Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe

Professor, Harvard Law School; Attorney; Author

Lawrence Tribe is an American constitutional scholar and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at the Harvard Law School. A longstanding proponent of liberal jurisprudence, in 2001 Tribe helped found the American Constitution Society a supposed liberal counterweight to the conservative Federalist Society and was long considered a possible Supreme Court nominee by a Democratic administration. Tribe received his A.B. in math from Harvard in 1962, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1966. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart from 1967-1968 and became an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard in 1968, where has taught ever since. A fierce critic of many recent Supreme Court decisions, Tribe has argued over thirty cases before the Court, including the infamous Bush v. Gore in 2000, and is the author of Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, American Constitutional Law, and co-author of On Reading the Constitution (with Michael Dorf).  He is also a former Professor of President Obama and current supporter.

4mins
Tribe talks about being born a few months before Pearl Harbor in Shanghai, his first experience with injustice and how he landed at Harvard.
2mins
Tribe asks us to try to be better people and work to figure out their purpose.
1mins
Tribe gives advice to those thinking about applying to law school.
1mins
People should be more aware of their impact on others.
2mins
Tribe is conflicted on his thoughts for the future.
4mins
Tribe talks about how pro-active the Supreme Court should be in preventing harm.
1mins
Tribe hopes that Justices like Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsberg and Souter continue to allow international experience to prevail.
3mins
Larry Tribe talks about the continuity between human nature and that of other living creatures.
2mins
Tribe talks about the structure of the Constitution and how it relates in a broader sense to the rest of the world.
5mins
Tribe believes that approaching the Constitution with a unified theory is impossible.
6mins
Tribe talks about using equality and liberty in his interpretation of the Constitution.
2mins
Tribe talks about why he thinks the Supreme Court has taken a turn for the worse.
4mins
Tribe talks about the Rehnquist and Roberts eras as being more hostile.
2mins
Tribe talks about significant eras of Supreme Court history and how the Constitution was interpreted.
5mins
Tribe talks about some of his favorite cases, teaching Barack Obama and Justice John Roberts and the impact he hopes it has.
5mins
Tribe talks about his own experience with injustice in Japan and his experiences in the U.S. that led him to the practice of law.