Laurence Tribe Quotes

Now the country is faced with a president whose conduct strongly suggests that he poses a danger to our system of government. ...[I]mpeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency. ...One important example is Trump’s brazen defiance of the ...The question of Russian interference in the presidential election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign go to the heart of our system and ability to conduct free and fair elections. ...[R]eporting suggests... the... sinister, with Trump insisting that Comey pledge "loyalty" to him in order to retain his job... the president turned to Twitter with a none-too-subtle threat that Comey would regret any decision to disseminate his... conversations... Nixon’s... list of actions... deemed... impeachable obstruction reads like a forecast of... Trump... misleading statements to, or withholding material evidence from, federal investigators or... employees; trying to interfere with FBI or congressional investigations; trying to break through the FBI’s shield surrounding ongoing criminal investigations... [T]he crucial thing is that the prospect now be taken seriously, that the machinery of removal be reactivated, and that the need to use it become the focus of political discourse...

[A]ttempting to organize and give structure to the study of legal silence has been a primary purpose of much of what I have written and taught over the past half-century.

The models... (I) separated and divided powers; (II) implied limitations of government; (III) settled expectations; (IV) governmental regularity (V) preferred rights; (VI) equal protection; and (VII) structural justice.

[I]t is puzzling that purely process-based approaches—designed to deny the need for, and legitimacy of... substantive theory—should... continue to find... articulate proponents and persist in attracting... adherents.

It's easy to underestimate how much difference David Souter's analytical prowess and historical command have made within the Court over the past 19 years in shaping both the language of other justice's opinions and on occasion their votes in important lines of cases. Elena Kagan seems to be uniquely suited to perform that task, and to perform it for the next thirty years or longer. Dianne Wood—who is more powerful intellectually than Sonia Sotomayor or any of the others mentioned as plausible prospects... with the sole exception of Kagan, who is even smarter—would be likely to serve nearly a decade less than Elena and doesn't appear... to have the dynamic personality or the extraordinary diplomatic gifts for inspiring confidence and for moving others that have made Elena Kagan the best dean of any major law school in memory and certainly the best Harvard dean in the forty years I have spent on the faculty here.

American Constitutional Law... final chapter... "The Problem of State Action," grappled with one of the most perplexing aspects in the law of the U.S. Constitution: its character as a body of law addressing not ordinary private conduct but only government conduct. ...[T]he law of the Constitution is a kind of meta-law. ...many instances of what might be regarded as government inaction pose troubling constitutional questions. ...[T]he Supreme Court has generally interpreted constitutional provisions as having nothing at all to say about non-governmental choices. ...One might ...say that the constitutional principle limiting the Constitution’s reach to "state action" is an unwritten command ...essentially "heard" in the sounds of constitutional silence. ...I closed the book with the question: "[I]s it not fitting that a book about the Constitution should close by studying what the Constitution is not about?"

[T]he woman's right to decide for herself... is now subject to regulation, and possibly even prohibition, by our elected representatives. ...Even as the public agenda is stretched to address... questions as the , no issue threatens to divide us politically in... as powerful a way as the abortion issue...

I am... moved... by a sense of the ultimate futility of the quest for an Archimedean point outside ourselves from which the legitimacy of some form of judicial review or constitutional exegesis may be affirmed.

For the Souter seat, I can't think of anyone nearly as strong as Elena Kagan, whose combination of intellectual brilliance and political skill would make her a ten-strike... I've known and worked for her... since she was my student and research assistant in the 1980s, have watched her become a scholar of the first rank and a star... teacher, and have marveled at how skillfully she transformed a school that had long been considerably less than the sum of its parts into a vibrant and wonderful place for students to learn and for faculty to teach, write, and collaborate. Her techniques for mastering the substance of the many fields in which we have made important new faculty appointments during her tenure as dean and for gently but firmly persuading a bunch of prima donnas to see things her way in case after case—techniques she has deployed with a light touch and with an open enough mind to permit others to persuade her from time to time—are precisely the techniques I can readily envision her employing not just with Justices like Kennedy but even with a justice like Alito or, on... rare occasions, with a justice like Scalia or Roberts.

If you were to appoint someone like Sonia Sotomayor, whose personal history and demographic appeal you don't need me to underscore, I am concerned that the impact within the Court would be negative in these respects. Bluntly put, she's not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is, and her reputation for being something of a bully could well make her liberal impulses backfire and simply add to the fire power of the Roberts/Alito/Scalio/Thomas wing of the Court.

The crux of any determination that a law unjustly discriminates against a group... is... that the law is part of a pattern that denies those subject to it a meaningful opportunity to realize their humanity. ...[S]uch an approach must look beyond process to identity and proclaim fundamental substantive rights—including substantive rights to participate on equal terms in the evolution of law and policy. ...[I]mportant aspects of constitutional law, including the determination of which groups deserve special protection, can be given content in no other way.

In the first model, the centralized accumulation of power in any man or single group... meant tyranny; the division and separation of powers, both vertically (...federal, state and local...) and horizontally (...legislative, executive, and judicial...) meant liberty.

For all these reasons, I hope you will reach the conclusion that Elena Kagan should be your first nominee to the Court. ...I can hardly contain my enthusiasm at your first hundred days. I don't underestimate the magnitude of the challenges that remain, and I... hope that I can before too long come to play a more direct role in helping you meet those challenges, perhaps in a newly created DOJ position dealing with the rule of law, but my main sentiment... is one of enormous pride and pleasure in being an American at this extraordinary moment in our history.

The state shapes the society as much as the society shapes the state...

[T]he highest mission of the Supreme Court... is not to conserve judicial credibility, but in the Constitution's own phrase, "to form a more perfect Union" between right and rights within the charter's necessarily evolutionary design.