Moonwalkin' Larry Tribe

Michael Jackson never moonwalked better than Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. The National Review reported this week that Prof. Tribe in March 2009 urged Pres. Obama on the down low not to nominate Sonia Sotomayor to a seat on the Supreme Court. According to blogger Ed Whelan,  the good professor told the president that now-Justice Sotomayor wasn't all that bright, could be "a bully" and might antagonize and further polarize the Court's four conservatives.

According to Whelan, Tribe's purpose in contacting the president was to promote the cause of Solicitor General and former colleague Elena Kagan for the Court vacancy. In order to do that, Tribe put the beatdown on Justice Sotomayor's Court quals. Pres. Obama later nominated, and the Senate confirmed, Elena Kagan for the Court seat vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens.

And what of Tribe, whose law students have included the president himself, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justice Kagan? To his credit he fessed up to contacting the president, but then backpeddled across history's stage more deftly than Michael Jackson every moonwalked to Billy Jean.

In an email he wrote that Justice Sotomayor's performance in her first year on the Court, as well as a second reading by Tribe of her record "amply refuted" his earlier take that she was dumb, a bully and could be a pain in the ass. Huh?

Who says academics can't bust a move now and again?

Just thought you might like to know.