A CALL TO URGENCY

437 law professors from across the country have signed the following statement to call attention to the constitutional crisis that the nation is now facing. 

The opening weeks of the second Trump administration convince us, as law professors who have spent years studying the American legal system, that we are beginning to see unfold the gravest threat to the rule of law and its constituent principles – the separation of governmental powers, the independence of prosecutorial authority, the inviolability of human rights, the transparency of government action, and the sanctity of constitutional accountability itself – ever presented in our lifetimes. The president’s and his associates’ actions, and threats of action, profoundly undermine the bedrock principle of our federal government system – that the Chief Executive and his agents are constrained by the United States Constitution. The fundamental guardrails of our constitutional democracy itself are threatened and notably battered. They are, as we write, at risk of complete collapse.

We recall that Benjamin Franklin warned, when asked by Elizabeth Willing Powell whether he and his colleagues had delivered “a republic or a monarchy,” that we have “a republic” but only “if you can keep it.” We hope that all Americans, and especially all lawyers, will recognize the gravity of this situation and will be prepared to answer that challenge with the urgency required in the days, weeks, and months ahead.