While the federal government is busy slashing university spending and tax status or claiming donors to groups filing civil rights claims against the government are definitionally threats to national security, a lot of law firms and law schools have remained silent. Duke Law School’s faculty, on the other hand, want the record to reflect that they’re standing up against the erosion of academic freedom and the rule of law.
In a new letter still gathering signatures, just about every tenured luminary who still answers email at Duke delivered a sharp rebuke to the federal government’s increasingly clumsy attempts to play academic hall monitor and law firm regulator. These law professors, in their individual capacities, came together to remind any government lawyer that might be reading that this isn’t how the profession is supposed to work.
Yet government actions targeting individual lawyers and law firms have no basis in law and are contrary to the protections of our Constitution. Requiring lawyers to acquiesce to improper demands or face such punishment places them in a position inconsistent with the essential role of lawyers as officers of the courts and independent advocates for their clients. Similarly, government threats to impeach judges based on disagreements with their judicial decisions, from whatever political quarter those threats come, are inconsistent with the fundamental principles underlying judicial independence—principles that have been respected by political actors for over 200 years. An independent judiciary is essential to the preservation of the rule of law and our most basic constitutional rights.
The statement is a cousin to the NYU Law faculty letter from last month, though that was before we started arresting judges in courthouses or calling America’s oldest educational institution “a threat to democracy.” Those were more innocent times when the government was merely disappearing people to El Salvadoran slave camps and kidnapping foreign grad students. The Duke letter emerges as events move from bad to worse.
It also acknowledges the rise of campus antisemitism, which has become the administration’s catch-all justification for the higher education crackdown:
In saying this, we in no way discount the gravity of concerns about antisemitism and other forms of bias, which must be taken seriously. Higher education institutions must reflect and engage in actions to ensure that we do better to offer a diversity of perspectives and further our standing as trusted beacons for knowledge and truth.
Antisemitism is absolutely on the rise, though Trump’s buddy Kanye releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler,” his co-president openly campaigns for the German neo-fascism party, and then Trump personally accepting a luxury airliner from the government bankrolling Hamas all seem to be doing a lot more to directly mainstream anti-Jewish sentiment than universities offering a Middle Eastern Studies major. Trump revels in the “dual loyalty” rhetoric with deep connections to American bigotry toward the Jewish community and those tropes are baked into his campus crackdown efforts. It’s why, from the White House’s perspective, criticizing the Netanyahu government is “antisemitism” and a neo-Nazi rally on campus is just “very fine people on both sides.”
But when push comes to shove, there’s a reason why Education and Wrestling Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter to Harvard complained more about Bill De Blasio, Lori Lightfoot, and Penny Pritzker being affiliated with the school than racial or religious animus. The fight against antisemitism is far too important to be defined by an administration that treats it as a mere fig leaf to pursue petty grievances toward random Democrats.
We further share a commitment to the rule of law and to the role of lawyers and judges in preserving that rule of law. As the American Bar Association states in the preamble to its Model Rules of Professional Conduct, “[a]n independent legal profession is an important force in preserving government under law, for abuse of legal authority is more readily challenged by a profession whose members are not dependent on government for the right to practice.”
This should be a bedrock principle for lawyers and law professors to rally around. While more faculties should sign on to letters like this one making broader claims about academic freedom and the rule of law, this paragraph got me wondering… can we all maybe agree to sign a much shorter and, by extension, less controversial one affirming that we all as professionals agree with the Model Rules here?
But I guess if you can’t get several Biglaw firms on board with due process, what hope is there for basic professional responsibility?
(Letter available on the next page…)
Earlier: T14 Law School’s Faculty Shows Biglaw What A Spine Looks Like
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post Top Law School Faculty Issue Letter Defending Rule Of Law appeared first on Above the Law.
While the federal government is busy slashing university spending and tax status or claiming donors to groups filing civil rights claims against the government are definitionally threats to national security, a lot of law firms and law schools have remained silent. Duke Law School’s faculty, on the other hand, want the record to reflect that they’re standing up against the erosion of academic freedom and the rule of law.
In a new letter still gathering signatures, just about every tenured luminary who still answers email at Duke delivered a sharp rebuke to the federal government’s increasingly clumsy attempts to play academic hall monitor and law firm regulator. These law professors, in their individual capacities, came together to remind any government lawyer that might be reading that this isn’t how the profession is supposed to work.
Yet government actions targeting individual lawyers and law firms have no basis in law and are contrary to the protections of our Constitution. Requiring lawyers to acquiesce to improper demands or face such punishment places them in a position inconsistent with the essential role of lawyers as officers of the courts and independent advocates for their clients. Similarly, government threats to impeach judges based on disagreements with their judicial decisions, from whatever political quarter those threats come, are inconsistent with the fundamental principles underlying judicial independence—principles that have been respected by political actors for over 200 years. An independent judiciary is essential to the preservation of the rule of law and our most basic constitutional rights.
The statement is a cousin to the NYU Law faculty letter from last month, though that was before we started arresting judges in courthouses or calling America’s oldest educational institution “a threat to democracy.” Those were more innocent times when the government was merely disappearing people to El Salvadoran slave camps and kidnapping foreign grad students. The Duke letter emerges as events move from bad to worse.
It also acknowledges the rise of campus antisemitism, which has become the administration’s catch-all justification for the higher education crackdown:
In saying this, we in no way discount the gravity of concerns about antisemitism and other forms of bias, which must be taken seriously. Higher education institutions must reflect and engage in actions to ensure that we do better to offer a diversity of perspectives and further our standing as trusted beacons for knowledge and truth.
Antisemitism is absolutely on the rise, though Trump’s buddy Kanye releasing a song titled “Heil Hitler,” his co-president openly campaigns for the German neo-fascism party, and then Trump personally accepting a luxury airliner from the government bankrolling Hamas all seem to be doing a lot more to directly mainstream anti-Jewish sentiment than universities offering a Middle Eastern Studies major. Trump revels in the “dual loyalty” rhetoric with deep connections to American bigotry toward the Jewish community and those tropes are baked into his campus crackdown efforts. It’s why, from the White House’s perspective, criticizing the Netanyahu government is “antisemitism” and a neo-Nazi rally on campus is just “very fine people on both sides.”
But when push comes to shove, there’s a reason why Education and Wrestling Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter to Harvard complained more about Bill De Blasio, Lori Lightfoot, and Penny Pritzker being affiliated with the school than racial or religious animus. The fight against antisemitism is far too important to be defined by an administration that treats it as a mere fig leaf to pursue petty grievances toward random Democrats.
We further share a commitment to the rule of law and to the role of lawyers and judges in preserving that rule of law. As the American Bar Association states in the preamble to its Model Rules of Professional Conduct, “[a]n independent legal profession is an important force in preserving government under law, for abuse of legal authority is more readily challenged by a profession whose members are not dependent on government for the right to practice.”
This should be a bedrock principle for lawyers and law professors to rally around. While more faculties should sign on to letters like this one making broader claims about academic freedom and the rule of law, this paragraph got me wondering… can we all maybe agree to sign a much shorter and, by extension, less controversial one affirming that we all as professionals agree with the Model Rules here?
But I guess if you can’t get several Biglaw firms on board with due process, what hope is there for basic professional responsibility?
(Letter available on the next page…)
Earlier: T14 Law School’s Faculty Shows Biglaw What A Spine Looks Like
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
The post Top Law School Faculty Issue Letter Defending Rule Of Law appeared first on Above the Law.
