Watch legal professionals condemn the erosion of justice and constitutional safeguards under the current administration, highlighting attacks on the rule of law, the Department of Justice’s politicization, and abuses in immigration enforcement and voting rights. Speakers, including experienced lawyers and former DOJ officials, stress the need for the legal community to resist unconstitutional orders, defend judicial independence, and support vulnerable populations through advocacy and pro bono work. They recount personal experiences of government overreach and intimidation, urging collective action to uphold democracy, restore justice to the DOJ, and ensure equal protection under the law. The event underscores the critical role of lawyers in safeguarding constitutional principles and calls on all to actively participate in preserving justice and democracy.
Video Transcript
Throughout the entire world. As lawyers and legal professionals, we are educated and trained to be advocates for justice. So it seems just right that when we are confronted with a manifest injustice, we should call it out publicly.
Today we are facing a storm of injustices.
So it is time, if not way past time, for the legal community to stand together with other community groups and to state clearly and unequivocally that justice and respect for constitutional safeguards remain foundational values of our profession and our democracy.
The members of the organized bar, May 1st is Law Day, a day meant to celebrate a nation ruled by laws enacted with the consent of the governed as opposed to a nation ruled by the whims of a single powerful individual and no supporters and family members when he seeks to enrich at our expense. Today, too, is May Day, a day that celebrates the dignity of labor and its struggle for decent working conditions and against a system that all too often places the interests of the rich and powerful above the needs of workers all around the world.
As long as our country is in the hands of Donald Trump and his enablers, we will have neither the rule of law celebrated by Law Day nor the economic justice called for by May Day.
Before I introduce the speakers at today’s rally, please just join me in a moment of silence in memory of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, a member of our community who was left to die on the streets after federal border patrol agents dropped him off in freezing weather far from his home in Buffalo at a closed coffee shop on Niagara Street.
[Moment of Silence]
Now I have the distinct pleasure of introducing the speakers at today’s rally. The first speaker is Kevin Skittler, who has represented criminal defendants in state and federal courts in Western New York throughout his career.
Kevin is a past president of the Bar Association of Erie County, one of the largest voluntary associations of lawyers in New York State outside of the city of New York. Kevin.
Kevin Skittler
Well, John, thank you. Thank you for that kind introduction. Hey, it’s so nice to see you all here. And you’re here. Why? You’re here to resist, to protest peacefully against the assault on justice. You’re here to stand up for the rule of law.
And people say to me, “What is the rule of law?” And I ask you. So look at that federal courthouse behind us.
And etched in the windows of that courthouse are the 4,536 words that are in the Constitution of the United States, the bedrock foundation of the rule of law.
This Constitution, our Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, its amendments, grants us freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, freedom of press, our right to vote, and our right to see recourse in the courts.
Unfortunately, we all recognize that we’re in a period of great concern over attacks on judges, lawyers, law firms, on the rule of law. These attempts to impede the rule of law lead us down a dangerous path.
We in the legal community must speak out, and we do speak out, to preserve our Constitution and our democracy. We are in a crisis. We know it. But there’s good news. Good news.
The good news is that the rule of law, despite these attacks, is alive and well. It’s vibrant. It’s strong. It’s alive and well in that federal courthouse. It’s strong in cities, towns, villages throughout the country.
It’s strong in district courts across the country.
Here’s my evidence. Despite the repeated attacks on our democracy, on judges, on lawyers, on law firms, the rule of law has prevailed.
When an executive order targeted particular law firms and attempted to force them to represent only people and issues that are favorable to the administration, courageous, unethical law firm rule of law affords us.
When the executive grants demanded that pro bono services be provided only for cases favorable to the administration, ethical law firms resisted.
And the resistance of those courageous law firms inspired hundreds of others, lawyers and law firms, to make a stand against the unconstitutional and illegal demands. Contagious resistance is so important.
That’s why we’re all here.
