MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday invited former Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe to discuss President Donald Trump’s war on Iran and efforts to restrict birthright citizenship, a bid the Supreme Court cast doubt on during arguments earlier in the day.

The “Last Word” host played audio from the court session, during which Trump Solicitor General D. John Sauer claimed the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to people born in the U.S. has “implications” in our “new world” that the amendment’s framers wouldn’t have intended.

Chief Justice John Roberts fired back, “Well, it’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution.”

“I think the main thing to focus on is the comment that you quoted from John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States,” Tribe told O’Donnell. “And I was, I have to say, proud of him as a former student when he said, yes it is a new world, but it’s the same Constitution.”

He continued, “That’s a very fundamental point. This was a Constitution designed to endure for the ages. Just because there might be a different form of immigration problem today … doesn’t mean we throw the Constitution out.”

Tribe went on to argue that things ultimately aren’t that different today, either.

The constitutional law scholar noted that, whereas privacy laws once centered on physical “snooping,” they now concern modern surveillance technologies, and that the Constitution has endured because it was born from the aspirations of the Declaration of Independence.

“And it has enormous evolving potential,” Tribe told O’Donnell. “There are new problems, but it is the same Constitution. And we need to hold on to it, not trash it, not call it stupid. Recognize that it isn’t perfect — no human instrument is — but it will do the job.”

“And we really need to preserve and protect it, not trash it the way this president does almost every day,” he added. “And in fact, when we talked about the war on Iran, how stupid it was, how foolish, how ill thought through, I didn’t hear anybody mentioning: It’s also unconstitutional.”

Tribe concluded: “The power to make war, for good reason, is not put in the hands of one person, however bright or not so bright. It is given to the Congress of the United States. We mustn’t forget that.”

O’Donnell noted an important issue that was “left unsaid” during the Supreme Court arguments Wednesday: namely, that if a president doesn’t like a constitutional provision, they can’t just circumvent the Constitution by signing executive orders — a penchant of the Trump administration.

Watch the full “Last Word” conversation on MS NOW’s YouTube account.

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