Laurence Tribe Quotes

[T]he Constitution is an historically discontinuous composition... the product... of a series of not altogether coherent compromises; it mirrors no single vision or philosophy but reflects instead a set of sometimes reinforcing and sometimes conflicting ideals and notions.

The visible Constitution... certainly doesn't answer very many of the persistent questions about what it means in any particular case and at any particular time. Indeed, the Constitution even tells us that it doesn't tell us: The Ninth Amemdment... expressly says, "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny of disparage others retained by the people." In plain English there's more than meets the eye.

Judicial neutrality necessarily involves taking sides. ...[J]udicial restraint is but another form of judicial activism.

[T]he framers were deliberately vague. They didn't want to limit it to treason and bribery because they knew that there were other things that could so violate the basic structure of our constitution, of checks and balances, that they couldn't even predict in advance. So they wanted a general term that would refer to profound abuses of power that threaten the rule of law. Those needn't be crimes. For example, if the president promises to pardon anybody who beats up one of his opponents, or beats up a non-white immigrant, and basically says, "All of you guys have a get out of jail free card." That would be a manifestly impeachable offense, but it wouldn't be a crime. At the same time there are some crimes that are not high crimes and misdemeanors in the sense that the framers used that language, like tax evasion. ...[I]f this president is evading his taxes, that's not an abuse of his official powers. But they resisted going even further and making it a complete free-for-all. That is, at one point they debated making maladministration... impeachable... Well, that could mean any disagreement with the president. There are some countries that say that misconduct is... impeachable... There are some states that, in application to their governor say that misbehavior is... impeachable... Well that would mean that any time the Congress disagrees profoundly with the president on policy... Suppose it passes a law, he vetoes it, they can't override the veto, but if they basically say... we were right and you were wrong, they could just impeach him. ...An effort of that kind was made with President John Tyler. They thought he vetoed too many bills, and that was the impeachable offense. So the framers of the constitution struck a balance and left the judgement to us. They didn't try to create a formula for what was an impeachable offense, but they didn't just say any time you disagree with president, the thing to do is impeach him and try to remove him. They struck a balance in between, and a pretty good one, although it's one that leaves a huge amount of judgement to... we the people.

[W]hy do thoughtful judges and scholars continue to put forth the process-perfecting theories as though such theories could banish divisive controversies over substantive values from the realm of constitutional discourse by relegating those controversies to the unruly world of power?

[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.

This book challenges the inevitability of permanent conflict... and tries to lay the groundwork for moving on.

I... organize the constitutional principles, rules, and theories... in terms of the seven basic models that... have represented the major alternatives for constitutional argument and decision in American law from the early 1800s to the present.

[I]mpeachment does not require proof of a crime... The argument that only criminal offenses are impeachable is deeply and profoundly wrong. It misunderstands the Constitution, U.S. history, and the nature of criminal law in important ways.

Impeachment haunts Trumpland... Never before has an American leader so quickly faced such credible, widespread calls for his removal...

Nothing is more devastating than a life without liberty. A life in which one can be forced into parenthood is just such a life. Rape is among the most profound denials of liberty, and compelling a woman to bear a rapist's child is an assault on her humanity. How different is it to force her to remain pregnant... because efforts at birth control accidentally failed?

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.

[T]he framers had derived the conviction that human rights could best be preserved by inaction and indirection—shielded behind... deliberately fragmented centers of countervailing power, in a vision almost Newtonian...

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?"

[M]ost of us would readily concede that the framers of the 1787 Constitution adopted a federal system of government organization in order to, among other goals, help secure the institution of private property. When Madison, in his theory of faction, suggested that shifting the legislative responsibility for certain problems from the state to the national level could help assure that majorities would not trample on minority rights, the problems he had in mind were largely economic; the minority rights... were, for the most part, rights of property and contract.