Media Mentions

Harvard constitutional law Professor Laurence Tribe and former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr weigh in on the fallout of former FBI Director James Comey's firing.

An op-ed by Hal Scott. Over the past 10 years the number of initial public offerings in the US, and the total amount of equity raised by them, are way down on historical averages. If these had held there would have been more than 3,000 new public companies in the past decade. Instead, we have had fewer than half the number of IPOs. Against that, private companies in the US, including the likes of Lyft and SpaceX, are raising a record amount of equity capital in private markets. Private companies raised almost $120bn through private offerings in 2016, according to the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a policy group. Last year US IPOs raised $24bn in equity, compared with a historical average of nearly $60bn.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice. The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system. It operates by removing executive-branch officials who have so abused power through what the framers called “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they cannot be trusted to continue in office. No American president has ever been removed for such abuses, although Andrew Johnson was impeached and came within a single vote of being convicted by the Senate and removed, and Richard Nixon resigned to avoid that fate.

Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe tells Joy Reid why it is critically important to put the impeachment process in motion now, before it is too late.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. Listening to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai go on about “net neutrality” last week felt just like Alice’s encounter with Humpty Dumpty in Wonderland. The large, contemptuous egg says, scornfully, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Pai says, essentially, that he is looking for a new legal route that will satisfy consumers who care about their internet transmissions being treated fairly and, at the same time, that will lift old-fashioned Ma Bell-era regulation from the dynamic, shiny, wonderful businesses of AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, and CenturyLink. It’s all nonsense.

Lower-income Nutmeggers saddled with debt have few options for dealing with their fiscal troubles, but a major study is about to find out whether new strategies could help. Set to launch within the next few weeks, the research could be crucial for determining the right resources to support Americans in financial straits. Led by a team of law professors from the University of Connecticut, Harvard and the University of Maine, the Financial Distress Project will assess how at least 1,200 state residents fare while using legal aid, financial counseling or self-help materials to tackle their debts...“We’re never going to have enough resources to give everyone a lawyer who would need one,” said Harvard Law professor Jim Greiner, one of the study’s leaders. “We’ve got to find ways that make the legal system accessible and usable for folks who can’t afford to hire a lawyer.”

The New York Times is now reporting that according to “associates” of former FBI director James B. Comey, President Trump asked Comey at a private dinner in January to pledge his loyalty. Comey told Trump that he could not do that, the sources say, and now blames this in part for Trump’s decision to fire him...In an interview with me this morning, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, a persistent Trump critic, argued that this demand for loyalty, if it happened, could constitute an effort to obstruct justice, particularly when viewed in the light of the subsequent firing of Comey. “The demand for loyalty from the head of the organization investigating those around you, when you have the power to fire that person — if you wrote a novel about obstruction of justice, this would almost be too good to be true,” Tribe told me.

Kordel Davis, a member of Beta Theta Pi at Penn State University, says he told his fraternity brothers to call 911 after noticing a 19-year-old pledge who had been drinking tumble down the stairs, then end up comatose on a couch. Nobody called for 40 minutes, and the young man, Timothy Piazza, was later pronounced dead. Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah, says Mr. Davis should have done more than just urge someone else to call for help. Mr. Guiora is leading a push to impose a duty on bystanders to take affirmative action to assist those they see in peril... “Prosecutors rarely if ever actually prosecute persons for these crimes,” said John Goldberg, a law professor at Harvard University. Mr. Goldberg said there’s a difference between pressing someone to alert authorities if they see a person being beaten from a distance and demanding they step forward to try to stop murder by agents of a genocidal government.

For five years in the Army, including one in Afghanistan, David E. White Jr. was zealous about leadership and public service. At Harvard Law School, he added to his passionate pursuits. “At the end of the day, it’s about justice,” said White, J.D. ’17. “In everything I pursue, my goal is to do justice.” The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, White said, deepened his desire to serve something greater than himself with character and integrity. At Harvard, hoping to discover the power of the law to create peace, he found he aspired as strongly to justice. “The Law School is a training ground a little bit as West Point was, but it’s quite different,” said White, a 2009 West Point graduate. “Here, no one is going to shoot at you, but it’s where you learn to take your rights back.”

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation...Sessions may have some explanation for why he chose to participate in the firing of Comey. But the attorney general may now be in considerable legal peril...So Sessions faces a host of serious, potentially career-ending questions. “As I see it, the President’s discharge of FBI Director Comey on a clearly pretextual basis for the obvious purpose (even if unlikely to be achieved) of shutting down the FBI’s then-accelerating investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was on its face an obstruction of justice, the very same charge that the first Article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon made,” says constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe.

President Donald Trump says he asked former FBI Director James Comey if he was under investigation. Constitutional expert Laurence Tribe takes issue with that and other Trump actions he says are likely impeachable offenses.

Some critics of President Trump have accused him of obstruction of justice in his firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, amid the bureau’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. Here is a look at the complex legal concept. Several federal statutes criminalize actions that impede official investigations. While some examples of illegal ways to thwart the justice system are specific — like killing a witness or destroying evidence — the law also includes broad, catchall prohibitions...“To prove that he did it not because Comey was grandstanding or showboating or all the other excuses he has given, but because he wanted to impede the investigation, that would be awfully hard to prove,” said Alex Whiting, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Harvard Law School.

