itself again and again. "It represents a success in herding cats, but there is deep division underneath," observes Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe…"Precedent is getting a very hard knock all over the place," says Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, who served as solicitor general in the Reagan administration.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe. Most people don’t associate freedom of speech with a deregulatory economic agenda. But that agenda is an untold story of the Roberts court, and it’s vital to understanding this morning’s decision in Harris v. Quinn.

Governor Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley, responding to last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down the state’s buffer zone law, called Wednesday for legislation to crack down on harassment and obstruction outside abortion clinics…But Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, said that any effort to narrowly tailor the legislation could go too far and appear to target antiabortion protesters for the content of their speech. Crafting “a package that is limited to the abortion situation just raises the suspicion that these are all indirect ways of suppressing antiabortion speech,” he said.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe. Even as a committed supporter of a woman’s — increasingly imperiled — right to choose, I must acknowledge that the Supreme Court got it right on Thursday. In McCullen v. Coakley, the Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law setting a 35-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics. While the buffer zone was enacted to ensure the safety of women seeking abortions, it also restricted the peaceful activities of the plaintiff, Eleanor McCullen, and other opponents of abortion, who sought to stand on the sidewalk and urge those women not to make what they see as a tremendous mistake.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe. We know, or at least think we know, how Supreme Court terms are supposed to end: with a string of high-profile, divided decisions. That's certainly what happened last term. Ten of the court’s final 12 decisions of the term featured dissenting opinions—including 5–4 decisions (along what some describe as “party lines”) about gay marriage, the Voting Rights Act, and employment discrimination. This term, however, something very different is happening. With only two cases remaining to be handed down, a trend has already appeared: This is the term for high-profile unanimous decisions.

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe. …Wednesday’s decision—remarkable in its unanimity—was only superficially about cellphones. As Chief Justice John Roberts said, the term cellphone is “itself misleading shorthand; many of these devices are in fact minicomputers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone.” He added, “They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has always been riven and 5-4 rulings under Chief Justice John G. Roberts on issues including prayers at government meetings and federal recognition of same-sex marriage isn’t a new phenomenon, high-court scholar Laurence Tribe said in an interview. Roberts’s predecessors heading the court managed to persuade their colleagues more often to hide those divisions, Tribe said in a Bloomberg Radio interview today. Tribe is a Harvard University law professor and author of “Uncertain Justice,” a book examining the work of the court under Roberts.

Picking up a book entitled Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution, it is reasonable to assume that the book is critical: the title promises to damn the Court as not reliable in delivering justice, or, at the very least, as a little wobbly and tentative when it does justice. It’s a tantalizing title, since there is nothing more appealing to legal pundits (and by extension book publishers) than a scathing critique of a court that has lost its way. The fact that one of the authors, Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, is among the nation’s most celebrated legal scholars raises the stakes that much more.

The 2005 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice is best remembered for his oft-quoted assertion that “judges are like umpires.” Few remember the line that preceded it: “A certain humility should characterize the judicial role.” The Supreme Court will soon complete its ninth term with Roberts at the helm. In “Uncertain Justice,” Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe and his former student Joshua Matz find much to analyze and explain in the “wondrous complexity” of the Roberts court. Their well-told story is not one of judicial modesty, however, either for the aspirations of the Roberts court or for its impact on American life.

The U.S. Supreme Court is majestic, immensely powerful and deceptively fragile. It commands by the power of reason, and its justices are, as the great Robert Jackson once observed, not "final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." And yet Americans today increasingly regard the court in an unfavorable light. In 2001, almost two-thirds of Americans approved of the court's work; by last year, that number had dropped to less than half. "Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution" takes the measure of the court at this puzzling juncture. The book is full of bright and unconventional wisdom, as one might expect from its author, the venerable law professor Laurence Tribe, here teamed with a young collaborator, Joshua Matz. They portray a court tip-toeing into new areas of constitutional law, divided and without a clear sense of mission or purpose.

We are a nation of law. Change the law, change the country. The ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the country is changing. On campaign finance. Money politics. Corporate power. Unions. Guns. Health care. Gay marriage. Race. In 5-4 decision after decision, the Roberts court is changing the country. Critics call it a politicized high court, not above polarization but part of it. My guest today, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, says it’s more subtle than that. More interesting. This hour On Point: the Roberts court, and where it is taking the country.

An op-ed by Charles Fried and Laurence H. Tribe. Although the two of us frequently approach legal questions from different perspectives, and just as often disagree about the best answers to those questions, we share a respect for our Constitution and a reverence for the judicial process. That’s why, in spite of our disagreements, we agree that Harvard Law School professor David Barron is exceptionally well-qualified to hold a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and that the Senate should promptly confirm him.