There has never been a time when U.S. universities were in an adversarial relationship with our government on a par with this one. Even the Smithsonian - custodian of our national museums has been lambasted as anti-American in a Presidential Fact Sheet. In a move designed for Saturday Night Live the former leader of World Wrestling Entertainment, is now Education Secretary. Secretary Linda McMahon has announced that a "Joint Task Force on Anti-semitism" is reviewing $9 billion in federal grants to Harvard University. That move follows Columbia University's ongoing negotiations to restore hundreds of millions in canceled funds. And it succeeds the capitulation of two leading law firms Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps. Two firms - Jenner & Block and Wilmer Hale have filed suit to block the retaliatory Executive Order. Andrew Weissman, a former Jenner partner, was a lead prosecutor in the investigation of Donald Trump led by former Wilmer partner Robert S. Mueller.
Today 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine signed an open letter warning of the danger of the Trump administration's attacks on science. For exxample in the last month $450 million in federal funds for HIV research have been cut.
Today the majority of the Harvard Law School faculty in an open letter declared:
As the Model Rules of Professional Conduct provide: “A
lawyer is ... an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for
the quality of justice.”
The rule of law is imperiled when government leaders:
• single out lawyers and law firms for retribution based on their lawful and ethical
representation of clients disfavored by the government, undermining the Sixth
Amendment;
• threaten law firms and legal clinics for their lawyers’ pro bono work or prior
government service;
• relent on those arbitrary threats based on public acts of submission and outlays of funds
for favored causes; and
• punish people for lawfully speaking out on matters of public concern.
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 the basic norms we have described.
But a prominent dissenting voice is that of Adrian Vermeule. A conservative convert to Catholicism he has nonetheless defended the Catholic social gospel and co-authored with Cass Sunstein a defense of the administrative state Law and Leviathan, Redeeming the Administrative State. And at a conference at the conservative Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio Vermeule declared "there is no dismantling the administrative state".
Despite his departure in that respect from conservative confreres Vermeule dissents angrily from the bulk of his Harvard colleagues about current threats to the rule of law. Although Vermeule asserts he is writing more in sorrow than anger he proves to be very angry, finding hypocrisy in those who are to his left, writing:
Where were the letter’s signatories when federal prosecutors took the unprecedented step of bringing dozens of criminal charges against a former president, who also happened to be the leading electoral opponent of the then-incumbent president? Where were the signatories when Jeff Clark, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and other lawyers were disbarred or threatened with disbarment, and indeed prosecuted, for their representation of President Trump? Was this not a threat to the rule of law? Where were the signatories when radical activists menaced Supreme Court Justices in their homes, or when a mob hammered on the doors of the Supreme Court itself?
Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman were indeed disbarred - but it was not "for their representation of Presdient Trump". The case against Giuliani is indeed substantial; as is that against Clark for dishonest conduct in an attempt to overturn Georgia election results; as is the case against John Eastman who was found ineligible to practice law after a five month trial before the California Bar Court.
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