democrat !
News Break
09/28/2004 08:55:42 EST Harvard Prof Acknowledges Lifting Passages
BOSTON - A Harvard law professor who represented Al Gore in his lawsuit over the 2000 election results and worked on other Democratic Party issues apologized for lifting from another scholar's work without giving proper credit.
In a statement released Monday, constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe acknowledged that his 1985 book, "God Save This Honorable Court," borrows liberally from Henry Abraham's 1974 book, "Justices and Presidents," including one exact 19-word passage.
"My well-meaning effort to write a book accessible to a lay audience through the omission of footnotes or endnotes - in contrast to the practice I have always followed in my scholarly writing - came at an unacceptable cost: my failure to attribute some of the material the Weekly Standard identified," Tribe wrote.
He did note that his book had praised Abraham's, calling it the "leading political history of Supreme Court appointments."
Harvard issued a statement saying the incident was being investigated.
Tribe's supporters, including well-known colleague Alan Dershowitz, said the revelation on the Web site of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine last week amounted to a political attack on the liberal scholar.
The scrutiny came about after Tribe publicly supported law school colleague Charles J. Ogletree, who acknowledged earlier this month that his book "All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education" included six paragraphs lifted almost directly from another work.
According to the Weekly Standard, a law professor contacted the magazine after Tribe expressed sympathy for Ogletree. The tipster suggested the magazine look into Tribe's book.
Tribe apologized to Abraham, who told The Boston Globe he has known of the plagiarism for 20 years but would accept the apology. However, he also said he felt betrayed and called Tribe's actions "inexcusable."
"I'm sure his book sold better than mine," Abraham told the Weekly Standard, adding that "he's a big mahatma and thinks he can get away with this sort of thing."
In addition to representing Gore in his 2000 lawsuit, Tribe more recently represented the Democratic Party in its attempt to keep independent Ralph Nader off the Florida ballot.
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JonR
