Tribe to receive Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence

Professor Laurence Tribe ’66

Professor Laurence Tribe ’66

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe ’66 will be awarded the American Philosophical Society’s Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence, which recognizes outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of jurisprudence. Tribe will be honored at the Society’s annual gathering on Nov. 15, in Philadelphia.

Tribe is the 24th winner in the prize’s 125-year history. Previous winners include Harvard Law School Professors Cass Sunstein ’78 in 2007 and Frank I. Michelman ’60 in 2005. Both Sunstein and Michelman were also bestowed with University Professorships by Harvard. Past HLS-affiliate winners of the Phillips Prize include the late Ronald Dworkin ’57 in 1994, Professor Lon Fuller in 1935, Visiting Professors Karl Llewellyn in 1962 and HLS Dean Roscoe Pound in 1960.

Dean Martha Minow said: “Larry Tribe combines genuine imagination and mastery in his scholarship, teaching, and advocacy. It is terrific to see Larry honored the Society with the Henry M. Phillips Prize and to see him join the roster of distinguished past recipients of the prize.”

A distinguished legal scholar and a world-renowned professor of constitutional law, Tribe is the author of more than 100 books and articles, including “American Constitutional Law,” “On Reading the Constitution,” and, most recently, “The Invisible Constitution.” He has argued many 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 he has testified frequently before Congress on a broad range of constitutional issues.

Tribe joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1968, and held the Ralph S. Tyler, Jr. Professorship in 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.

Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743. “The first drudgery of settling new colonies is now pretty well over,” he then wrote, “and there are many in every province in circumstances that set them at ease, and afford leisure to cultivate the finer arts, and improve the common stock of knowledge.”

Distinguished early members included George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, James Madison and John Marshall.