We who sign this statement have three critical things in common.
We are attorneys.
We swore oaths to support the United States Constitution.
And we are profoundly concerned about a current threat to that Constitution: President Trump’s continuing attacks on our judicial system.
In signing, we express no opinion on any policy matter other than the administration’s relationship with the courts. We come from all walks of life, hold political views across the spectrum, and are not representing any political, partisan, or other group. We sign only as concerned citizens upholding our oaths to defend the Constitution.
Under the Constitution, the United States has a government consisting of three branches: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. As every American learns early on, the legislature creates the law, the executive carries out the law, and the judiciary interprets the law. We have no king—we fought the Revolution to throw off the monarchy—and the Constitution includes checks and balances on each branch’s power.
One such check is the judiciary’s ability to strike legislative or executive action as illegal or unconstitutional in cases properly brought before it. The Constitution sets forth in
Article III the courts’ jurisdiction over all cases and controversies arising under the Constitution, and the Framers made clear in
The Federalist No. 78 that the courts were to serve as a check on exercises of both executive and legislative power.
Yet President Trump and his administration have increasingly resisted the judiciary’s role.
The President has
called for the impeachment of judges simply because they have handed down decisions with which he disagrees. He has
advanced the idea that judges commit “sedition or treason” whenever they strike executive actions as illegal or unconstitutional. The Vice-President has
suggested that the courts have no control over the executive’s exercises of power. The administration’s “border czar” has
stated that he does not “care what the courts think.”
The President has also attacked and attempted to intimidate attorneys working within the judicial system. He has issued executive
orders to
punish law firms that have litigated against him or supported candidates who have opposed him, in blatant violation of the First Amendment. He has even
circulated the personal data and addresses of attorneys who have opposed him, knowing that this might facilitate harm to those individuals.
But most alarming of all, the President and his administration have begun violating court orders that go against them. One district court has already
found probable cause to hold that top members of the administration “willfully disobeyed a binding judicial decree.” A Fourth Circuit panel in another case has
described the administration as claiming “the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders.” Indeed, the administration is
willfully misleading the public about, and most likely
violating a
directive of, the Supreme Court of the United States.
We will defend the rule of law and stand against these unacceptable actions. In our Constitutional system, no one—including the President—is above the law, and it is the judiciary’s province to enforce the law. We will not stand by while our nearly 250-year-old republic becomes an unrecognizable dictatorship and our cherished individual rights become unenforceable and unprotected. We call upon the President to honor his Constitutional obligation to comply with all court orders and lead the nation with respect for his co-equal branch of government.