And when targeted law firms went to court to fight against these unconstitutional demands from the administration, courageous judges ruled in their favor. And when executive orders targeted particular law firms oop, my page has moved on here.
And when the executive grants makes threatening personal attacks against judges, undermining our system of checks and balances, our democracy itself, we condemn the attacks. We demand that they stop.
To counter these attacks on the legal profession and on the Constitution, law professors are standing up for the rule of law. Lawyers, law firms, and judges are standing up for the rule of law. The American Bar Association is standing up for the rule of law.
State and local bar associations are standing up for the rule of law. The Erie County Bar Association is standing up for the rule of law.
Now, despite all this evidence of, in my opinion, good news, I am troubled, as many are.
I am troubled by the proposal from the Department of Justice that would allow Department of Justice lawyers and the department itself to conduct its own internal ethical conduct reviews rather than holding the Department of Justice attorneys accountable
to state courts and the state’s disciplinary action. Every attorney is licensed by a state. Every attorney earns the right to appear in federal court through his or her state license.
That state license requires that the attorneys adhere to the state’s code of professional conduct and, when necessary, that she or he be disciplined for violations of the code by the authorities of that state.
It is an egregious attempt to allow DOJ lawyers to avoid the consequences of unethical behavior. I think it’s ironic that this unjust proposal by the department comes from the Department of Justice.
All lawyers must follow the ethical rule. I know so many lawyers in the US Attorney’s Office, good men and women, who are appalled that such a rule would come up.
These attacks on the rule of law, no doubt, will continue. And we lawyers will continue to protect the rule of law and to resist unconstitutional orders. Your resistance is a big part of the good news. I am optimistic that the rule of law will prevail.
Thanks for coming out today to stand up for justice and the rule of law. Thank you.
Thank you, Kevin.
Mr. Harrington
Our next speaker is James Harrington. James Harrington has been a criminal defense lawyer for 56 years, during which time he has represented persons accused of crimes all the way from Buffalo to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Mr. Harrington.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers.
This is the off-quoted Shakespeare line from Henry VI by Dick the Butcher, and everybody thinks it’s because Shakespeare hated lawyers. It’s actually the contrary.
He was talking about anarchy, and he was talking about rule of a desperate king, and the only way to have that was to get rid of lawyers.
And so this is a group of a lot of lawyers, and we are, unfortunately, in a time of unwarranted and inexcusable comments from the highest elected officials and reckless and dangerous people in
our society against everybody in the legal system: judges, prosecutors, lawyers, even the people who work keeping the courts functioning.
I come to you as a criminal defense lawyer who has spent 56 years representing people charged with the simplest offenses to somebody charged with being responsible for the 9/11 mass murder in New York City in the Guantanamo Military Commissions.
I am not shy about voicing my opinions, as any of you know, both positive and negative, about how the legal system works. But that criticism itself is not what should concern us. While judges and lawyers may not like criticism, they know it is part of the job.
They deal with important, difficult, and often emotional cases every single day. Unfortunately, we are in an era, though, where highly partisan and emotional topics come up, and the guardrails of responsible free speech seem to have been removed.
When the president, podcasters, and talk show personalities raise their rhetoric, it becomes an encouragement and a license for escalating and violent conduct.
To combat this, we really need everyone, but especially lawyers, no matter what type of law you may practice, to not only defend free speech but to help to lower the temperature.
Lawyers who are the closest to the system know the most about it and must defend it, even when unhappy with certain outcomes.
I call on all of you to speak up, to write, to engage others about this escalating problem, whether it is social media or a number of other causes. We are living in a new time period.
We have lived for over 200 years where customs, norms, and self-restraints and the use of power were checks on the excesses of our legal system. Those are now being blown up and thrown aside.
We did not arrive here, though, in a vacuum. In the past 40 years, our Congress has passed laws which have opened the door for some of these abuses of rights. The war on drugs delivered extremely harsh penalties on certain minorities and disfavored groups.
