Harvard Law School’s most famous professor Laurence Tribe — whose influence touched such Harvard law students as Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Elena Kagan and Merrick Garland — appealed directly on social media today to another former Harvard law student, United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Concerned about what he sees as a potential abdication of duty by the Supreme Court as it considers the case of Colorado keeping candidate Donald Trump off the state’s ballot, Tribe implores Roberts not to “kick this can down the road.”
Asserting that Roberts’s questions during oral arguments “suggest” that the Chief Justice is “tempted” to leave a decision on the critical 14th Amendment Section 3 “insurrectionist” argument for another day, Tribe warns that the can Roberts appears ready to kick is filled with “highly fissionable and radioactive explosives.”
Tribe says to Roberts “I beg you to rethink that instinct.”
To Chief Justice Roberts:
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) February 15, 2024
Your questions during oral argument suggested you’re tempted to kick this can down the road.
I beg you to rethink that instinct.
This can contains highly fissionable and radioactive explosives 🧨🔥 ☢️ https://t.co/L7TJkImUPJ
Tribe writes in response to a post shared by yet another Harvard Law alum, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD). Raskin shared an article by Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz, in which Wilentz lays out the case that a refusal by the court to adjudicate the matter would be perilous to American democracy.
Raskin writes: “Professor Wilentz explains why the Supreme Court is on the road to tragedy—even catastrophe—with its ‘historic abdication’ in refusing to say what the law of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment actually is.”
[NOTE: The Wilentz article, in the New York Review of Books, is subtitled: “If the Supreme Court decides not to rule on whether Trump should be disqualified, it could set off precisely the crisis it hopes to avoid.”]
Tribe’s direct appeal to the Chief Justice — he writes formally in his tweet: “To Chief Justice Roberts:” — follows on the heels of another direct message from Tribe — this time to Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — castigating Kavanaugh for having “bought into Trump’s mythmaking.”
Justice Kavanaugh:
— Laurence Tribe 🇺🇦 ⚖️ (@tribelaw) February 15, 2024
You appear to have bought into Trump’s mythmaking when you suggested by your questioning during the oral argument that Congress was responding in the 1870 Enforcement Act to the claim in Griffin’s Case that Section 3 was not self-executing.
You’ll find that…
Tribe’s reputation in the world of constitutional law is unparalleled. Even conservative former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig — who filed an amicus brief at SCOTUS supporting the legal basis for the removal of Trump from the ballot in Colorado for participation in an insurrection — wrote last year that “Laurence H. Tribe has been the Nation’s preeminent constitutional scholar for the past half-century.”
