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Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg
Washington Post
More than 160 law deans denounce attempted insurrection and effort to decertify election — but don’t name names
They also do not push for disbarment of the lawyers who contested Joe Biden’s win
By Valerie Strauss
Jan. 12, 2021
More than 160 deans of the United States’ best-known law schools issued
a rare joint statement Tuesday, condemning last week’s attempted
insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as well as the lawyers who “betrayed
the values of our profession” by challenging election results without
evidence. But they did not name the lawyers nor call for censure or
disbarment.
In a four-paragraph statement, the deans of law schools said that the
attack on the Capitol on Wednesday “was an assault on our democracy and
the rule of law” and that “the effort to disrupt the certification of a
free and fair election was a betrayal of the core values that undergird
our Constitution.”
It did not name the lawyers who represented President Trump in court
with false accusations of fraud in the November election, nor the
lawyers who are members of Congress and voted against certifying the
results. Several petitions from law school communities have called for
the disbarment of some of these lawyers, including Sens. Josh Hawley
(R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who led the effort in the Senate to
decertify the election result.
It is highly unusual for so many law school deans to come together to
make such a statement. Two law school deans who signed it and spoke on
the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
discussions said that some of the signatories wanted to issue a
stronger statement.
To get a maximum number of law deans to sign on, the language was made
broad and intentionally did not name anybody or call for any kind of
censure, they said.
Academics and leaders of higher education institutions have long been
reluctant to issue pointed statements on sensitive subjects out of fear
of alienating donors and alumni who have different positions.
“Many lawyers and judges worked honestly and in good faith, often in
the face of considerable political pressure, to ensure the 2020
election was free and fair,” the law school deans’ statement says.
“However, we recognize with dismay and sorrow that some lawyers
challenged the outcome of the election with claims that they did not
support with facts or evidence. This betrayed the values of our
profession.”
Some of the deans who signed the statement include those at the law
schools at Harvard and Yale and the Universities of Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Virginia and California at Los Angeles.
More than 10,000 law school alumni and students have signed a petition
first circulated by Yale Law School students calling for the disbarment
of Hawley and Cruz over what it says were their “efforts to undermine
the peaceful transition of power after a free and fair election.” Those
include more than 2,300 members of the Missouri, Texas and District of
Columbia bars.
The New York State Bar Association will consider expelling former New
York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal lawyer
in dozens of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the election results
without any proof in the legal documents he filed.
Thousands of law school alumni and students push for disbarment of Sens. Hawley and Cruz
A petition on Change.org by members of the Stanford University
community has more than 7,500 signatures calling for the school to
sever all ties with Hawley, who earned a history degree at Stanford in
2002. The petition condemns “the open sedition” of Hawley, calls for an
investigation of his behavior and says he should resign from the Senate.
The deans’ statement was not the only one from the world of academia
that was seen as pulling punches. Inside Higher Education wrote about a
Thursday statement issued by the American Political Science Association
that called on public officials on “both sides to do better” — until
some members complained that only one side was responsible for the
attempted insurrection. The organization later apologized for that
language, issuing a new statement that conceded that the “both sides”
rhetoric had been “deeply harmful.”
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