The federal sentencing guidelines assured that these biases would be enforced. The so-called Bail Reform Act is used to penalize the poorest among us. 9/11 brought us the Patriot Act, a wishlist for government overreach.
It also brought us the Department of Homeland Security without the necessary safeguards for the citizens’ rights and right for the current high successes and brutal treatment of non-citizens and citizens alike.
When I say we must defend the courts from threats and violence, we must also advocate to support the courts as a restraint, as they have been, against these enforcement excesses.
Before the Declaration of Independence and we became a country, our revolt against the British was bubbling and would soon explode. In Boston, a young boy had been killed accidentally by British troops.
On March 5th, 1770, depending on one’s point of view, either a group or a mob of disgruntled Bostonians approached some British soldiers. Soldiers fired their rifles, and five Bostonians were killed. This became known as the Boston Massacre.
When the soldiers were charged in the colonial court, John Adams, who would become a revolutionary leader and the second president of the United States, stepped forward to defend the soldiers.
His representation of them was unpopular, but this became the benchmark for lawyers in this country throughout the history of our country.
In the 250 years we have existed, there are many lawyers who have stepped forward to represent those accused of the most heinous crimes, the less fortunate, or the outsiders in our society.
Often, these lawyers are those no one would have thought would be in these positions, but they were confronted with extraordinary situations.
Not all of us can be giant lawyers like Abraham Lincoln, a Thurgood Marshall, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg in our law practices, but all of us can give service and make large or small contributions against the problems right in front of us.
Make a commitment right now to yourself that you will support organizations who help people treated unfairly by unfair laws and policies or out-of-control government agencies. Do pro bono work. Encourage your firms to rededicate and expand their pro bono service in our community.
Learn how to file a habeas corpus petition for the unjustly and unlawfully detained.
Talk to your friends, no matter what their viewpoints are, in a civilized manner. Write to your elected officials. Post your opinions on social media. Speak whenever you can, especially to young students.
Decency and respect are learned behaviors. I want to conclude by also saying to you, do not be afraid. I do not know who is here monitoring us and what we are doing today. I assume there are some three-letter agencies that are.
Do not be intimidated. During my 10 years of representing my 9/11 client in Guantanamo, one of my team members, an investigator who had formerly been a federal agent, was recruited by the FBI to spy on my defense team. He sent them a great deal of attorney-client information.
No search warrant, no notice to us, just a spy within our team. We only found this out when another member of the team was also recruited by the FBI, but he declined, and he courageously came and told us, which is how this whole thing exploded.
This led to an 18-month halting of the entire 9/11 prosecution and a secret criminal investigation of the highest level for national security offenses of me and several other members of my team. It was entire bullshit.
They could have come and asked me what I had done, and they would have got the answer.
Neither my team nor the others were told what exactly was being investigated.
We only found out for sure that we had been investigated when the government filed an all-clear motion with the judge stating that I and the others would not only not be charged with criminal offenses but wouldn’t even lose our security cards.
During that period, I had more legal, emotional, and humorous support than you can imagine.
I was a rock star among the people doing national security cases, many of which actually hoped that I would be indicted, but they all did promise to visit me at the Maximum Security Prison in Swanks, Colorado.
But I am here to encourage you to do whatever you can. You won’t be faced, I don’t think, with that kind of a threat to you, but to have the courage and not be dissuaded in your efforts for whatever you can do, large or small.
I leave you with the famous quote of Edmund Burke, “For evil to flourish, it is only necessary for good people to do nothing.” So good people, do something.
All right, James.
Thank you, Jen. Thanks, Jen. Next speaker is co-chair of this event, Denise O’Donnell.
Denise O’Donnel
Denise is an attorney who worked with the Justice Department for 21 years, during which time she served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of New York during the Clinton administration and in the office of the Attorney General of the United States in Washington, DC, during the Obama administration.
So I welcome Denise O’Donnell. I need to wipe the floor.
