Harvard Law Professors Warn ‘Rule Of Law’ Is Buckling Under Trump

A majority of the Harvard Law School faculty sent an unusual letter to their students over the weekend warning that the “rule of law” now faces grave threats under the Trump administration.

The professors, writing in their individual capacities and not as representatives of the elite law school, voiced their concerns that “legal precepts and the institutions designed to uphold them” are starting to buckle. They referenced President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting individual law firms for retribution due to their legal work challenging Trump or his administration.

“While reasonable people can disagree about the characterization of particular incidents, we are all acutely concerned that severe challenges to the rule of law are taking place, and we strongly condemn any effort to undermine… basic norms,” they wrote.

The letter has been signed by about 90 professors, including roughly two-thirds of the school’s tenured faculty. The Harvard Crimson, which first reported the letter, noted that the signatories included most of the law school’s top leadership, though not its interim dean, John C.P. Goldberg.

Andrew Manuel Crespo, a public interest law professor who signed the letter, told HuffPost it was “remarkable” to see so many legal scholars in agreement on any issue, but they all recognized a moment of “extreme threats.”

“It’s very clear the strategy on the part of the administration is to pick off institutions one by one, whether that’s Paul Weiss or Columbia University or Skadden,” Crespo said, referencing two law firms and one school that chose to cut deals with the administration after Trump threatened them financially.

Crespo went on, “When these institutions are targeted individually, the pressure is overwhelming, and we’re seeing a number of them fold. Across the profession, lawyers and professors are realizing, if we don’t stand together, we will all fall separately.”

Earlier this month, Trump crafted an executive order aimed at stripping Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and its attorneys of government contracts and security clearances, jeopardizing the firm’s relationships with its clients. Paul Weiss agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal work to the administration’s causes in exchange for the president dropping the order. Another firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, reached a similar arrangement with the White House.

Trump’s use of his office’s power to bully and extort concessions has prompted a crisis within the legal profession, with many attorneys furious that certain firms bent the knee to Trump when their bottom lines were imperiled. Other firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Jenner & Block — have opted to fight the White House in court in the face of similar threats.

In the case of Columbia, Trump canceled $400 million of federal funding for the school, alleging it had mishandled student protests against the Israeli war in Gaza. The school pledged in response to reform its disciplinary process and develop a new definition of antisemitism, among other concessions that angered many professors and students.

A lawsuit against the administration argues that revoking the funding due to the protests violates free speech protections.

Sharon Block, a labor law professor at Harvard and a former member of the National Labor Relations Board, told HuffPost many of her students feel they’re entering the legal profession while it’s under unprecedented strain.

“They don’t understand what’s happening, they don’t understand what it means for the rule of law, and they feel the world has changed in a dangerous way since they first stepped foot on our campus,” she said.

Block signed the letter to send the message that “we understand” and share the same basic concerns.

“The whole edifice of the democracy really relies on there being a rule of law respected,” she said.

College campuses have also been rattled by the prospect of arrest or deportation for international students who’ve taken public stances that cross the administration. Earlier this month at Columbia, federal immigration agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the school and legal permanent resident who helped lead pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.

The letter from Harvard law professors acknowledged that many international students on U.S. college campuses are living in “fear of imprisonment or deportation for lawful speech and political activism.” The First Amendment, they wrote, “was designed to make dissent and debate possible without fear of government punishment.”

“Neither a law school nor a society can properly function amidst such fear,” they added.

Read the full letter: