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Laurence Tribe
93 quotes
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: letter to Barack Obama, 4 May 2009
“[T]he courts that held slaves to be non-persons, separate to be equal, and pregnancy to be non sex-related can hardly be deemed either final or infallible.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he Constitution is an intentionally incomplete, often deliberately indeterminate structure for the participatory evolution of political ideals and government practices.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Judicial neutrality necessarily involves taking sides. ...[J]udicial restraint is but another form of judicial activism.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The inescapable boundaries of societal context and consciousness argue... that [judges] must raise distinctive voices of principle.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he morality of responsible scholarship points not at all to the classic formula of supposedly value-free detachment and allegedly unbiased description. Instead such morality points to an avowal of the substantive beliefs and commitments that necessarily inform any account of constitutional arguments and conclusions.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]ttempts to treat constitutional doctrine neutrally elide important questions and obscure available answers.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given its remarkable activism in constraining the President vis-à-vis Congress and the courts and in limiting Congress vis-à-vis the States, the current Supreme Court cannot be understood as pursuing a modest institutional role. ...I prefer postulates honestly expressed to analyses whose underlying assumptions are obscured by the jargon of neutral principles and the language of "objective" legal description.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he conventional ways even of stating the choices between greater freedom or equality, on the one hand, and greater governmental power, on the other... and particularly the conventional emphasis on "balancing interests"... are remarkably unilluminating as well as misleadingly ahistorical.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]hese models are not... mutually exclusive... discourse in any given period can... draw on... more than one model. ...Their main function is . ...[T]he models ...grow out of immersion in judicial decisions and lawyers' arguments ...[T]hey should be ...familiar themes ...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the legislature would punish, it must enlist... the other branches—the executive to prosecute, the judicial to try and convict.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A] Bill of Rights directed against federal abuses was thought necessary in addition to the separation and division of powers...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]lthough the effort was finally rejected by the Senate, the House was sufficiently persuaded by James Madison's fear of state and local oppression... to approve a constitutional amendment... that "no State shall infringe the equal rights of conscience, nor the freedom of speech or of the press, nor of the right of trial by jury in criminal cases." ...[H]e came close to succeeding in 1789, and... it took a Civil War to make the difference.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[J]ust as I am not writing for those who feel confident that canons of appropriate constitutional construction may be convincingly derived from some neutral source, so I am also not writing for those who have convinced themselves that "anything goes" as long as it helps end what they see as injustice; that constitutional law is only a legitimating mask for what those in power can get away with; or that it is only a tame language in which those that would otherwise foment violent revolution can couch their demands in forms the regime might accept without losing face.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one... persuaded that the categories of constitutional discourse, or of law generally, are readily rendered determinate and certain—and no one who believes that those categories are inherently empty, infinitely malleable, and ultimately corrupt—need read any further.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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?”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[G]overnmental action that burdens groups effectively excluded from the process is constitutionally suspect. In its most sophisticated form, the resulting judicial scrutiny is seen as a way of invalidating governmental classifications and distributions that turn out to be motivated either by prejudiced hostility or by self-serving stereotypes.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The state shapes the society as much as the society shapes the state...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Governmental subsidies to "major" political parties... or failure of state governments to provide funds to compensate school districts lacking "rich" property tax bases, are government actions that affirm some aspects of the status quo as inevitable. Such... are at present constitutional... Unable to support a challenge to such... power, a truly procedural... theory seems doomed... for without such challenge government may well be able to shape the "will" of the governed in the image of those who govern, reducing consent and representation to all but empty ideals.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This book is about a clash of absolutes, life against liberty. No right is more basic than the right to live. ...If infanticide is wrong, is the destruction of a fetus at eight months of , or at five, any different?”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who knows the names of the countless women who have died from painful and illegal abortions? What of the names of the countless babies who would have been born...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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...”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The political stage is... dominated by... well-rehearsed and deeply felt arguments, on either side... The debate is unending. ...[S]ingle-issue campaigning has ...distorted ...national elections. The losers will be the democratic process and the American people.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since it was judges who had read abortion rights into the Constitution, abortion opponents believed, we needed judges who would read abortion back out... [S]ome urged a that would... have prohibited abortion or... at least have returned the question to each state's legislature, but... consensus and effort... proved elusive.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This book challenges the inevitability of permanent conflict... and tries to lay the groundwork for moving on.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since it first came before the Supreme Court... abortion... has been about the Constitution. Whom does it protect? How do we decide..?”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e may... find more common ground than we currently imagine.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So the written Constitution, the one we can see, fails to tell us just what's in it and what's not.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My interest is less in what's invisible "around" the Constitution than in what is invisible within it.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean to set aside... the complex superstructure of rules, doctrines, standards, legal tests, judicial precedents, legislative and executive practices, and the cultural and social traditions that together constitute what people call "constitutional law.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That body of materials, unlike the Constitution itself, is massive and continuously growing... and changing... Many capable scholars have argued that this elaborate edifice is entitled to great respect as the "law" of our Constitution, "law" whose legitimacy ironically is in many ways easier to defend than is the legitimacy of the underlying text itself, and whose role in enabling the Constitution to carry out the important functions in our history is not difficult to demonstrate.”
Laurence Tribe (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source