John, thank you all of you for coming out in this rain. You are tremendous. So I stand before you today as a 21-year-old veteran of the Department of Justice.
I was proud to be an attorney, not for the president, but for the people of the United States.
I worked under four presidents, two Republican and two Democrats, although their priorities changed at different times depending on who was in the White House.
Our commitment to live up to our oath of office and to the highest ethical standards of the Justice Department did not. Our mission was clear: to protect constitutional liberties, keep Americans safe, and seek justice.
Justice Robert H. Jackson, a Jamestown native for whom our beautiful federal courthouse across the street was named, is credited for setting these high standards over 85 years ago.
In a speech he delivered as Attorney General in the Great Hall of Justice, he recognized the awesome power which federal prosecutors have and the responsibilities that go with it. He warned about the dangers of abusing that power.
That is the Department of Justice I knew for over two decades in working there. In a single year, President Trump has all but destroyed that Department of Justice and created one in his self-image.
He openly announced that he was creating a weaponization working group to target his political enemies, individuals like Jack Smith, Jerome Powell, and our own Attorney General, Tis James, who reportedly is being investigated now for the third time on Trump-up charges.
This very week, after its first attempt to indict former FBI Director James Comey failed, the Trump Justice Department reached a new low by bringing an indictment against him for taking a photo of a pile of rocks in the sand
at the beach and posting it on his website.
Sadly, this is what has become of what was once known as one of the finest prosecution agencies in the world, one which strived to meet the Justice Jackson high ethical standards.
What is equally troubling is that the courageous career DOJ attorneys, who have refused to bring those frivolous charges rather than violate their oath of office, were fired or forced to resign. They are our heroes.
It is estimated that over 2,500 career Justice Department lawyers have been fired, retired, or resigned since President Trump took office.
The firings continue for prosecutors and FBI agents and for immigration judges who follow the law and grant protections for refugees and asylum seekers. We hope that does not happen to our dedicated AUSAs here in the Western District of New York.
What is happening is right before our eyes and has a far greater impact than just on the Department of Justice employees. It affects all of us.
The administration has decimated components of the Justice Department that protect us: environmental rights, public integrity, consumer rights, national security.
The civil rights section has lost 70% of its attorneys, and its historic voting rights section has been transformed into a voter suppression tool to make it harder or impossible for people to vote.
President Trump continues to make a mockery of the presidential pardoning process, allowing his political groups to accept large donations from family and friends of those pardoned, and allows fraudsters to escape paying millions of dollars in restitution to
crime victims. But the decision that will go down as one of the most insidious in our nation’s history is the decision by President Trump to pardon the insurrectionists who desecrated our national capital.
It caused death and injuries to police officers on January 6th. If that was not enough, the president went on to fire or demote the career DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents who were assigned to work on those cases.
And that is only year one.
This is why we are here today, as lawyers, to stand up for democracy, to demand the president and attorney general stop weaponizing the Department of Justice against our citizens and destroying its integrity, independence, and critical role in protecting the rule of law.
Let me conclude with seven simple words: Restore justice to the Department of Justice. Let me hear you say it. Restore justice to the Department of Justice. One more time.
Restore justice to the Department of Justice. Thank you.
Thank you, Denise.
John Emore
Our next speaker is John Elmore. John Elmore has been a practicing attorney for 40 years. Among other notable accomplishments, he is the author of Fighting for Your Life: The African American Criminal Justice Survival Guide.
Hello, everyone. It’s a beautiful day in May.
So like all of our speakers, I am a lawyer. Like all of our speakers, I’m a proud American, and I’m a proud Western New Yorker.
My remarks today are made in furtherance of my oath as an attorney to protect our constitution because right now, something is not right.
Our constitution and our rule of law, our rights to equal protection under the law, our right to free and fair elections are under attack by an administration that is fueled by greed, a desire for power, a desire for money, and is dividing this country with hate and bigotry.
