The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Lawyers stand against Trump
People in America may disagree in their political views, a freedom enshrined in the Constitution.
But President Donald Trump is alleged to have violated the basic rule of law that undergirds the Constitution, according to a group of lawyers who say they felt compelled to take a stand against his “disregard of these core values and principles.”
In an open letter signed by more than 800 attorneys, the nonpartisan group Lawyers Defending American Democracy states: “We live at a time when America’s fundamental values are under attack. As American lawyers, we’re deeply concerned about protecting the democratic institutions and principles that have enabled America to be the world’s preeminent beacon of freedom and opportunity.”
Eugene Fidell, a member of the group’s steering committee, is a visiting lecturer and senior research scholar at Yale Law School. He said the statement was needed because “the bar had basically been missing in action in terms of various challenges that the rule of law had been facing over the years.”
The contention is that, while the lawyers, including former judges, law professors and deans of law schools, mostly remained silent, Trump was attacking the fundamental constitutional principles that ensure equal treatment for all Americans.
According to the letter, Trump has attacked the news media as “enemies of the American people” and
“fake news.” He has said the judiciary is “broken and unfair,” calling a judge he disagreed with a “socalled judge” and labeling the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a “terrible, costly and dangerous disgrace.”
The attorneys say Trump also has undermined law and order by criticizing and removing Attorney General Jeff Sessions because he recused himself from Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, believing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials. He then called the investigation the “rigged Mueller Witch Hunt.”
The group also criticized Trump’s description of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., and those who protested as “very fine people on both sides” and said, “The Washington Post has documented more than 7,500 ‘false or misleading claims’ by the President.”
The group is led by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. In the release accompanying the letters, Harshberger sad, “If we are to fulfill our obligations as members of a profession charged with protecting and defending our Constitution, we must speak out when we see democracy and the rule of law being undermined at the highest levels of our government. It is time for lawyers — as a profession — todefendthechecksand balances and demand accountability from lawmakers. The time for playing politics is over. If lawyers do not lead, we risk losing our democracy.”
Fidell said the group has kept its focus on Trump’s words and actions, not on his character. “We’ve tried to keep it substantive and look at the challenges and not engage in personalities,” he said.
But Fidell described Trump’s attacks as “many of them surprising, many of them inconceivable before now.” For example, he said the president has ridiculed “the fake emoluments clause,” Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which forbids federal officials from accepting gifts, titles or offices “from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
“Something’s either in the Constitution or it isn’t,” Fidell said.
“We’re supposed to be custodians of the rule [of law] as such, and now is when it counts because all of us feel embattled,” he said.
Fidell said he hoped members of the bar would rally on Capitol Hill in a show of support for their profession, as the District of Columbia bar did in 2007, when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suspended the country’s chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. “I hope that happens. I think people do have to show up at times and be counted,” Fidell said.
Like the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, when people were accused of disloyalty and grilled about whether they were communists, “This is a moment where the bar ought to be heard from,” he said. But even McCarthy “wasn’t in a position to subvert the mechanisms of the state,” Fidell said.
Trump’s “model is not Abraham Lincoln. It’s Nicholas II, the czar of All Russia.”
Fidell said the group is not taking a position at this point on whether Trump ought to be impeached. “We’re watching things as they unfold,” he said. “The House of Representatives is obviously doing their thing. We’re not involved in that.”
He added, “It’s not a question of whether or not he’s committed any crimes. It’s really an assault on the rule of law.”
Fidell said the political views of those who signed the letter range from liberal to conservative. “There really is a range of views among us but the common thread is we really feel that what we went to school for … is at risk.”
He added, “Whatever one’s politics are, the whole enterprise of law is a very conservative enterprise. We’ve been very, very wary of not getting too far in front of the people who have been nice enough to sign onto the open letters.”
Stephen Wizner, professor emeritus at Yale Law School and a signer of the open letter, said, “As lawyers, we have a unique responsibility. We are the only ones who can go to court and represent people in the courts … and as such we are trustees of justice.”
Wizner added that “the rule of law doesn’t exist alone. It exists in the context of other values,” such as the checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches. “Trump doesn’t believe in that. He believes he has all the power,” he said.
Wizner added that he believes Attorney General William Barr, who replaced Sessions, also lacks respect for the Constitution. “He has since he was a very young man been a strong advocate of an imperial presidency,” he said.
Emily Bazelon, a lecturer and senior research fellow at Yale Law School, wrote an oped published in the New York Times last week making that case. Bazelon said she wasn’t aware of the open letter and declined to comment on it.
“I think William Barr is not behaving the way an ethical lawyer should behave,” Wizner said. “He’s not acting as attorney general.”
Asked for a comment, Brad Saxton, interim dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Law, released a statement saying, “I decided against signing the letter, although I think it makes a number of fair and good points. I generally try hard to avoid publicly revealing my personal political perspectives to our students, as I would feel badly if students whose political views differ from mine would feel uncomfortable voicing their views in my classes out of fear that I might hold those views against them.”
Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken did not comment on the letter because the school played no part in its writing or distribution.