Richard Lazarus

President Obama’s ambitious plan to battle climate change by forcing power plants to reduce their greenhouse gases appeared to survive its first court challenge Thursday, but only because the formal rules are still pending at the Environmental Protection Agency....Industry attorneys were joined by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, a onetime mentor to Obama. He suggested the plan was unconstitutional because federal officials were “commandeering” states to do the bidding of Washington. Tribe, who was hired by Peabody Energy Corp., raised eyebrows last month when he testified before a House committee and described Obama’s environmental policies as “burning the Constitution.” ... “It was a good day for the government, but just the first of many to come,” said Richard Lazarus, a Harvard Law professor and environmental expert who supports the EPA rules.

The environmental case being argued on Thursday in a federal appeals court in Washington is equal parts legal freak show and serious legal business. On the serious side, it is the latest attempt by fossil-fuel interests to embalm the Environmental Protection Agency and the Obama administration's climate plan. But it is the legal sideshow orchestrated by constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe of Harvard that is unsettling to many environmental lawyers. ... Jody Freeman, another Harvard law professor, called the challenge’s timing "extremely unusual," and Harvard’s Richard Lazarus, who called the legislative history of the disputed clauses in the law "beyond novel" and "really bizarre." Both professors strongly disagree with Tribe’s arguments.  

It's as if sportswriting has invaded the energy and environment beat. President Barack Obama’s actions on climate change are “sidestepping” or making an "end run” around Congress, critics and news accounts say – including some stories by this reporter. But that depiction, more applicable perhaps to a wide receiver than a Washington politician, is at best imprecise. And at worst, it's just plain false, some legal scholars contend...Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe – testifying opposite Revesz in a House hearing last month – went one further, accusing the administration of "burning the Constitution."...Others, however, argue that the Clean Air Act's language is “expansive,” in the words of Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, writing in the Harvard Law Review in March 2013. “The relevant language has lain largely dormant for decades, but is now ripe for a presidential awakening,” Lazarus argued.

Laurence H. Tribe, the highly regarded liberal scholar of constitutional law, still speaks of President Obama as a proud teacher would of a star student. “He was one of the most amazing research assistants I’ve ever had,” Mr. Tribe said in a recent interview. Mr. Obama worked for him at Harvard Law School, where Mr. Tribe has taught for four decades...Which is why so many in the Obama administration and at Harvard are bewildered and angry that Mr. Tribe, who argued on behalf of Al Gore in the 2000 Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, has emerged as the leading legal opponent of Mr. Obama’s ambitious efforts to fight global warming...“The administration’s climate rule is far from perfect, but sweeping assertions of unconstitutionality are baseless,” Jody Freeman, director of the environmental law program at Harvard Law School, and Richard Lazarus, an expert in environmental law who has argued over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court, wrote in a rebuttal to Mr. Tribe’s brief on the Harvard Law School website.

In a speech on climate change delivered during her visit to China last month, Harvard President Drew Faust described the problem as “a struggle, not with nature, but with ourselves.” During Climate Week April 6-10, Harvard will take a long look at the ongoing struggle to find man-made solutions to this man-made problem...At Harvard Law School, faculty members are debating President Barack Obama’s proposed power plant rules, which aim to reduce greatly the carbon dioxide emissions from existing facilities. Two of the nation’s top environmental lawyers, Jody Freeman, the Archibald Cox Professor of Law and director of the School’s Environmental Law Program, and Richard Lazarus, the Howard and Katherine Aibel Professor of Law, have posted online rebuttals to constitutional scholar and Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence Tribe’s contention that the proposed rules are unconstitutional.

Climate-change activists and advocates seldom have trouble finding villains. But recently, they've found a new one in a strange place: famed legal scholar and Obama mentor Laurence Tribe, in his office at Harvard Law School. Tribe has been the highest-profile legal scholar to criticize the Obama administration's rules for carbon-dioxide emissions from coal plants, which were formally proposed in June 2014. (He's one of the few law professors who is frequently and plausibly referred to as an "icon.") In a formal comment submitted to the EPA, a Wall Street Journal column, a House energy committee hearing last week, and other venues, Tribe has argued against the rule, suggesting both that it runs contrary to the relevant statute and that it violates the Fifth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. ... And Tribe's opponents also bring significant legal firepower to the discussion. One opponent is Richard Revesz, dean emeritus of New York University Law School, who testified in favor of the rule in last week's House hearing and wrote a New York Times op-ed Thursday disagreeing with Tribe. Two others are Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman, colleagues of Tribe's at Harvard Law.