Our so-called Secretary of War, who proclaimed his opposition to diversity and inclusion, who has a military resume of being a part-time soldier in the Army Reserves and achieving the rank of major, has fired four
African-American generals, two female generals, a female chief of operations of naval operations, and a female commander of the Coast Guard for reasons that he claims is a desire to have a military based on merit. Something’s not right. We have an administration that has renamed military bases after rebel soldiers who were resurrectionists and committed treason by trying to overthrow our government.
Something’s not right.
We have a president who pardoned 1,600 people who stormed the capital, assaulted 134 police officers, threatened to hang the vice president, a president who has weaponized the Justice Department to falsely accuse his opponents.
Something is not right.
We have an administration that wants to rewrite and sanitize African American history and Native American history by taking books out of classrooms and libraries, by removing historical artifacts and documents from museums
and parks. Something’s not right. Something’s not right.
We have an administration that’s trying to restrict our sacred right to vote with gerrymandering, threatening to post ICE mask agents at polling places, restricting mail-in voting, and creating other obstacles for voting.
There has never, ever been an election where there’s been widespread voting fraud, and that’s been proven in court.
And if there is any fraudulent ballot, what they need to do is catch the person that committed it and lock them up but not restrict our access to vote. Something’s not right.
The Eighth Amendment protects us all from cruel and unusual punishment.
We have an administration that gloats about sending people to Salvador to a prison that human rights organizations describe as a gulag or cemetery of the living dead. Something is not right. The Southern.
What’s going on here? Something’s not right. Let me say it’s time to fix what’s not right. We’re not safe. We’re in danger. Our country’s in danger. Our constitution is in danger.
I call to all of you to exercise your right to freedom of speech, freedom to assemble, exercise your right to vote, protect your family, protect this community, and most of all, protect this constitution and our country.
Let’s work together to make things right. Thank you.
Denise O’Donnell: Next speaker, Michael Thomas Thompson, joins us from his office. Thompson is from New York.
Michael Thompson
Michael Thompson has 30 years of an early career representing individuals in prison crimes and has been appointed to serve as learning counsel in federal death penalty prosecutions. Not only has he received numerous awards and honors, I welcome him here today.
All right. If I knew Jim Harrington was going to give all my time, I think I could have stayed for a minute.
I want to talk a little bit about immigration, what they call immigration enforcement, and it’s really terrorizing of immigrants, the intimidation of immigrants. It has nothing to do with legitimate immigration enforcement.
We’ve seen use of pretend unlawful warrants at our homes, at our workplaces. We’ve seen renditions on the street and Home Depot parking lots. There’s lawlessness. We don’t even know who these people are because they have masks on their face. Some of them are certainly probable.
But there’s no vetting of the individuals who are exercising the force against our fellow citizens. And we’ve seen the violence here. We’ve seen it in Michigan. We’ve seen it throughout the country. So how do you respond?
I mean, it’s easy to feel helpless and to feel powerless. But as attorneys, we have a little bit more power, a little bit more ability. So let me encourage you to do a few things. I have a few suggestions.
There’s some tables over here of groups that are assisting in immigrant assistance representation. I invite you to visit those and see what some of the volunteer opportunities are.
If you happen to be a later, middle-aged white guy, like myself, exercise your right to freedom. Go to a protest. Ideally, in a suit. Record, record, record, record. You are the public record these days.
They’re not making the public record, and they don’t want the public record made. What else can you do? Well, there are a number of people that are pushing back online. The New York Immigration Coalition is a particularly useful group.
They provide business cards, basically, for immigrants and for those who are assisting immigrants. If they’re confronted by ICE, they can just hand the card over. They have, on one side, what their rights are.
They have, on the other side, what ICE can do or what they can do. Very useful. They don’t have to memorize everything. We have, in Rochester, some of the immigration renditions that have been frustrated by people just showing up. We have a rapid response network, for example.
