180 Law School Deans Stand Up for the Rule of Law – but Too Few Top-Rated Schools Are Represented
April 22, 2025
Our country’s democracy, rooted in the rule of law, is being sorely tested. One particularly troubling aspect of this has been the Trump administration’s imposition of sanctions against several prominent law firms, among them Perkins Coie, Covington & Burling, Paul Weiss, and Jenner & Block. The administration justified these sanctions, asserting that “Global law firms have for years played an outsized role in undermining the judicial process and in the destruction of bedrock American principles.”
In response, the deans of US law schools issued a public statement last month condemning these sanctions. Their statement read in part:
“We write to reaffirm basic principles: The government should not punish lawyers and law firms for the clients they represent, absent specific findings that such representation was illegal or unethical. Punishing lawyers for their representation and advocacy violates the First Amendment and undermines the Sixth Amendment. We thus speak as legal educators, responsible for training the next generation of lawyers, in condemning any government efforts to punish lawyers or their firms based on the identity of their clients or for their zealous lawful and ethical advocacy.”
To their credit, the deans of 189 U.S. law schools signed this statement, each in their personal capacity. They emphasized, “As deans of law schools, we have a special responsibility for the legal profession.” However, of the top 20 law schools—as ranked by U.S. News & World Report—only six deans, from the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; Georgetown; Cornell; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the University of Minnesota, signed the statement. I commend these and the other deans who signed the statement.
As tensions between the administration and the federal courts escalate, the next test will be whether the administration will abide by a final decision from the US Supreme Court in any one of these cases the court is likely to decide in the coming weeks or months. If the administration declines to follow a final court order, it will be incumbent on law deans in particular, including those from the most highly ranked law schools, to publicly challenge such actions.
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