Category: Attacks Against Legal Institutions

Judicial disaster

The Kathmandu Post’s May 14 opinion column reviews the cumulative damage that the 26th and 27th Constitutional Amendments — pushed through Pakistan’s parliament by political and military elites — have done to judicial independence. The piece details how the amendments empower a Special Parliamentary Committee to choose the Chief Justice, create a new Federal Constitutional …

Holding DOJ to account has been ‘extremely frustrating’ for judges. A Rhode Island court is taking a fresh approach

CNN reports that federal judges in Rhode Island took the unusual step of appointing a special counsel to investigate alleged misconduct by a senior Justice Department attorney in an immigration case. The piece situates the appointment within a broader pattern: judges in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C., have tried to hold the Trump Justice Department …

250 years later, is judicial independence crumbling?

Broadcast on May 1, 2026, this WXXI public-radio program convenes retired federal and state judges to assess the state of judicial independence in the United States as the country approaches its 250th anniversary. Participants distinguish between ordinary public criticism of judicial decisions, which they characterize as constitutionally healthy, and a newer phenomenon in which sitting …

Pakistan: Attempts to bulldoze spirit of constitution, compromise independence of judiciary

Reporting on the recently enacted Twenty-Seventh Constitutional Amendment (May 1, 2026), the article details how Pakistan’s parliament has restructured the judiciary in ways that the International Commission of Jurists has called “a flagrant attack on the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.” The amendment creates a new Federal Constitutional Court whose members …

We know it when we don’t see it

In this Spokesman-Review guest opinion, former federal appeals judge Robert H. Henry and UW–Madison Staff Attorney Sterling Knoche argue that Americans recognize the rule of law mainly by noticing its absence — and that recent events, from warrantless searches and masked agents to defied court orders, signal exactly that absence. They note that the judiciary, …