We have in Lasse, which is one group that we have in Rochester that responds where ICE appears and attempts to take people into custody. We had one circumstance where there were two roofers trapped on a roof.
I don’t know if ICE has a rule where they can’t go up ladders or what. But the roofers weren’t coming down. ICE wasn’t going up. And we had one of the women from in Lasse, Maria Garcia, she’s off business hall, goes out and she imitates with ICE and talks to them. And they leave.
They leave because they know they’re wrong. So if somebody stands up like the Linnie bully, they know they’re wrong. But is there some risk to us to do this? Yes, of course, there’s risk to us. But it’s either risk to us or it’s risk to our children.
So we stand up, and we do what we need to do. What else can you do as a lawyer? Well, in Rochester, we just had a few people who started talking to each other and basically said, “We’re not taking this shit.” So we started with Zoom meetings. And well, what can we do?
Well, you start talking about things, and you figure out what you can do. It’s part of the process. And we have some contacts with our legislators now, our legislature now. We have some ideas about things to do. We’re able to respond to ICE actions that are unlawful in our community.
So I encourage you to talk with others, to meet with others, to brainstorm about what you can do. You can agree to represent immigrants who get renditions to the Catania, for example.
There’s a great need for lawyers to file Catania petitions before these people get taken out of the country. And it’s a quick process. We’ve got forms. You want forms? We’ll give you the forms. But raise your hand and use the power that you can give it by passing the bar for good here.
So if I can before I go over my time, I want to leave you with the words of one of my favorite philosophers, Dr. Choose. Unless someone like you tears a whole lofty lot, nothing is going to get better this morning. Please pray.
Thanks, Dominic. The rest of this summit is coming up, too. Thank you for holding the sun up. Our next speaker is Nicholas Ramirez. He is a human rights attorney and the reporting secretary of the Minority Bar Association of Western New York. Nick.
Nicholas Ramirez
Hi, everyone. Something we just forgot to mention. I’m an attorney at the Western New York Law Center. We’re in town that fast.
My remarks may be a little different than some people’s are today because they’re going to be personal. I’m lucky enough to have had attorneys when I was entering the first license degree years ago and during law school that taught me to embrace my identity.
So that’s how I always like to start, complete my people. So my name is Nicholas Ramirez. I grew up foreign-porter reaching on the west side of Buffalo. And I knew I wanted to be a civil rights attorney since first grade when I read a Thurgood Marshall quote in a college book.
My community didn’t have attorneys readily available. I always think of how different it would have been for people around me and my family and myself even if I had known them what I didn’t know.
And I’m really proud every day to be able to do what I know to help people who can’t afford to hire a lot of us with the training that we have or the student debt we have by working in places that don’t charge anybody one dollar a hour. But I’m terrified.
A few weeks ago, I was going to the movies. We got quiet time on Sundays. It was kind of a reset for the week because I figured I need to watch something a little more relaxing. I mean, the film rides free right now. So right before the movie is showing, I go to something. And I got there.
And as I’m pulling in, I see a couple cars, a sheriff’s office along with ICE. And the pulling man up just stopped.
And a little shame to say, I hesitated to go and do what I did end up doing, which was film it and observe to see if there was something I could do to help. I have this training. I have these skills I’ve been public defendant before.
And I hesitated, but I did go and start filming it. While I’m filming it, one of the agents holding masks ignored that I had information. So I didn’t know where it was from. So I just assumed ICE saw me, pointed at me, and took a few steps my direction.
And we probably got the street as far as distance goes from the graveyard. Luckily, someone else in the group that was there simply called them to get the car. They had the guy that killed the kidney figure.
They’re all saying, “We left.” I left the movie theater, and I don’t go back to the left theater now because even knowing what I know about how to protect my rights and advocate for myself and the people around me, I’m a Puerto Rican network. And they don’t even see that. They see black people.
And it doesn’t matter that I carry my birth certificate on me now. It doesn’t matter I have my driver’s license on me. It doesn’t matter that I have my lawyer ID, the gold card we all get so we can bypass the amount of bankers.
