Actually, Jonah, there has been at least one attempt to defend Professor Tribe. It’s by Tom Goldstein, who notes in a partial disclosure that he “regularly work[s] with Larry Tribe on Supreme Court litigation.” His defense adopts several strategies to sidestep the issue of scholarly misconduct:

1) Mischaracterize what I wrote. Goldstein says that my criticism of Tribe is merely that he “very strongly implied” in 2003 that he had made a bold Ninth Amendment argument in a 1980 case when he didn’t. That’s part of the criticism in my article. But it’s not the entirety of it. And it’s important to note that it’s not the case that Tribe wrote one stray sentence or paragraph that strongly implied something false. The whole Tribe article makes no sense except as an attempt to portray his record in the 1980 case as different than it was. For example, since Tribe didn’t make anything close to the bold Ninth Amendment argument he later claimed to have made, there is ample reason to doubt Tribe’s 2003 account of having withstood pressure from powerful figures to back away from that argument.

2) Mischaracterize what Tribe wrote. That 2003 “essay . . . is actually about the death of Tribe’s father—a subject that Ponnuru essentially back-handedly mocks.” First of all, Tribe’s essay was not simply “about the death of Tribe’s father” and did not purport to be. It was about how that death gave Tribe the courage to be bold before the Supreme Court. I take it that Goldstein chooses the locution “essentially back-handedly mocks” since he can’t quote any examples of my actually front-handedly mocking the topic of Tribe’s father’s death. I did not mock that topic in any way. (Goldstein’s decision not to link to my article was strategically wise.) I didn’t, for example, suggest that Tribe’s treatment of it was “over the top,” as Goldstein does. I do, at one point, say that the “incident” which my article concerns—Tribe’s publication of an essay that seems to falsify his record—was “weird.”

3) Speculate about my motives. Goldstein believes that I am trying to damage Tribe in advance of a confirmation battle over Chief Justice Rehnquist’s replacement. I’m supposed to be under the impression that if Tribe’s credibility is damaged, there will be no other liberal law professors to write op-eds and testify against whoever Bush nominates. That’s nuts. I did the story because I thought it was an interesting story. Its timing reflects when I learned about the story.

My article stuck very closely to Tribe’s own words and to the record of the Supreme Court case involved. When I had to characterize, e.g., legal briefs, I tried to do so in as restrained and sober a way as possible, allowing for evidence that went against my thesis. (There was a very little bit of that.) I did not speculate about Tribe’s own motives. I did not do a lot of editorializing. I did not, for example, call Tribe slippery and dishonest. I am willing to say that, however, about one of his defenders.