Professor Laurence Tribe Decides Not To Update American Constitutional Law
Pre-eminent constitutional law scholar and featured speaker at this year's ACS National Convention Professor Laurence Tribe has decided not to publish the second volume of the third edition of his influential treatise American Constitutional Law. His letters explaining the decision are here.
Professor Jack Balkin comments on the development:
For many years, Tribe has been a key exponent and defender of a liberal synthesis of the constitutional law created by the Warren and Burger Courts. Because Tribe has seen his job as synthesizing and reconstructing the larger themes of constitutional law as it actually exists, several of his positions have changed over the years as the Supreme Court (and existing doctrine) have become more conservative. Yet at the same time, the Rehnquist Court has pushed the liberal civil rights agenda in ways that the Warren and Burger Courts never did, for example, in the area of gay rights. Hence, until this moment, Tribe has worked on the assumption that the Supreme Court, even if it has not decided every issue in the ways he would prefer, has been working within the basic paradigms of reasoning established by the Warren and Burger Courts. Apparently, Tribe now believes that this may no longer be the case, and that a Supreme Court stocked with new Bush appointees will shift constitutional doctrine in important new directions. Perhaps equally important, Tribe appears to believe that the new Court will shift doctrine in directions that will make his synthesis of existing doctrine outmoded or irrelevant.Whether or not he turns out to have been correct, Tribe's decision to suspend his treatise marks an important moment in American constitutional scholarship. It is important not simply because Tribe and his treatise are important, but because Tribe has symbolized the liberal establishment in American constitutional law for many years, and because, as a seasoned litigator, he is as good a judge of future trends as anyone else in the country. When Larry Tribe says that a paradigm shift may be on the way, it is worth sitting up and taking notice.
I cannot think of a scholarly decision of similar symbolic importance.
Written By:Michael E. Tierney, Victim On May 25, 2005 4:37 PM Written By:James Scott Stewart On June 1, 2005 4:02 PM
Dear Judge Tribe:
I would like to ask for your help in prosecuting High Crimes and Misdemeanor and Treason on the part of local, state and federal officials. It is no joke.
I am very interesting in US Constitutional law, and would like receive the news and essays of the subject.
regards
Thomasgguo
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