What is Senator Sessions' View of Kagan's Whitewash of the Larry Tribe Scandal?

Blogger Tom Remington, who we blogged about yesterday, has an interesting update today on his Black Bear Blog, here.

Remington points to the announcement of Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he and the other Republicans on the Committee are forcing a one-week delay of the Committee vote on her nomination, to insist that she answer questions, set out in his letter, concerning whether she will recuse herself from any cases involving the constitutionality of the recently passed federal health care legislation.

But where, Remington asks, are the questions about Kagan's role as dean of Harvard Law School in whitewashing the ghostwriting/plagiarism scandals involving Larry Tribe and Charles Ogletree -- a role she undertook despite a personal conflict of interest (as a student she'd served as a Tribe ghostwriter and hence had every incentive to sweep the matter under the rug)?

Remington writes: 

[T]here is no reference to anything to do with Elena Kagan and her role in covering up ghostwriting and plagiarism at Harvard Law School while she was dean. I know that Sen. Sessions and others on the Judiciary Committee have been made aware of this as I have contacted them asking that they investigate.

We commend Mr. Remington on his efforts to alert Senator Sessions and others on the Committee to Kagan's whitewashing of such matters, and we will do our best to follow up, by contacting members of the Committee to ask whether they have taken the time to review the matters flagged by Mr. Remington, and to report on this blog what their views are.

Black Bear Blog on Senators' Neglect of Harvard Plagiarism Story: "Shame on the Senate"!

Tom Remington of the Black Bear Blog made a cogent post this morning noting the importance of the Harvard plagiarism scandals to the Senate's task of deciding whether Elena Kagan is fit to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court (we appreciate his link to our blog).  You can read it in full here. 

Mr. Remington, an avid hunter and the managing editor of U.S. Hunting Today, has previously opposed the Kagan nomination, mostly based on concerns about how faithfully she would adhere to the Second Amendment right to bear arms.  In this post, Remington expresses his concern about the Senate's lack of interest in Kagan's handling of the ghostwriting/plagiarism scandals at Harvard.  An excerpt:

Like with any Supreme Court nominee, there is more to the person than simply how they stand on Second Amendment. Isn’t it just as important to know about a person’s character, maybe even to know whether they find little problem with lying, cheating and stealing?

A reader tipped me off the other day to events that have been taking place for some time at Harvard Law School, especially during the time that Elena Kagan was the Dean. It appears there is nothing short of an epidemic (at least by using Barack Obama’s standards for what entails an epidemic) of plagiarism by some of Harvard Law’s well-known associates – Alan Dershowitz, Charles Ogletree and Laurence Tribe. The history is long and sordid dating back several years.   You can find much information about this from the links given to me by a reader who claims to have been following this story for several years and puzzles over why nobody is talking about this during the Kagan hearings. The Harvard Plagiarism Archive is a good place to start and the below video I’ve posted can be found at the Harvard Parody.

Personally I have little, if anything, at stake if Harvard Law School wants to pump out liars, cheaters and stealers.  . . .  However, all Americans have a stake in this because as Dean of Harvard Law School, according to documents provided [at the Harvard Plagiarism Archive], Elena Kagan was aware of copying and pasting of other scholars’ work into books and other documents claimed by Dershowitz, Ogletree and Tribe and essentially did nothing about it. Even more troubling is that Kagan, as Dean, investigated accusations against Laurence Tribe about his using students to ghostwrite and plagiarizing for his book and other works. A real conflict of interest exists here in that Kagan used to ghostwrite for Tribe.

Plagiarism is a serious offense. Caught in the act, a student will be bounced out on their ear but evidently it is an acceptable practice at Harvard Law School for professors and staff; at least under Kagan’s watch. The ramifications of stealing another person’s scholarship goes far beyond the obvious dishonesty and threatens the very foundation of academic scholarship, much as Climategate has rattled and cracked the scientific world leaving millions not knowing who to believe or trust.

. . .  Why isn’t this being discussed during the Kagan nomination process? This knowledge challenges the very core of a person’s character; the very ethos no American should desire to see of a person sitting on the highest court in this land.

Surely members of the Senate must be aware of this . . . aren’t they? Do they want to know? How deeply tied are these Senators to Dershowitz, Ogletree and Tribe? Is this all just Washington “business as usual/politics as usual”?

For Elena Kagan, as dean of any college, to show such disregard for obvious plagiarism is an abomination but to take it upon herself to investigate the person she used to ghostwrite for, simply reeks of dishonesty and a cover-up or better yet a good, old-fashioned Washington, D.C. whitewash.

* * *

Shame on the Senate for not getting to the bottom of this in their vetting process. If you think this information is important in selecting a Justice to sit on the Supreme Court, pass it on to everyone you know and most importantly, send it to your Senator.

