This ABA Journal column by Zamira Djabarova of the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights argues that attacks on U.S. courts and judges are now being measured against international human rights standards — the U.N. Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary and on the Role of Lawyers — that the United States has historically promoted abroad while exempting itself at home. It records that in May 2025 the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, formally warned of “an apparent organized effort to interfere in the independence of the U.S. legal and judicial system,” citing executive orders banning law firms from government buildings and stripping lawyers of security clearances, and that in January the international Day of the Endangered Lawyer was directed at the United States for the first time. The piece draws extensively on Poland’s 2015–2023 experience — court-packing, a politicized judicial council, a disciplinary chamber, and state media campaigns against judges, met by transnational solidarity such as the 2020 “March of 1,000 Robes” — as a comparative roadmap. It is relevant to democratic decline as a framework linking the targeting of U.S. legal professionals to a recognized global pattern of assaults on judicial independence.

Read it here.