A Letter to Students of USC Gould School of Law

 April 2, 2025

To our students:

Like faculty at many law schools, we are concerned that American legal precepts and the institutions designed to uphold them are being severely tested. We are privileged to teach and learn the law with you. We have heard your concerns and are therefore writing to you today in our individual capacities. Faculty at Harvard Law School recently wrote a letter to their students about the current moment and have invited others to make use of it.  Because we believe that their letter says important things well, we have adapted it here.

Each of us brings different, sometimes irreconcilable, perspectives to what the law is and should be. Diverse viewpoints are a credit to our school. But we share, and take seriously, a commitment to the rule of law: for people to be equal before it, and for its administration, by independent judges, to be impartial. That commitment is foundational to the whole legal profession, and to the special role that lawyers play in our society. As the Model Rules of Professional Conduct assert: “A lawyer is ... an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”

The rule of law is imperiled when government leaders:

• single out lawyers and law firms for retribution based on their lawful and ethical representation of clients disfavored by the government;

• threaten law firms and legal clinics for their lawyers’ pro bono work or prior government service;

• relent on those arbitrary threats based on public acts of submission and outlays of funds for favored causes;

•  threaten to impeach judges merely because they disagree with decisions that those judges have made; and

• punish people for lawfully speaking out on matters of public concern.

These threats contravene the commitments of the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. They are exacerbated when government penalties are administered without due process.

While reasonable people may disagree about the characterization of particular incidents, we are all deeply concerned that severe challenges to the rule of law are taking place, and we strongly condemn any effort to undermine the basic norms we have described.

On our own campus and at many other universities, international students who have come to the United States for different purposes, including to study the American legal system, have reported fear of imprisonment or deportation for lawful speech and political activism. Whatever each of us might think about particular conduct under particular facts, we share a conviction that our Constitution, including its First Amendment, was designed to make dissent and debate possible without fear of government punishment. Neither a law school nor a society can function properly in the present climate of fear.

We reaffirm our commitment to the rule of law and to our roles in teaching and upholding the precepts of a fair and impartial legal system.

Sincerely,