WASHINGTON – Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe’s name was yanked from an amicus curiae brief in a major U.S. Supreme Court climate change case earlier this month after the Justice Department told him his recent service in the department made it improper for him to be on the brief.

The department invoked 18 U.S.C. 207(c)(1), prohibiting former senior employees from communicating with their former departments when those communications are “knowingly made with the intent to influence the department in connection with any matter on which such person seeks official action by any officer or employee of such department.”