Roughly 70 percent of Harvard Law School’s professors accused the federal government of exacting retribution on lawyers and law firms for representing clients and causes opposed by President Donald Trump in a Saturday night letter to the school’s student body.
The letter, which was signed by 82 of the school’s 118 active professors as of this article’s publication, described Trump’s threats as a danger to the rule of law. It condemned the government for intimidating individuals based on their past public statements and threatening international students with deportation over “lawful speech and political activism.”
Nine emeritus professors also joined the statement.
March 29, 2025 To our students:
We are privileged to teach and learn the law with you. We write to you today—in our
individual capacities—because we believe that American legal precepts and the institutions
designed to uphold them are being severely tested, and many of you have expressed to us your
concerns and fears about the present moment. Each of us brings different, sometimes irreconcilable, perspectives to what the law is and should
be. Diverse viewpoints are a credit to our school. But we share, and take seriously, a
commitment to the rule of law: for people to be equal before it, and for its administration to
be impartial. That commitment is foundational to the whole legal profession, and to the special
role that lawyers play in our society. As the Model Rules of Professional Conduct provide: “A
lawyer is … an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for
the quality of justice.” The rule of law is imperiled when government leaders:
• single out lawyers and law firms for retribution based on their lawful and ethical
representation of clients disfavored by the government, undermining the Sixth
Amendment;
• threaten law firms and legal clinics for their lawyers’ pro bono work or prior
government service;
• relent on those arbitrary threats based on public acts of submission and outlays of funds
for favored causes; and
• punish people for lawfully speaking out on matters of public concern. While reasonable people can disagree about the characterization of particular incidents, we are
all acutely concerned that severe challenges to the rule of law are taking place, and we strongly
condemn any effort to undermine the basic norms we have described. On our own campus and at many other universities, international students have reported fear
of imprisonment or deportation for lawful speech and political activism. Whatever we might
each think about particular conduct under particular facts, we share a conviction that our
Constitution, including its First Amendment, was designed to make dissent and debate
possible without fear of government punishment. Neither a law school nor a society can
properly function amidst such fear. We reaffirm our commitment to the rule of law and to our roles in teaching and upholding
the precepts of a fair and impartial legal system.