It doesn’t matter that I have my federal admission ID on me at all because I’ve seen and heard the stories of them saying these things our face and not caring.
I’ve known about people who were Puerto Rican and were picked up because they were speaking Spanish. And so someone would come and bring documents and enough proof that ICE would say, “Okay. We’ll let you go.” And that’s assuming they even know that Puerto Rico is part of the United States, right?
If I’m not terrified of what I know, if the privilege I have of being an attorney with this training and knowledge and unafraid to go in front of a judge and advocate for the people I’m with, I can’t imagine how someone without that training and privilege must feel when they’re just trying to get through their job, whether they’re here undocumented or documented or just afraid that speaking Spanish or having an accent or having Italian is enough that they will scoop you up and you’ll disappear again.
I was afraid of that happening with everything I know. And it’s got to be worse for everyone who is even kind of likable. And that’s why I’m really sure I hesitated. But I just let that question remain.
If I can be out there and learn, I have always been vocal about my positions, about where I stand and what I am against and what I don’t and what I’m not doing. And it’s scary. I’m terrified to do it still.
But I have to do it because I have this privilege of having the ability to become a lawyer and help people who need help. And I would ask that everyone here do the same because regardless, we all have that extra privilege.
And there might be extra layers to it for some of us and less for some of us. But at the very least, we all have the privilege of being able to speak out with that training and with that authority. And we all have the privilege of sometimes being able to make a difference.
Maybe they’re not going to pay attention all the time, but even once, it’s important. So I call on everyone today to do what they can, what they’ve been trained to do for people like me and like all of us who don’t have the same privilege.
Thank you.
Thank you. Nicholas Wood is our next speaker. Samantha is our Human Rights Attorney. The pastor was in the Minority Bar Association of Western New York. Please listen closely to Samantha as she wraps up today’s round. Thank you very much.
Samantha
We all learned the pledge of allegiance as schoolchildren, standing beside our desks, hands over our hearts, reciting the words that still echo today, “With liberty and justice for all, not for a few,
not for some, but each and every one of us, regardless of whether you’re a citizen or not.” That promise is the foundation of the public law. It is the idea that the law is not a weapon, not a privilege, and not a favorite.
It’s a safeguard that belongs equally to each and every one of us in this country. We’re going to send you a vote. President Theodore Roosevelt reminded us that in a true democracy, no one is above the law, and no one is beneath it. It’s simply true.
It’s both our aspiration and our responsibility.
Because the law is not only worse when it’s applied fairly, it only endures when it is defended, and it only means something when it protects the most vulnerable among us as surely as it restrains the most powerful.
But I’ll tell you, that promise is being tested today. When we see courts undermined, when we see rights questioned, when we see the law bent to serve power instead of principle, there is no room for spectators. We must respond.
We must use our resources and our skills to argue, to analyze, to advocate as we stand for justice, not as partisans. I don’t care about two parties. I don’t care about two beliefs. We all believe in the Constitution.
We are stewards of this system of justice as lawyers. And it depends on our vigilance, standing for the independence of the judiciary, constitutional rights, and the idea that justice is not selective. It truly is universal.
So today, we gather not to just speak and spew hot air, but to affirm that the rule of law matters, that equal justice matters, and that democracy itself depends on both.
And we do this together so that those words, justice for all, remain true not just in our memory but in our lived reality.
While I am the last speaker, this is the beginning. It’s not the end. You’ve heard a couple of times about opportunities to do the right thing. Well, I’m going to call on you specifically. Use your financial resources. Provide resources to immigrant defense. There’s funds.
They need your support. There’s groups that are doing the work. Become members. Join the National Lawyers Guild. Join the League of Women Voters. Take on a case. Come on. I know you’ve got time. Take on a case. Represent somebody.
Do the right thing because if we don’t, who will? Thank you.
Everything now. Everybody must be happy. Thank you.