A Prophet’s Unlikely Defender
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Harvard’s Professor Tribe courts both issues and publicity It is hard to imagine a more unpopular cause than defending the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Attorneys for the Korean evangelist carried out a survey in 1982 and found that more than 75% of those questioned reacted negatively to Moon’s name. He is widely thought of as a brainwasher and exploiter of American young people. Given this prejudice, officials of the Unification Church knew that they would need a lawyer with impeccable credentials to represent the self-proclaimed “Prophet of God” in an appeal of his 1982 conviction for filing false federal income tax returns. The advocate they eventually landed was Laurence H. Tribe, 42, a Harvard professor of constitutional law with a national reputation as a defender of civil rights and feminist causes. Next week Tribe will file a petition before the U.S. Supreme Court asking for a review of the Moon case. At first glance it might seem curious that a lawyer who sees himself as a champion of the poor should be coming to the defense of the powerful evangelist, who will have to serve 18 months in prison unless his conviction is overturned. Tribe has agreed to take the Moon case because he sees a basic constitutional issue at stake. The religious leader, he argues, was unfairly prosecuted for financial practices that are common among some larger, established churches; moreover, says Tribe, the prosecution is an unwarranted intrusion by the Government and a jury into church affairs. “It is exactly the people who are hated who ought to have the protection of the courts against mass hysteria,” he says. “The issue in this case is not religion alone but rather how to protect minorities against oppression.” That comment typifies the rigorous intellectual style of Tribe, who was appointed to the Harvard Law School faculty at the ripe young age of 26. His 1978 treatise American Constitutional Law has become a primary reference work for scholars, lawyers and judges across the country and has been cited in more than 400 court cases. Jesse Choper, dean of the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, places Tribe at “the very top of his field” as one of the law’s most brilliant scholars. In recent years. Tribe has also become a fearsome presence in the courtroom, where he generally takes the liberal side of legal and social issues. “I have enormous respect for his ability, his intelligence and his analytical skills,” says U.S. Solicitor General Rex Lee, who represents the Government in cases before the Supreme Court. The conservative Lee says that he and Tribe disagree on nine out often issues, but adds, “I don’t know that I have ever had a more skillful opponent.” Tribe’s batting average is remarkable. Since 1980, he has taken seven cases to the Supreme Court and has won five. Those winning presentations have involved such disparate issues as California’s right to stop the construction of new nuclear power plants within the state and the right of a Cambridge, Mass., restaurant to have a liquor license. In the latter case, he persuaded the court to strike down a state law that gave churches the right to block the issuance of liquor licenses to nearby businesses. Source : time.com |