After President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, it didn’t take long for people to start talking about impeachment. "It may well produce another United States vs. Nixon," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal on CNN. "It may well produce impeachment proceedings.”...Does Trump’s decision to fire Comey meet the legal threshold of obstruction of justice? And is it too early to put impeachment on the table? I put these questions to Mark Tushnet, a professor of law at Harvard University who focuses on constitutional law and 20-century American legal history..."I'm in the camp of people saying that we've started down a path that might lead to a constitutional crisis, but aren't quite at the point of crisis yet. And we could, of course, turn off the path before we reach the crisis stage."

About a week ago, FBI Director James Comey went before the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify on two FBI investigations: one of Hillary Clinton and her emails, and another of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any connections the Trump campaign may have had to the Russians. The former investigation was conducted and closed amid much public scrutiny and controversy. The second, no less controversial investigation is ongoing, but Comey refused to go into it in detail. And this Tuesday, Comey was fired, having never wrapped up the second investigation. So what happens to that still unfinished Russia investigation?...“The investigation will go forward in the short run,” said Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. “The question is how vigorous it will be.”

An article by Samuel Moyn. German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote Donald Trump a public letter the day after his election. “Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views,” she said. “I offer the next President of the United States close cooperation on the basis of these values.” It was a restatement of ideals that many Americans regard as obvious. But the fact that she felt it necessary to return to fundamentals reveals something important about our present circumstances. A rising populism is challenging the postwar system in Europe, and perhaps in the United States, and this may threaten some deep principles.

In the hours after he sacked the very man investigating his ties to Russia, sparked a media firestorm, and engendered political blowback fierce enough to imperil his legislative agenda, President Donald Trump spent his time firing off 140-character insults at U.S. senators. For Trump’s critics, the sequence of events ― from the firing to the tweeting ― was both dizzying and further cause to question the mental state of the man in the Oval Office...“At first glance it looks crazy,” said Laurence Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and professor of constitutional law at Harvard. What he worries about, he said, is if it’s “crazy like a fox.” “He is yet again changing the headline from what was disadvantageous for him; namely what a pistol [former AG] Sally Yates was” in testifying about Trump’s former top national security adviser’s ties to Russia, Tribe said.

Constitutional law experts say that while President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey was legal, it appears to be an abuse of power that could constitute an impeachable offense. Trump’s decision to terminate Comey, the head of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, was announced Tuesday and sent shockwaves throughout the political sphere...Laurence H. Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School went one step further. In an email to ThinkProgress, Tribe said that Trump’s firing of Comey has triggered a constitutional crisis. Only a fully independent investigation can prevent this crisis from “engulfing our democracy,” wrote Tribe.

Less than a year into the new president's administration, the FBI director was fired. His conduct had been scrutinized before the election, but when the opposition party won, it took months for him to be out of a job. William S. Sessions, fired in July 1993, was until Tuesday the only FBI director dismissed in the middle of a 10-year term. He claimed politics led to his ouster, a view held to this day by some supporters. There are many similarities between President Bill Clinton's firing of Sessions and President Donald Trump's firing of James Comey, as well as many foundational distinctions...Still, "they could have stood by Sessions longer than they did," says Harvard Law School professor Philip Heymann, deputy attorney general at the time. Heymann can’t recall personally lobbying one way or the other but says in retrospect he believes politics were at play.

The corporate legal services industry is in need of massive change to address fundamental shortcomings, according to panelists at Wednesday’s “Magna Carta for the Corporate Legal Services Industry” session at the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium’s (CLOC) annual institute in Las Vegas. But what exactly are the changes needed and who can really drive them?...Billing is another area in legal that is often cited as in need of revision because while there’s been a push for alternative fee arrangements in recent years, it’s still often the case that top firms charge high hourly rates and legal departments pay them...This is where law schools come in, according to Scott Westfahl, a professor at Harvard Law School and the director of its executive education program. “Legal education, the cost is incredibly high and the reason graduates are going into large law firms and need to be paid $180,000 is so that they can start paying that back,” he said.

Worried undocumented immigrants got a boost locally this week, but immigration advocates say it won’t matter much if the Safe Communities Act doesn’t find more support at the state level...Along with underlining the message that undocumented immigrants are safe going to police for help or even to help police fight crime with tips or eyewitness testimony, state-level action can reassure immigrants that they can go on getting health care, housing aid and using school resources without fear, said Lusardi and Amy Volz [`18], co-organizer of the recently formed Harvard Law School Immigration Response Initiative. “One of the clients I work with is a victim of domestic violence who has been too scared to call the police for fear that she will be deported,” said Volz, who works with immigrants in Cambridge and surrounding cities.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter, and Norman Eisen. If President Trump’s shockingly sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey had violated some statute or constitutional provision, our judicial branch could easily have remedied that misstep. What the president did was worse. It was a challenge to the very premises of our system of checks and balances precisely because it violated no mere letter of the law but its essential spirit. No one, not even a president, is above the law. And thus no public official, high or petty, can simply fire those our system trusts to investigate and remedy that official’s possible bribery, treason, or other disloyalty to the nation.