The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47, 1778

Without an independent judiciary… all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing. Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist No. 78, 1778

How often do you think of yourself as a revolutionary? If the answer is not very often, you should, more often. Especially now.

We have a chief executive of the United States who has mounted an unprecedented attack on our independent judiciary. To the extent these attacks are successful, it will largely be due to the fact that, as founding Father Alexander Hamilton noted, the judiciary is the weakest branch as it has "neither sword nor purse".

The Vice President of the United States was interviewed by journalist Ian Ward in 2023 for a profile in Politico magazine. He was asked about his statements on a conservative podcast in 2021 suggesting that Trump, if reelected, should fire every midlevel bureaucrat and every civil servant in “the administrative state” and when the Courts try to stop him, that he should “ … stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it’”. Mr. Ward asked him if this was still his view. His one word answer was “Yup.”

In April of 2025, Columbia Law Professor Thomas Schmidt, in an article in The Atlantic titled “The Supreme Court has no Army,” [argued] that the authority and independence of the Supreme Court, and by extension every lower court, depends entirely on the vigilance of the American people.

An independent judiciary is one that is free to uphold the rule of law without prejudice against or favoritism toward special interests, political or otherwise. When the system is attacked, it has to be defended. Yet it is not (generally) the courts and the judges who can or will provide that defense, as they are restricted in their ability to respond (by codes of judicial ethics?). This restriction is important to ensure the dignity of justice system, prevent interference with pending cases, and to keep the judicial system independent of political pressures. So who is uniquely suited (pun intended) to defend the independence of the judiciary?

In 2007 I recall being riveted by the images of Pakistani lawyers protesting the government’s suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, who had defied the authoritarian government’s actions. The actions included corruptly privatizing government-owned industries, and disappearing citizens without due process. One such image accompanies this article.

The protests escalated, and in November of 2007 there was a nationwide crackdown on lawyers, which included a raid on the Lahore High Court Bar Association in which police baton-charged and threw tear gas into the premises, and then arrested over 800 lawyers. The “Black Coat Protests” expanded as well-dressed lawyers took to the streets and refused to back down. In the end the protests, also known as “the Lawyers Movement,” were successful in having the chief justice reinstated.

Lawyers in lands with authoritarian governments have often looked to the United States for inspiration to defend their own fledgling judicial systems. The best among them know how critical it is to have a system of government with checks and balances, and how an independent judicial system is the best protection against tyranny. In Pakistan, at least in 2007, they were willing to, quite literally, fight to protect it.

In pre-revolutionary Boston, it was the lawyers in the upstart colonies who were the leaders in demanding liberty and justice from the British. Thomas Gage, commander in chief of British forces in the early days of the revolution, made it clear in a 1765 letter to the King that “the lawyers are the Source from whence the clamors have flowed in every Province.”

Can we ultimately be the source from where the clamor will flow? Will we be? Or perhaps the better question is, must we be?

I hope that we American lawyers will not find ourselves lobbing tear gas back toward police lines in a desperate fight for justice and the rule of law. I really do. It seems unthinkable. It would be unprecedented. But then again, what we are facing today is unthinkable. And it is unprecedented.

For me, I will keep the image of the black-suited lawyer in Pakistan in mind as I do what I can, when I can, to fight for our independent judiciary.