Professor Laurence Tribe ‘66, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor, will be recognized by Columbia University with an honorary Doctor of Letters at the school’s commencement exercises on May 22, 2013.
A distinguished legal scholar and a much sought-after appellate advocate, Tribe has prevailed in three-fifths of the many appellate cases he has argued, including 35 arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court. He also helped write the constitutions of South Africa, the Czech Republic and the Marshall Islands.
Tribe, a world-renowned professor of constitutional law, joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1968, received tenure in 1972, and held the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship in Constitutional Law from 1982 to 2004, when he was appointed University Professor—the highest academic honor that Harvard University can bestow upon a faculty member.
In 2010, he was appointed to serve the Obama administration in the U.S. Department of Justice as Senior Counselor for Access to Justice, an initiative created to address the access-to-justice crisis in the criminal and civil justice system.
Tribe is the author of more than 100 books and articles, including “American Constitutional Law,” “On Reading the Constitution,” and, most recently, “The Invisible Constitution.” He has argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States—including the historic Bush v. Gore case in 2000 on behalf of presidential candidate Albert Gore, Jr.— and he has testified frequently before Congress on a broad range of constitutional issues.
Tribe holds a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude in mathematics from Harvard College. In addition to the honorary degree from Columbia, Tribe has received 10 honorary degrees, including a Doctor of Laws from the University of Miami in 2010, a doctor of laws from New York University in 2008, and a doctor of humane letters from Hebrew University in 1998.