Elena Kagan's "Runaround Suit"

The Harvard Parody bloggers have been busy.  Yesterday they posted a new video, called Elena Kagan's "Runaround Suit."  It contains highly entertaining video from the March, 2009, annual Harvard Law School parody show, which portrayed Justice John Paul Stevens as a decrepit old man who'd lost his marbles.  That video is matched with video of Kagan professing her great respect for Justice Stevens during her confirmation hearing a couple of weeks ago.  

The video also portrays Dean Kagan putting on a superhero cape, and announcing:

"But now I'm going to D.C.; I'm going to help fix the country the way I fixed the Law School!"

Given how Dean Kagan "fixed" the ghostwriting/plagiarism scandals of Professors Dershowitz, Ogletree, and Tribe by meting out no punishment of any kind to any of them even though each was caught red-handed having students write books for them (because, as it happened, the students had plagiarized material from other books), we must admit to some concern about the future of the country, or at least of the Supreme Court!




[7/15 UPDATE: In case you have difficulty viewing the Harvard Parody videos, either as embedded on this blog or at HarvardParody.wordpress.com, the videos are also posted on YouTube on the Harvard Parody channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/harvardparody]

Update on National Review article and Harvard Parody project

A week ago we reported on the June 28 National Review article by Robert VerBruggen (article here) revealing important new evidence supporting what we have long contended:  that Professor Laurence Tribe has for years run a ghostwriting mill in which his books and articles (including his career-making constitutional law treatise) are drafted for him by his current and former students, with Tribe serving mostly as a compiler of material written by others, not as an actual "author" of the works bearing his name.

One of our most important posts on this point, dated Feb. 2, 2006, discussed an essay by Dean Lawrence Velvel touching on our "ghostwriting mill" description of Tribe's method of producing books. See here.  In particular, we quoted Dean Velvel's comment that a law professor he knows had recently told him that while a student at Harvard Law School he had been asked "to work on American Constitutional Law" and "he knew several people who had done so.  . . .  The people who had worked for Tribe, said this professor, had written large tracts of Tribe's treatise."

As we mentioned last week, we first learned of the National Review article from one of the Harvard Parody bloggers.  They ended up doing a lengthy video (which we provided significant help with), explaining in detail the Larry Tribe ghostwriting/plagiarism scandal which Dean Elena Kagan was instrumental in whitewashing, entitled:  "I'm Larry Tribe":  The Story Behind the Parody. The end of the video includes highly entertaining audio, photos, and lyrics of the 2005 live performance of the "I'm Larry Tribe" parody skit.  (If you want to watch only the skit, it's available as a discrete clip on YouTube, here.)

The full video is posted at the new Harvard Parody site on WordPress.com (which apparently has video hosting capabilities not available on the old Harvard Parody platform). [7/12 update: a reader suggested we embed the video; here it is]



[7/15 UPDATE: In case you have difficulty viewing the Harvard Parody videos, either as embedded on this blog or at HarvardParody.wordpress.com, the videos are also posted on YouTube on the Harvard Parody channel, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/harvardparody]

One final point.  In response to our post of last week, "R.O. Denver" e-mailed us about the new evidence of plagiarism by Tribe discussed in the National Review article, of which he had quite detailed knowledge.  Denver was the law professor who tipped off the Harvard Crimson to new evidence of plagiarism by Charles Ogletree in 2006.  See here.  Denver immediately supplied us with very helpful background information (particularly on the research assistant singled out by Tribe) which we used in helping put together the video.  Denver recently informed us that he plans to launch a website (similar to the one he created on the new evidence of Ogletree's plagiarism, see here) setting forth that background information and fully documenting the new evidence of plagiarism by Tribe, complete with images of the relevant pages of Tribe's treatise and of the sources which were copied into Tribe's treatise.  We greatly appreciate his assistance, which will minimize our burden in keeping this blog up to date. We will post a link to his website once it is available.

On Elena Kagan Covering for Alan Dershowitz

Blogger Tony Greenstein has an interesting post on Elena Kagan's effort as dean of Harvard Law School to cover for Alan Dershowitz's plagiarism (a subject which we've given little attention, focusing more on her efforts to cover for Laurence Tribe and Charles Ogletree).

You can read it here.

For an excellent primer on the Dershowitz affair, we recommend Harvard Clown School.  (For our discussion of that blog, see here).

Elena Kagan, Medical Ghostwriter?

We note with some amusement that after drawing enormous flak from Dean Lawrence Velvel for her apparent role in the 1980s as a legal ghostwriter for Laurence Tribe (see here), Elena Kagan faced tough questioning in her confirmation hearings over the possibility that in the 1990s she served as a medical ghostwriter on a sensitive political matter involving abortion.  Here.  It's a shame no one (apparently) asked Dean Kagan about her legal ghostwriting work.

Last month Professor David Bernstein noted Kagan's ghostwriting work for law professors (hardly the first such work, it appears!) during the Whitewater affair, in a Volokh Conspiracy post here.  Some of the commentators are quite critical of Kagan.