From a reader:

To me, a much better reason to doubt Larry Tribe’s credibility is in a review by Peter Berkowitz in the Weekly Standard of an article by Tribe on Bush v. Gore. In the article Tribe argued at length that the Supreme Court should have declined to rule on the case on the grounds that it presented a non-justiciable political question. Tribe suggests that it was “remarkable” that the Court’s opinion failed to mention the political question doctrine; Berkowitz points out that it is much more remarkable that Gore’s brief in the case failed to mention the doctrine — and that that brief was written by Larry Tribe. In other words, Tribe chides the Court for not adopting an argument he himself failed to make, while concealing from his readers that he failed to make it. I don’t know if that’s exactly lying, but it sure takes some chutzpah.
Here’s Berkowitz’s version and the <a href=”http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/835noiex.asp?pg=2

” target=”_blank”> link.:

A FINAL REASON to doubt Tribe’s case against Bush v. Gore stems from the fascinating discrepancy between the arguments put forward by Tribe the scholar and those put forward by Tribe the lawyer. “How remarkable was it,” Tribe mockingly observes in the Harvard Law Review, “that neither the Court’s per curiam opinion nor the Chief Justice’s concurrence so much as mentioned the political question issue, much less attempted to justify its assertion of authority in the face of the seemingly applicable political question doctrine? It’s hardly the sort of thing a Supreme Court Justice simply forgets about.” Or, one might add, hardly the sort of thing a lawyer arguing a case in the Supreme Court simply forgets about.
Indeed, if the Constitution’s command to the Court to keep out of the Florida controversy really had been applicable and conclusive (or even a command), it is remarkable that Gore’s brief to the Court–which Tribe wrote and signed as counsel of record–fails to so much as mention the political question doctrine or assert that Bush’s challenge to the recount was nonjusticiable or invoke the Twelfth Amendment. It would seem that by failing to mention a legal argument that Tribe the scholar regards as clear cut and decisive, Tribe the lawyer, before the highest court in the land and in one of the biggest cases of his career, committed a substantial blunder. Or by characterizing in the Harvard Law Review as clear and decisive a legal theory that Tribe the lawyer, along with some of the brightest legal minds in the land, regarded as not worth mentioning in their brief on behalf of the vice president, Tribe the scholar committed a substantial mischaracterization of the law.