Walsh Hires Legal Expert for High Court Arguments

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who is investigating the Iran-Contra scandal, said Thursday that he has hired constitutional law expert Laurence H. Tribe to represent his investigation before the Supreme Court in the struggle over the independent counsel law.

Walsh, who has thrown the power and prestige of his office behind the independent counsel provisions of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, said he has asked the high court to let him file a friend-of-the-court brief in the current challenge against independent counsel Alexia Morrison.

On Jan. 22, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia voided Morrison’s investigation of former Assistant Atty. Gen. Theodore Olson and threw out the law as unconstitutional. It said the court appointment of the independent counsel usurps executive authority.

Asks for Quick Review

The Justice Department has joined the opposition to the law. Morrison, who faces a March 10 statute of limitations deadline in her probe of whether Olson lied to Congress during a 1983 Environmental Protection Agency scandal, has asked the Supreme Court for a quick review.

“Assuming that the Supreme Court grants our request,” Walsh said, “Prof. Tribe will prepare our brief, and if the court allows us to participate in oral arguments, he will argue on behalf of this office for the constitutionality of the independent counsel provisions” of the ethics law.

Tribe, 46, a member of the Harvard Law School faculty, is recognized as one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars and has experience arguing cases before the Supreme Court.

12 Cases Before Court

Tribe said recently that he has argued 12 cases before the high court, a large number for a private attorney, and won nine of the cases.

He was born in Shanghai in 1941 and grew up in California. He attended Harvard as both an undergraduate and law school student and was a clerk for former Justice Potter Stewart.

Tribe is frequently mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee for a Democratic President, but his well-known liberalism and his role in helping to defeat Robert H. Bork’s Supreme Court nomination could cause him trouble.