Lawrence Tribe
Truly, a name to conjure with. Let me tell you why.
In high school I enjoyed participating in speech and debate. Since this was something I was good at, I eventually won a full-tuition debate scholarship to attend USC.
To be successful in debate it’s important to work on certain skills, such as critical thinking, clear communication, and persuasiveness. But of all the skills one needs to win, I think the most essential is confidence. The better debaters, including me, always thought we were going to win every single round at every single tournament.
That is, until I met Larry Tribe.
It’s been more than sixty years, and still I remember one of his arguments as if it was this morning. We were at the Heart of America tournament in Lawrence, Kansas. The debate topic was national health insurance, and my partner and I were up against Tribe and his partner (the team from Harvard) in the first elimination round.
Tribe’s partner quoted Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York. My partner, Ken Moes, a fine debater, made the point that Governor Rockefeller of New York wasn’t qualified to speak as a medical authority. We both thought we were doing well.
Then Tribe got up and in his brilliant, rapidly delivered rebuttal, even included a parenthetical remark that probably won the debate for him. Every time I see Tribe, now a retired Harvard law professor, on TV, I can still hear him say, “And as for Governor Rockefeller, we did not cite him as a medical authority, but rather as a (pause for effect) financial expert.”
The audience laughed.
I cringed.
The judges voted for Tribe, who went on to win the tournament.
I’m reminded of that debate every month or two because Tribe went on to become a constitutional law professor at Harvard law School, and to this day is often interviewed on CNN as a legal expert on court decisions.
Needless to say, my partner and I were not able to defeat Tribe. And that is the only debate of my entire career where I can truly admit that I lost because we were up against a better debater. (My twenty-year-old self is surprised that I’m even willing to write about this.)
I doubt that Professor Tribe remembers me. But I certainly remember him.
Hi, Larry.
Alan