Laurence H. Tribe, the liberal icon and legal scholar, has grabbed headlines in recent weeks for publicly attacking President Obama’s signature climate change initiative — the Clean Power Plan — which would regulate carbon emissions from power plants. He was retained as an independent expert by Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, and is representing it in a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate the plan...In the estimation of his Harvard Law School colleagues Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus, “Were Professor Tribe’s name not attached to” these arguments, “no one would take them seriously.” But even if his claims don’t help Peabody in federal court, they are undoubtedly useful in the court of public opinion, where sentiment can be swayed by legal arguments, however weak, from a scholar of Professor Tribe’s reputation.

An op-ed by Jody Freeman and Richard J. Lazarus. When Mitch McConnell sent his recent letter to the nation’s governors urging them to ignore the White House’s upcoming clean-power rules, it was striking for two reasons. First, as the headlines pointed out, it’s a dramatic moment when a congressional leader openly tries to rally the states against a new federal policy. And second, McConnell’s legal justification relies on none other than Laurence Tribe—Barack Obama’s former law professor, and one of the nation’s top liberal law scholars—to argue that the upcoming EPA rules are unconstitutional.

At Harvard Law School, contentious legal debates are commonplace. Whether in a classroom, over lunch, or in the pages of one of the school’s many legal journals, professors and students respond to, critique, and question one another’s views. But notably, over the past week, University professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 and Law School professors Richard J. Lazarus and Jody Freeman, in what Tribe described as an “uncommon event in Harvard Law School’s history,” took the discussion to the Harvard Law Today website. The exchange began after Tribe testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy and Power on the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan.”

Earlier this week, Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe testified before Congress on the legality of the Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants under Section 111 of the Clean Air Act. Tribe’s testimony garnered attention because he challenged the lawfulness of EPA plans and raised several constitutional concerns...Tribe’s criticisms of the EPA attracted attention not just because he is a prominent liberal law professor, but also because he briefly worked in the Obama Administration (though not on environmental matters) and was one of the president’s professors (and has sometimes been described as a “mentor”). Tribe’s testimony, and his suggestion that the EPA’s climate plans involved “burning the Constitution,” also prompted some pushback. Most notably, two of his colleagues at Harvard Law School — Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman — penned a response on the HLS Web site, challenging Tribe’s legal and constitutional analysis, with an emphasis on the latter. Tribe, in turn, wrote a lengthy rejoinder, also on the HLS Web site. This back and forth is a preview of the legal battle that awaits the EPA’s Clean Power Plan.

Natural gas power company Calpine Corp. and a group of Harvard University law professors on Thursday told the D.C. Circuit that the EPA must be allowed to finalize its greenhouse gas reduction plan for existing power plants before any legal challenges may be decided. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan has been challenged by coal mining company Murray Energy Corp., along with a variety of states and other industry groups. They have alleged the agency lacks the authority to issue the rule and that the rule would harm their economic health. But in separate amici briefs, Calpine and Harvard law professors Richard Lazarus and Jody Freeman said the EPA is on firm ground.

An op-ed by Richard Lazarus. The President’s decision to open up the Atlantic coast to offshore drilling exploration is a clear expression of his “all-of-the-above" energy strategy. It is also a clear exercise of political horse-trading. No doubt the President hoped to take the sting out of his decision to eliminate drilling off of parts of Alaska by offering parts of the Mid- and South-Atlantic, which have been closed since 1990, in return. In April 2010, in a similar political gambit, the President courted conservative support for his then-pending climate bill by proposing to open the Atlantic coast for drilling. Anticipating environmental opposition, the President confidently asserted that “oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills.” It proved an unfortunate choice of words.

Peter Keisler might be the only lawyer who's argued five cases before the Supreme Court and has appeared in a TV soap commercial....Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus said Keisler is successful because of his ability to read the mood of the court both in his briefs and during oral arguments. Keisler, he said, delivers the argument that the justices will find most attractive. "He knows how to go for a win," Lazarus said. "He has an instinct for the pragmatic, not the jugular. He pitches things to make them look reasonable. "He's not a true believer. He's not a flamethrower. He wants to win the case."