Tribe now senior counselor for access to justice in the Department of Justice
Laurence Tribe ’66, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard Law School, became senior counselor for access to justice in the Department of Justice, where he leads a newly launched initiative aimed at improving access to civil and criminal legal services.
In launching the initiative, Justice Department officials say they hope to elevate the importance of legal access issues and to take concrete steps to address them. The primary focus of the initiative is to improve indigent defense, enhance the delivery of legal services to the poor and middle class, and identify and promote alternatives to court-intensive and lawyer-intensive solutions.
“We at the law school salute Larry Tribe’s willingness to advance the dream of true access to justice for all. We will miss him while he’s in Washington, but it helps to know he will bring his enormous talents and energy to such a vital task,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.
As senior counselor, Tribe is a primary liaison to the federal judiciary and works with federal, state, and tribal judiciaries in strengthening fair, impartial and independent adjudication. He also exchanges information with foreign ministries of justice and judicial systems regarding efforts to provide access to justice, as part of the DOJ’s existing international efforts to promote fair and impartial law enforcement and adjudication.
Tribe began his tenure at the DOJ on March 1 and officially reports to Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli ’91.
Tribe is a renowned professor of constitutional law. He joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1968, received tenure in 1972 and held the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship of Constitutional Law from 1982 to 2004, when he was appointed University Professor—the highest academic honor that Harvard University can bestow upon a faculty member, reserved for just a handful of professors throughout the university.
Tribe is the author of more than 100 books and articles, including “American Constitutional Law,” “On Reading the Constitution” and “The Invisible Constitution.” He has argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States—including the historic Bush v. Gore case in 2000 on behalf of presidential candidate Albert Gore Jr.—and has testified frequently before Congress on a broad range of constitutional issues.
After serving in the White House, Freeman returns to Harvard Law School
Professor Jody Freeman L.L.M. ’91 S.J.D. ’95 returned to the Harvard Law School faculty this month, after serving in the White House as counselor for energy and climate change for more than a year.
Freeman, a leading scholar of administrative and environmental law, was appointed to an endowed chair in public law named for Watergate special prosecutor and former Solicitor General Archibald Cox ’37 and will work at the law school and across the university to harness Harvard’s talent and resources toward shaping global energy policy. She resumed her role as director of the law school’s Environmental Law Program, which she founded in 2006 and which houses one of the nation’s top environmental law and policy clinics.
“I’m thrilled to welcome Jody back after her tremendous service in the White House,” said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. “In more than a year of intensive policy review and implementation, she made major contributions to the shaping of bold and innovative new initiatives in environmental and energy policy, and she will now bring the lessons and insights from that experience here to the law school and to the wider university. Her knowledge will be invaluable to students and colleagues engaged in the critical search for solutions to the staggering environmental and energy challenges we face nationally and globally.”
In her role as counselor to Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Freeman contributed to a variety of policy initiatives on American energy and climate change issues, including the pursuit of comprehensive energy and climate legislation that would place a market-based cap on carbon. The OECC has supported the Obama administration’s efforts to reduce dependence on oil, cut greenhouse gas pollution, advance energy efficiency and spur American leadership in clean energy manufacturing, including efforts undertaken in the Recovery Act. The OECC helped to facilitate the president’s national auto policy, which represents a historic agreement among the auto industry, California and key stakeholders to support the most ambitious federal fuel efficiency standards and the first-ever federal greenhouse gas standards.
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