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Laurence Tribe Quotes

Laurence Henry Tribe is an American legal scholar who is a University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. He previously served as the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School.

A constitutional law scholar, Tribe is co-founder of the American Constitution Society. He is also the author of American Constitutional Law , a major treatise in that field, and has argued before the United States Supreme Court 36 times. Tribe was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2010. Wikipedia  

✵ 10. October 1941
Laurence Tribe photo
Laurence Tribe: 35   quotes 0   likes

Famous Laurence Tribe Quotes

“We... devote... Chapter five to the proposition that there is too much loose impeachment talk, and we think that impeachment... needs to be cautiously and carefully approached.”

Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe on To End a Presidency (2018)
Source: 13:54 https://www.c-span.org/video/?446316-3/washington-journal-laurence-tribe-discusses-presidential-impeachment&start=834

“Americans have moved into ideological echo chambers... everything they read or hear reinforces their predispositions and makes them more intolerant of opposing views...”

Laurence Tribe

Source: To End a Presidency (2018)

“Warring partisan tribes now define a dysfunctional system...”

Laurence Tribe

To End a Presidency (2018)

“While "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" was a term of art dating to 1386, and had thus accumulated centuries of intellectual baggage, there's no reason to think the Framers had all that in mind.”

Laurence Tribe

To End a Presidency (2018)

“[W]e’re skeptical that so-called "impeachment precedent" commands deference apart from its power to persuade future generations. Congress isn’t bound by its own prior decisions.”

Laurence Tribe

To End a Presidency (2018)

“Impeachment requires good judgment amid uncertainty, not a preprinted checklist of relevant considerations...”

Laurence Tribe

To End a Presidency (2018)

Laurence Tribe Quotes about silence

“[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.”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

“[W]e should beware of "hearing" silences where nearly all readers, setting aside how they would like a particular controversy to end, identify determinative text... "The heart has its reasons," as Pascal famously said, "that reason does not know."”

Laurence Tribe

Good enough. And those heartfelt reasons deserve a hearing. But when they defy reason, the meaning of living by the rule of law is that reason should prevail.
Soundings and Silences (2016)

“There are as many reasons to be silent as there are to speak, and as many ways to hear meaning in the sounds of silence.”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

“[C]onstitutional silences, like silences of other kinds, aren’t just occasional gaps or omissions in an otherwise-seamless design. They’re everywhere and come in as many flavors and varieties as sounds. Ambiguity and multiplicity of meanings are in a sense manifestations of silence.”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

“[T]he "dormant Commerce Clause" [is] a set of unwritten constitutional principles limiting state commercial regulation in the face of congressional silence coupled with the Constitution’s delegation to Congress of the power to regulate interstate commerce.”

Laurence Tribe

Source: Soundings and Silences (2016)

“[M]uch of what our Supreme Court does involves filling in the "great silences of the Constitution"...”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Laurence Tribe Quotes about the trip

“[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.”

Laurence Tribe

To End a Presidency (2018)

“For those whose minds are made up, this book offers a window into the way the "other side" sees... of why you have not been able to persuade opponents... insights into what they believe and... why.”

Laurence Tribe

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

“This is... a book about morality. By offering several perspectives... some rooted in philosophy, some... in science and technology, we may come to see new ways to understand...”

Laurence Tribe

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

“[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 right to die, no issue threatens to divide us politically in... as powerful a way as the abortion issue...”

Laurence Tribe

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Laurence Tribe Quotes

“Every sentence, every phrase, is in part silent with respect to how a reader or listener is to go about attributing meaning to it...”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Parting

“[M]any of the most important Supreme Court decisions take the form of holding that a particular limit either has not been exceeded or, more fundamentally, that the asserted limit is not in fact part of the Constitution at all.”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

Parting , Decision

“[T]here are plenty of things besides private action that the Constitution is "not about."”

Laurence Tribe

Soundings and Silences (2016)

“My interest is less in what's invisible "around" the Constitution than in what is invisible within it.”

Laurence Tribe

The Invisible Constitution (2008), Distinguishing "The Constitution" from "Constitutional Law"

“So the written Constitution, the one we can see, fails to tell us just what's in it and what's not.”

Laurence Tribe

The Invisible Constitution (2008), Identifying "The Constitution"

“[W]e may... find more common ground than we currently imagine.”

Laurence Tribe

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Imagination

“This book must... touch... deep and difficult questions about birth and death... life and its inception... sexuality and gender, about distribution of power.”

Laurence Tribe

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Question , Death , Books , Life

“If forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy that will almost certainly kill her is impermissible, how different... to compel... a pregnancy that will probably shorten her life? Or... that will leave her life in shambles?”

Laurence Tribe

Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Life

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

Laurence Tribe

Constitutional Choices (1985), The Nature of the Enterprise, The Futile Search for Legitimacy

“The question whether individuals may insist on being heard by rulemakers, for whom they already (directly or indirectly) voted, has bedeviled administrative law since the turn of the century.”

Laurence Tribe

Constitutional Choices (1985), The Nature of the Enterprise, The Futile Search for Legitimacy

Law , Question

“[I]t is largely because I find all exercises of power by some over others—even with what passes for the latter's consent—are and must remain deeply problematic, that I find all legitimating theories not simply amusing in their pretensions but... as dangerous as they are convincing.”

Laurence Tribe

Source: Constitutional Choices (1985), The Nature of the Enterprise, The Futile Search for Legitimacy

Exercises

“If the legislature would punish, it must enlist... the other branches—the executive to prosecute, the judicial to try and convict.”

Laurence Tribe

American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

“That all lawful power derives from the people and must be held in check to preserve their freedom is the oldest and central tenet of American constitutionalism. ...[I]t was believed that personal freedom could be secured more effectively by decentralization than by express command.”

Laurence Tribe

Source: American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

Freedom , Personality , People , Law

“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.”

Laurence Tribe

American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

Justice

“[A]ttempts to treat constitutional doctrine neutrally elide important questions and obscure available answers.”

Laurence Tribe

American Constitutional Law (1978), Preface to the First Edition

Question

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

Laurence Tribe

American Constitutional Law (1978), Preface to the First Edition

“[A] Bill of Rights directed against federal abuses was thought necessary in addition to the separation and division of powers...”

Laurence Tribe

Source: American Constitutional Law (1978), Approaches to Constituitonal Analysis

“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?”

Laurence Tribe

Source: Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (1990), Approaching Abortion Anew

Birth , Life , Effort

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