In the Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2024

Some of the greatest defenders of American liberty have been men born in tyranny who made their way to these shores and appreciated from personal experience the country’s precious legal protections. So it was with David Rivkin, our frequent contributor and champion of the U.S. Constitution who died Friday at age 68.

Rivkin’s life is a great American story. He was born in the city of Pskov in what was then the Soviet Union. He made his way to America alone as a 19-year-old in 1976 amid the wave of Jewish emigration. (He later converted to Catholicism.)

Rivkin worked multiple jobs, including busboy and gas-station attendant, and he talked his way into Georgetown by asking the dean if he could attend classes. He earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in Soviet affairs and went on to Columbia law school. He quickly made a name for himself in the legal world, and in the 1980s became an associate in the White House counsel’s office, in the Justice Department’s policy shop, and as legal counsel and adviser to Vice President Dan Quayle.

Only in America, as they say, could someone arrive as an immigrant without a dime and a decade or so later work in the White House. Conservatives who want to ban all immigration might reflect that they would have lost the contributions of a man who became a leading conservative legal mind.

Even as he represented clients as a partner in BakerHostetler, Rivkin played an active role in America’s policy and intellectual debates. He took pride in winning an essay contest in a naval trade magazine in 1984 defending the Reagan maritime strategy. He made himself an expert on nuclear deterrence strategy, and one of our more memorable experiences was listening to David and Henry Kissinger discuss Russian foreign policy over lunch.

Rivkin’s special passion was for the Constitution and what he called its “elegant” structure for protecting individual liberty. He saw the separation of powers as the bulwark of that protection, both the vertical separation between states and the federal government, and the horizontal separation among the three branches of U.S. government. These checks and balances are as crucial as the Bill of Rights to the defense against dictatorship.

This conviction led Rivkin to take the intellectual lead in challenging ObamaCare’s individual insurance mandate. The Supreme Court embraced his argument on the limits of the Commerce Clause even as it upheld the law on other grounds. Rivkin advised many state Attorneys General on how to challenge federal intrusions on enumerated state power. He played a leading role in overturning the Obama Clean Power Plan, among other abuses.

Rivkin didn’t mind controversy, and he was a rare member of the Washington legal establishment willing to deplore the use of lawfare against Donald Trump. His argument in these pages explaining why Presidents have some constitutional immunity from criminal prosecution was ignored at the time by the conformist legal press, but again he was vindicated by the Supreme Court.

A search of our data base found no fewer than 243 David B. Rivkin Jr. bylines in these pages over the years, often with a co-author, and the first appearing in 1988 on the Byrd Amendment to the INF missile treaty. Excerpts from his writing appear nearby.

Even as he was burdened by illness in his final weeks, David was on the phone urging us to weigh in editorially on this or that subject of the current day. He was a great friend of ours, and of America’s vital role in the world, and his wisdom will be missed.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/david-b-rivkin-jr-dies-age-68-u-s-constitution-law-soviet-russia-obamacare-02fafc9d