Laurence Henry Tribe (born October 10, 1941) is an American legal scholar known for his studies of United States constitutional law.
He is also the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times.
Tribe then received a National Science Foundation fellowship to pursue doctoral studies in mathematics at Harvard, but dropped out after one year.
[25] In 1983, Tribe represented Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon in the appeal of his federal conviction on income tax charges.
[26] The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well criticizes the opening of his brief as a "thicket of confusing citations and unnecessary definitions" stating that it would have been "measurably strengthened" if he had used the "more lively imagery" that he had used in a footnote later in the document.
[28] The Supreme Court ruled against Tribe's client in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986 and held that a Georgia state law criminalizing sodomy, as applied to consensual acts between persons of the same sex, did not violate fundamental liberties under the principle of substantive due process.
[29] Tribe's 1990 book Abortion: Clash of Absolutes, was called "informative, lucidly written and cogently reasoned" in a review in the Journal of the American Bar Association.
[41] In December 2016, Tribe and notable lawyers Lawrence Lessig and Andrew Dhuey established The Electors Trust under the aegis of Equal Citizens.
They provide pro bono legal counsel as well as a secure communications platform for those of the 538 members of the United States Electoral College who were considering a vote of conscience against Donald Trump in the presidential election.
[42] After the dismissal of James Comey in May 2017, Tribe wrote: "The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice."
Tribe argued that Trump's conduct rose to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" that are impeachable offenses under the Constitution.
[48][49] Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan harshly criticized Tribe, saying that he "has become an important vector of misinformation and conspiracy theories on Twitter.
"[48] According to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, Tribe has been "an especially active booster" of the Palmer Report, "a liberal blog known for peddling conspiracy theories".
[48][49][50] On August 8, 2023, The New York Times reported that Kenneth Chesebro, who initially laid out "a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election", referred to comments by Tribe, to which Tribe responded that his referred comments were "a gross misrepresentation of my scholarship” by Chesebro, and were "taken out of context".