All nine justices of the Supreme Court are lawyers. All of them have friends and law school classmates who practice privately. All of them sit at the highest point of the legal system, relying on lawyers to introduce these matters that judges must decide. Many of them are litigants in large law firms themselves, and their livelihoods depend on their ability to advocate for clients without fear of personal revenge.
Therefore, it is hard to imagine that the presidential lawsuit is more likely to confront Justice Donald Trump, which requires his agenda to be maintained series Management staff Order Trump recently released. These actions are intended to punish law firms that previously represented Democrats or clients who opposed Trump.
The orders target lawyers are friends, classmates and colleagues of the judge. For example, Chief Justice John Roberts or Brett Kavanaugh also easily sympathize with legal partners who have done the exact same jobs.
What’s amazing about all law firms executing orders is that they have hardly even tried to justify Trump’s decision with a reasonable explanation to illustrate that the orders are legitimate.
Orders against law firm Perkins COIE attacked the company’s “Hillary Clinton, the presidential candidate who represents failed“In its second sentence. The order against Wilmerhall accuses him of participation”Achieve political goals in obvious party representatives”, as if Democrats don’t have the same right to hire lawyers who represent others’ advocacy.
The order against Jenner & Block justifies the attack because The company once hired Andrew Weissmanna well-known television legal commentator, said in the words of the executive order, “As a party prosecution of Robert Mueller’s totally unreasonable investigation, Trump was prosecuted. Weisman Leaving Jenner in 2021.
Furthermore, the sanctions set forth in these orders are extraordinary. They attempted to ban lawyers of companies and employees of federal buildings to prevent lawyers representing criminal defendants from plea dealing with federal prosecutors and potentially prevent lawyers who practice in front of federal agencies, thus appearing entirely before those agencies. They also seek to deprive security permits from the company’s attorneys and to deprive federal contracts from companies hiring target law firms.
It is hard to think of such a precedent of rapid attack on a business that does some work for the president’s political rival. In the second Bush administration, the Defense Department’s political appointment criticized detainees on behalf of Guantanamo Bay and It is recommended that their company’s customers should look elsewhere Legal representative. But the official apologized shortly after that. And he Resign He received widespread criticism for three weeks.
Bush himself hasn’t even tried anything similar to what Trump is trying to impose sanctions from law firms now.
Just like Perkins Coie There are threats to the companies Trump targets. “It has nearly 1,000 active matters, requiring its attorneys to interact with more than 90 federal agencies,” Perkins said, and was worried that it would not be able to continue many statements if it was not allowed to enter the building to meet with government officials. Similarly, the company said that unless those clients fire the company, it has “ownership or compete for government contracts” for many of its largest clients, including its 15 largest clients.
In other words, Trump claims to have the right to wipe out billions of dollars in businesses, with more than a thousand lawyers and many support staff to punish them for their behalf in 2016.
It is difficult to calculate all the ways in which these orders are unconstitutional. Perkins, Its lawsuitalleging violations of the First Amendment Free Speech and Freedom Association’s rights, justified violations of procedures because it did not have a hearing or announcement to sanction it, a violation of powers, as there is no regulation authorizing Trump to approve law firms in this way, and a violation of the client’s right to choose his own lawyer.
The Trump administration has not submitted a brief response, but at the hearing, One of its lawyers claimed The Constitution gives the president an inherent authority to “discover the secrets of certain individuals or certain companies that are not trustworthy to the state.”
Often, when litigants want the court to allow something that is clearly contrary to existing laws, they try to raise questions in a sympathetic way of portraying it as a problem. But Trump chose to fight the battle in the most unfavorable position he imagined:
Trump’s decision to fight on such an unfavorable terrain may be a illegitimate logic. If he won the right to represent a famous Democrat a decade ago, it would be unlikely that the Supreme Court would prevent him from doing anything completely in the future. Most lawyers are too afraid of revenge and even file lawsuits to challenge Trump’s actions. Paul Weiss, a company Trump targets, has It seems to have surrendered Agree to conduct $40 million in free legal work on reasons Trump’s White House support. (Like Perkins Wilmer and Jenner sued Block orders targeted. )
Of course, if Trump’s final game is Openly oppose the courtObviously, an unconstitutional executive order against law firms prosecuting the government is a great way to quickly achieve this.
These amazing executive orders dare to make themselves irrelevant or trigger the final showdown of the rule of law.
Anti-Thurgood Marshall Strategy
If you want to know that litigants usually keep going when they want to convince the court to boldly change the law Sweatt vs. Painter (1950), before the case filed by future Justice Thurgood Marshall, he successfully convinced the justice to declare apartheid in public schools unconstitutional before the case filed by future Justice Thurgood Marshall Brown v. Education Commission (1954).
Marshall’s goal is to convince the judges because they end up in Brown“”Individual educational facilities are inherently unequal“, even if a country tries to balance the resources provided to segregated black and white schools. But before posing a more difficult challenge to K-12 segregation, Marshall chose a more favorable reason to fight for an integrated educational facility: a law school.
exist Sweata black man was denied to be denied access to the University of Texas Law School, simply because of his race. Instead of integrating UT, Texas opened a new law school that opened a new law school for aspiring black lawyers and believed the facility solved the constitutional problem because black law students now have access to similar education they received at the state’s flagship college.
But all justices are lawyers who understand the delicate hierarchy of the legal world – where you go to law school to determine the entire trajectory of your career – all of which fools this arrangement too much.
As the unanimous ruling of the court explains, “University of Texas Law School has a greater degree of qualities that cannot be measured objectively but enjoy great qualities in law school – qualities such as outstanding reputations, and qualities that are full of successful lawyers’ networks, full of successful lawyers who are eager to gain UT graduates.
In other words, Marshall understands that by attracting the professional sensitivity of the justices, he can make them see that the concept of “independent but equality” is inconsistent with itself. Once those justices take compassion for law students and deny the simple steps of entering an elite school, it can make it easier for them to see themselves entering primary school.
Trump and Marshall did the exact opposite Sweat. This means the same sympathy that Marshall customers benefit from it Sweat and Brown It may cut Trump.
Not only that, the justices who end up hearing the case may have unique sympathy for lawyers who have been attacked by politicians seeking to discredit them, as many of them simply experienced this at confirmation hearings.
For example, when Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, one of the few controversies surrounding his nomination was whether the position he held as a lawyer representing the principal could be attributed to him personally. Roberts had only about two years of judge when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, so his judicial record was thin, with some Democrats and their allies Hope to point out his job as a lawyer to discredit him. Among other things, they pointed out a brief signature of Roberts as a Justice Department attorney, which Argued Roe v Wade Should be rejected.
The defense of Roberts by the White House and Senate Republicans at the time was that even if they disagree with the client, the work of the lawyers was on behalf of the client’s interests. Therefore, it is unfair to attribute the former client’s views to lawyers. This is a good defense! The Constitution gives everyone the right to hire legal counsel to represent them before the court. If attorneys representing unpopular clients or positions face professional sanctions, the entire system collapses.
The point is that the most powerful judges in the country, like many other career judges investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee, have a very personal stake in one issue, whether attorneys can be punished because the wrongly elected officials don’t like their clients.
This does not mean the court’s author Unreasonable Trump’s Immune Decision There will be a sudden epiphany and oppose Donald Trump. But if Trump’s goal is to take Roberts (and many other judges) against him, attacking lawyers who wore very similar shoes 20 years ago is a great way to do so.
