Dana Rohrabacher: “Today I rise to correct the record concerning a great economist and friend, the late Dr. Bernard Siegan, a distinguished…”

“Today I rise to correct the record concerning a great economist and friend, the late Dr. Bernard Siegan, a distinguished professor of law at the University of San Diego. In 1988 Dr. Siegan was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals. He promptly came under personal attack, most notably from Professor Lawrence Tribe of Harvard University. Tribe wrote a public letter on May 28, 1987, to Senator Joseph Biden belittling Dr. Siegan as being outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence. Tribe further asserted that Dr. Siegan 'reveals himself to be not a judicial conservative but an ideologue of the right, one who would deploy the Constitution in service of a conservative economic philosophy.' In a widely quoted section of his letter, Professor Tribe assailed Dr. Siegan's support of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling as 'a component of the right to travel, a right long secured by the Federal courts,' which was, of course, Dr. Siegan's reason for supporting Brown v. Board of Education.”