This article highlights the crucial role lawyers played in resisting authoritarian-leaning actions during a period of democratic backsliding in the United States, specifically under the Trump administration.
Evidence of Lawyers’ Resistance
Sinnar (2017), “Human Rights, National Security, and the Role of Lawyers in the Resistance”
This article examines the role of lawyers in resisting democratic backsliding and authoritarian policymaking in the United States, particularly during the Trump administration.
Pils (2014), China’s Human Rights Lawyers: Advocacy and Resistance
This book provides a powerful analysis of the role of human rights lawyers operating within an authoritarian legal regime, focusing on China.
Lahav (2010), “Portraits of Resistance: Lawyer Responses to Unjust Proceedings”
This article explores the underexamined role of lawyers operating within manifestly unjust procedural regimes, particularly in the context of liberal democracies under internal stress.
Wendel (2010), Lawyers and Fidelity to Law
This book reimagines legal ethics as a commitment to the law’s role in resolving deep societal conflicts and maintaining political stability, rather than as a license for lawyers to bend legal rules in service of client interests.
Hualing (2011), “Challenging Authoritarianism through Law: Potentials and Limit”
This article explores the complex role of legal reform within authoritarian regimes, focusing on activist lawyers in China who strive to use the law to protect rights and promote social change.
Hopgood (2016), “Law and Lawyers in a World After Virtue”
David Kennedy’s critical legal scholarship challenges the traditional monopoly lawyers and legal scholars hold over defining law’s purpose, highlighting law as a form of political struggle rather than a neutral system.
Stauffer (2007), “The Rule of Law and its Shadow: Ambivalence, Procedure, and the Justice Beyond Legality”
This article argues that attorneys have a duty to act as guardians of justice in a legal order fraught with moral ambiguity and political pressure.
Khalikova and Kazun (2021), “Should I Stay, or Should I Go? Self-Legitimacy of Attorneys in an Authoritarian State”
This study investigates the professional challenges faced by lawyers in authoritarian regimes.
Farbman (2019), “Resistance Lawyering”
The article invites contemporary lawyers to learn from this integration of daily legal work and political struggle as a model for resistance within unjust systems.