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Laurence Henry Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor. Tribe is generally recognized as one of the foremost constitutional law experts and Supreme Court practitioners in the United States. He is the author of American Constitutional Law (1978), the most frequently cited treatise in that field, and has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 36 times.
Born in Shanghai, China, Tribe immigrated to San Francisco at the age of six. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School. He holds an A.B. in Mathematics, summa cum laude, from Harvard College (1962) and a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School (1966).
Tribe was considered a potential Supreme Court nominee until he testified against Robert Bork, making lasting enemies in the U.S. Senate (although he supported Anthony Kennedy, who was eventually appointed in Bork’s place). His protégé, Kathleen Sullivan, is now thought of by many as a potential Court nominee if a Democrat takes the White House. As a result of the fact that he is unlikely to ever take a seat on the Supreme Court given both his large body of scholarship, his political activism, and now his age, Tribe continues to strongly support liberal political causes. He is one of the co-founders off the American Constitution Society, the law and policy organization formed to counteract the conservative Federalist Society.
