Media Mentions

Laurence Tribe a Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School explains the reasons for the foreign emoluments clause. The lawsuit against the Trump Administration focusing on the emoluments clause. The favors Trump receives from abroad and why that is an ongoing constitutional violation. What happens when the President does not follow the law? Why discriminating on the basis of religion is unconstitutional. The many ways the Muslim ban is unconstitutional. At what point are we in a constitutional crisis? Is impeachment the only answer.

Affiliates from across Harvard affected by President Donald Trump’s immigration order voiced concerns and posed questions to University administrators and staff at a town hall event Wednesday...Martin and Jason M. Corral, an immigration attorney, fielded questions from the audience. Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic recently hired Corral to offer legal counsel to those impacted by Trump’s immigration policies—a part of a series of steps Faust laid out in November to bolster resources for Harvard affiliates...“We’ll try to be as transparent as possible, but at the same time respect individuals and preserve confidentiality,” Corral said when asked about whether the University would communicate with the Harvard community about the status of affected individuals. Corral offered up his business card and pledged to continue working with clients even after they graduate.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. It’s been deeply heartening to see the intensity and enthusiasm of the resistance to President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. But precisely the intensity of the effort, complete with all-night lawyers at major airports, poses a challenge: Generating -- and maintaining -- a heightened sense of panic and outrage at every Trump policy move will be unsustainable over four years. If political energy isn’t expended wisely, it will dissipate quickly, and opposition will gradually fade. What’s needed is a guideline to know when to declare that the sky is falling -- and when to express measured, reasoned disagreement with policies that progressives consider mistaken.

When Donald Trump released his first list of 11 potential Supreme Court nominees last May, many legal scholars were surprised Neil Gorsuch did not make the cut. They needn’t have worried...Harvard Law School lecturer Jane Nitze recalls interviewing with Gorsuch in 2007 for a law clerk's position and "coming away with an impression that this is not just an incredibly brilliant person, but he is just the nicest guy out there" -- someone who takes his former law clerks on annual skip trips in the Colorado mountains.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. “Was that a surprise?” asked President Donald Trump on Tuesday night after the pseudo-drama of the reality-show-style bakeoff between two finalists whittled down from a list of 21. Well, no. Trump’s Supreme Court pick was resoundingly predictable. I say that simply because I did predict the selection of Judge Neil Gorsuch back on Nov. 16 -- based on his close fit to the profile sought by conservative legal elites. There was nothing very deep about my prediction. Having promised to leave the decision to the Federalist Society, Trump did exactly that. He gave them an intellectual who went to Harvard Law School like Justice Antonin Scalia (and five other members of the current court); studied in Oxford as a Marshall scholar like Justice Stephen Breyer; clerked on the Supreme Court like three other sitting justices; and has been reliably conservative for years. He even looks like the TV version of a Supreme Court justice, complete with silver hair and a firm jaw.

Less than two weeks ago, Donald Trump stood in the shadow of the US Capitol and took an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Now, 11 days later, critics steeped in constitutional law from across the ideological spectrum are already saying the new president has violated sections of that document...“I wouldn’t say he’s bumping into the Constitution, he’s crashing through it,” said Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who has joined litigation against the new president on a separate matter. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my lifetime.”

The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to be the next Supreme Court justice came as little surprise Tuesday night after days of speculation that he was the president’s leading candidate...Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe said via email of the nominee “that he’s extremely smart, knows federal law and procedure inside and out, writes elegantly and with nuance, is at the top of his game analytically, and totally idolizes the late Justice Scalia and what he identifies as Scalia’s almost regal indifference to the practical human consequences of his rulings.”

An op-ed by fellow Delcianna Winders. Ringling Bros. is shuttering, and more and more people are realizing — and eschewing — the abuse inherent in forcing wild animals to perform tricks. But it’s business as usual for the Al Chymia Shrine Circus, which will haul suffering, dangerous animals to Memphis’ Agricenter Showplace Arena in a few weeks. It’s time for Shrines to reevaluate their fundraising methods and join the 21st century.

An op-ed by fellow Delcianna J. Winders. With Ringling Bros.—the most active and spendthrift opponent of legislation to protect circus animals—shuttering, it may finally be possible for bipartisan public safety and animal welfare efforts to succeed. Introduced by Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Ryan Costello (R-Pa.), the Traveling Exotic Animal & Public Safety Protection Act, H.R. 6342, would ban traveling wild animal acts given their risks to humans and animals alike. While political debates rage, this simple, important measure—one that countries across the world have already taken—should be a no-brainer.

Growing up in Mexico City as a self-proclaimed geek, Paola Villarreal first realized the power of data after she arrived at a public bike-share station and discovered that all the bikes were taken. Villarreal, then 26 and a self-taught computer programmer, used information the bike-share program had posted online, albeit in an obscure format, to develop a mobile application. The app allowed her to check her phone for sites on the program’s citywide network that had bikes available. She shared the app with her friends, and before long it became so popular city officials sought to buy it, paying Villarreal six digits...Villarreal, now 32 and a fellow with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, continues to advocate for open source, but has made room for a new crusade: free access to public information. With open source, citizens can view, modify, and share source code. But they should also have access to data produced by the government, she says.

Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, talks with Rachel Maddow about the remarkable nature of Donald Trump's firing of acting attorney general Sally Yates, and the threat Trump's action represents to the independence of the Department of Justice.

A book review by Samuel Moyn...While Mishra long ago recognized the uses of Western thought in understanding the causes of global rage, in his new book, Age of Anger, he turns to intellectual history to counter civilizational or theological explanations for that rage in its more recent forms. After September 11, 2001, a crew of specialists arose to designate Islam the cause of hatred and violence; their essential goal was to immunize our own way of life from blame and scrutiny. Such analysts could never anticipate how their own states and cultures gave rise to a broader discontent—including in Europe and the United States. After votes for Brexit and Donald Trump, it turns out it was not just “radicalized” Muslim youths who resented elites and resorted to violence as a means of revenge.

An op-ed by Cass Sunstein. President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, to be announced on Tuesday, is likely to be some kind of “originalist.” For many conservatives, that’s terrific news. Improbably, originalism has become a litmus test, a simple way of distinguishing judges from politicians, using the Constitution to impose their values on the rest of us. But what is originalism?

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The Monday night massacre -- as President Donald Trump’s firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates was inevitably called -- lacked the grand madness of Richard Nixon’s famous firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox on Oct. 20, 1973, which prompted the resignations of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. Trump’s peremptory dismissal of Yates for refusing to enforce his executive order on immigration came symbolically at the beginning of his presidency, not with the end in sight, as in Nixon's case. But Trump’s action was nevertheless redolent of self-destructive bravado, much like Nixon’s.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. President Donald Trump’s executive order barring the U.S. entry of refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries -- while prioritizing refugees who are religious minorities, namely Christians -- is a shameful display of discrimination against people who are by legal definition innocent and in danger of their lives. It also violates the constitutional value of equal religious liberty. Whether the constitutional violation could be used by a court to strike down the order is a more difficult question.

Donald Trump has had a fixation on Iraq’s oil—and America’s right to seize it—for at least six years...But the legal scholars I consulted challenged this interpretation. “The issue is complicated in its details, but basically what Trump has in mind—pillaging during occupation—is prohibited,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who served in the Bush Administration’s Justice Department, told me.

An op-ed by Carol Steiker. Death is the ultimate punishment a state can impose. Because of the death penalty’s severity and finality, its implementation should never be rushed or done without full due process of the law. Yet Missouri will do exactly that if it proceeds with the execution of Mark Christeson on January 31. Intervention from the U.S. Supreme Court is now needed to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice. The federal courts have truncated due process by ordering unreasonably expedited briefing and hearing schedules, solely for the purpose of maintaining an execution date that was set at the State’s request while appeals were already pending. No court has ever fully considered the merits of Mr. Christeson’s important underlying constitutional claims, and no court has ever provided him with counsel free of conflicts of interest to raise those claims.

In the wake of President Trump's sudden and temporary ban on visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, the key word is chaos — at airports and in courtrooms. Within local immigrant communities, academia, the business world across greater Boston, there is fear, anxiety and push-back over what the ban means and whether it is legal. Guests...Nancy Gertner, retired federal judge, Harvard law professor and WBUR legal analyst.

President Donald Trump’s executive order temporarily suspending the U.S. refugee program and barring immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations is unlikely to be defeated on religious discrimination grounds, constitutional law experts told TPM Monday...“Viewing the executive order against the background that preceded it, the magnitude of the difference between what it seeks to accomplish and what effect it has and the way that it’s phrased demonstrates discrimination on religious grounds,” Harvard Law School professor Gerald Neuman told TPM. Referencing the Trump team’s defense that many predominantly Muslim countries are not included on the list, Neuman added that the order must be considered in its context. “The fact that it doesn’t ban every Muslim in the world doesn’t mean its not discriminatory against Muslims," he said. "It’s well established in the law of discrimination that you can discriminate against a subset of a group.” But like the other legal experts surveyed, Neuman said legal challenges to the ban were more likely to succeed on a statutory, not a constitutional, basis.

A day after firing his acting attorney general for refusing to defend his new immigration order, President Trump mocked his Democratic congressional critics Tuesday and demanded that the Senate confirm his pick to lead the Department of Justice, Jeff Sessions...Legal analysts such as Jack Goldsmith — a Harvard Law School professor and Justice Department official during the George W. Bush administration — said Yates should have resigned rather than force Trump's hand.

An old-fashioned word spoken by America’s Founding Fathers is suddenly back en vogue: Emoluments. The reason? President Donald Trump’s vast business empire — and his refusal to place that empire in a blind trust. The Emoluments Clause is a provision in the Constitution that prohibits federal officials from receiving money or gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval. As Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe recently wrote in a legal brief, Trump “appears to be on a direct collision course with Emoluments Clause.”...“The Founders viewed it as absolutely central to our nation’s sovereignty and survival,” said Tribe, a leading constitutional law scholar.