Lawyers are rallying across the United States on Law Day (May 1), which was established by President Eisenhower in 1958 as a national day to celebrate the rule of law.
Lawyers usually do their speaking for clients in courtrooms and on paper, but we are taking to the streets because the rule of law is under threat as never before in our lifetimes. This is not about politics or which party or individual is in the White House. It’s not about left or right. It’s about right or wrong.
We are rallying because judges are being vilified, targeted, and harassed for doing their jobs with honesty, integrity, and good faith.
We are rallying because lawyers are being coerced to replace their loyalty to clients and the Constitution with loyalty to the President.
We are rallying because legal U.S. residents are being snatched off the street by masked men in plain clothes and unmarked cars, without due process or evidence. One of these abducted individuals, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, a legal U.S. resident convicted of no crimes, was sent – through an “administrative error,” our government has said – to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
We are rallying because the executive branch is resisting a Supreme Court ruling (with no dissents) in refusing to facilitate Garcia’s return home or to satisfactorily explain to a court what steps it has taken to remedy this unlawful action.
You should rally with us because these tactics are always applied first to the most unpopular and powerless in society.
You should rally with us because these tactics have led to authoritarian rule in other countries.
You should rally with us if, like us, you are appalled by the bullying of the weakest by the strongest.
You should rally with us because sooner or later, it could be any one of us.
You should rally with us because we insist on continuing to live in our constitutional democracy, in a country “of laws, not of men.”
Lawyers and non-lawyers alike: Let’s rally because we are patriots who love the United States of America.
The Law Day Rally for the Rule of Law in New York City will take place on May 1 from 1 to 2 p.m. at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.
Bret Parker is Executive Director of the New York City Bar Association.
