We all know Dick the Butcher’s quote from Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” We all know what he means by this: the fair and reliable application of the law keeps society running smoothly and guards against political abuses, and if your goal is to seize power, then you should kill the people who enforce the rule of law.
Except not everyone knows this. The people running Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps, two of the most powerful law firms in the country, have never heard of Dick the Butcher. Faced with an administration pursuing the explicit goal of curbing lawyers who fight abuses of power, they have utterly capitulated. You don’t need to kill all the lawyers, it turns out, if they’re spineless fools like Brad Karp.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me explain. President Trump was first elected in 2016 and for the next four years proceeded to run a government that flouted the law to an extent that has no parallel in the modern era. Nixon comes in distant second. As a result of this law-flouting, President Trump and his government faced numerous lawsuits and investigations, all of which were run, naturally, by lawyers. Now that Trump is back in the White House, he wants to run the same kind of government (and even worse), and he knows exactly who will be there to stop him. Cue a series of executive orders aimed at crippling law firms that employ or employed anyone who stood in his way during his first term.
At least one law firm has refused to go along. Kudos to the folks at Perkins Coie, who sued immediately. The first paragraph of the complaint breathes righteous fury:
The Order is an affront to the Constitution and our adversarial system of justice. Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the President perceives as adverse to the views of his Administration… Perkins Coie brings this case reluctantly. The firm is comprised of lawyers who advocate for clients; its attorneys and employees are not activists or partisans. But Perkins Coie’s ability to represent the interests of its clients—and its ability to operate as a legal-services business at all—are under direct and imminent threat. Perkins Coie cannot allow its clients to be bullied. The firm is committed to a resolute defense of the rule of law, without regard to party or ideology, and therefore brings this lawsuit to declare the Order unlawful and to enjoin its implementation.
That is goddamn right. The lawsuit, moreover, won a temporary restraining order within a few days, because Trump’s order is plainly an illegal strongman tactic of the sort one might expect from a Latin American caudillo.
Notwithstanding Perkins Coie’s success, and notwithstanding the stakes, Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, and—if reporting is to be believed—at least a few other law firms have decided to give up. Rather than defend the rule of law, they have sought to cut deals with Trump. By doing so they shortchange not just their clients, who are entitled to legal representation that does not falter where it might offend the president, but America more broadly. These law firms, by their cowardice, have cut America’s capacity to fight Trump’s abuse of power. They have done so because they value their own standing and their partners’ compensation packages more than they value democracy.
Pathetic. Fear for your seven-figure paycheck should not move you to accommodate a president’s authoritarian aspirations. If, on the one hand, the notion that lawyers occupy a rarefied niche serves partly to constrict the number of lawyers and thereby raise the cost of legal services, then, on the other hand, it remains true that the practice of law, as an act, carries political and moral weight. The partners at these collaborationist law firms make their money partly on the back of this notion: they are doing (they say) what few can. But when asked to demonstrate their firm belief in the idea that lawyers have duties and responsibilities—when asked to stand against corrupt, abusive government—they skulk into the Oval Office, hat in hand. I say again: pathetic.
President Trump is no Dick the Butcher. He cannot kill all the lawyers. It is too bad that, thanks to Brad Karp’s cowardice, he does not have to.