{"id":330456,"date":"2026-05-24T12:32:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330456\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T12:32:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:32:10","slug":"poll-of-judges-lawyers-sees-grave-trump-threat-to-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/330456\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll of judges, lawyers sees grave Trump threat to rule of law"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes it seems as though the only thing that stands between a functioning democracy and a full-on Trump autocracy<\/a> is a thin, black-robed line<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although the Supreme Court, in general<\/a>, and conservative appellate courts, in particular, have bowed and granted President Trump permission to do pretty much anything he wants, they haven\u2019t thoroughly capitulated to his endless grasping for ever more power. (The way invertebrate congressional Republicans <\/a>have.)<\/p>\n

At the lower-court level, judges have repeatedly ruled in ways intended to check Trump<\/a>, most notably when it comes to violating civil and constitutional rights in pursuit of his indiscriminate immigration dragnet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The tendency to slow-walk his administration\u2019s response<\/a> to those rulings \u2014 and ignore others that Trump thinks he can safely snub<\/a> \u2014 only contribute to the perception of presidential lawlessness and a sense that our judicial system is being strained to something approaching a breaking point.<\/p>\n

Go ahead, if you\u2019d like, and dismiss those concerns as just so much overwrought hand-wringing, or the mindless anti-Trump blathering of your friendly political columnist.<\/a> A new survey of legal experts<\/a> \u2014 including federal judges, top-tier lawyers and scores of professors from some of the country\u2019s leading law schools \u2014 finds widespread concern about the brittle state of our legal system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the fears of a lot of shaggy-thinking liberals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nation is strong as is its commitment to the rule of law,\u201d said one appellate judge, a Republican appointee. \u201cThe current president presents the greatest threat in decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The survey was conducted by Bright Line Watch,<\/a> a nonpartisan academic group that monitors the health and resilience of American democracy, in conjunction with the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA\u2019s School of Law.<\/p>\n

Conducted between mid-February and early March, the poll anonymously surveyed 21 federal judges, 113 lawyers, 193 law professors, 652 political scientists and a nationally representative sample of 2,750 Americans.<\/p>\n

What leapt out to UCLA\u2019s Rick Hasen<\/a>, director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, was that \u201cacross the ideological spectrum and across judges, lawyers and law professors, there was considerable agreement that the rule of law in the U.S. is under tremendous stress.\u201d That consensus, he said, suggests \u201ca real risk to democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most legal experts agreed that Trump is using executive power excessively<\/a>, with a majority doubting the conservative-leaning Supreme Court<\/a> would handle cases involving the Trump administration impartially. The experts also expressed concern about politicized law enforcement \u2014 Trump seeking to persecute his perceived enemies \u2014 executive branch overreach, and the failure of Congress or the Supreme Court to do more to rein in the rogue president.<\/p>\n

Eight in 10 of those surveyed said federal officials fail to comply with court orders<\/a> somewhat or very often, and nearly 9 in 10 said political appointees in Trump\u2019s Justice Department mislead federal judges<\/a> somewhat or very often.<\/p>\n

Talk about contempt of court \u2014 not to mention our vital system of checks and balances.<\/p>\n

There was, unsurprisingly, a split among conservatives and liberals who took part in the survey. (The study defined legal conservatives as those saying the Supreme Court should base rulings on its understanding of what the Constitution meant as originally written.<\/a> Liberals, who made up most of the respondents, were defined as those saying the court should base its rulings <\/a>on what the Constitution means in current times.)<\/p>\n

Conservatives, for instance, were more likely than liberals to see former President Biden<\/a> as a greater threat to the rule of law than Trump. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to see evidence of Trump politicizing the Justice Department.<\/a><\/p>\n

There were also differences between legal experts \u2014 those most intimately involved in the judicial system \u2014 and the public at large. The experts were more concerned about Trump\u2019s excesses and threats to the rule of law, which, Hasen said, stands to reason.<\/p>\n

The legal system is not something most people encounter daily in the same way they do, say, gasoline prices<\/a> or the cost of groceries<\/a>. \u201cYet,\u201d Hasen said, \u201cit\u2019s one of these background things that really matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why? <\/p>\n

Hasen put it this way: \u201cImagine that a person had a dispute with their neighbor and it ended up in small claims court before a judge and the judge made the decision not based on the merits of the case but based on whether he was friends with one of the parties, or didn\u2019t like people who were similar to one of the parties.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now imagine that kind of corrupted, perverted system of justice<\/a> writ large.<\/p>\n

If, for instance, \u201cpeople know that the government can successfully seek retribution from people who criticize it, people will be less likely to criticize the government,\u201d Hasen said, leaving the country worse off by muzzling those who would hold their elected leaders to account.<\/p>\n

Or if, say, rioters overran the U.S. Capitol<\/a> and tried to steal an election and, instead of being punished<\/a>, received cash payouts from the federal government<\/a>, what incentive would there be to follow the law?<\/p>\n

Happily \u2014 and who couldn\u2019t use a bit of good cheer right about now \u2014 all is not lost.<\/p>\n

People \u201ccan demand that their elected representatives take steps to assure that the rule of law will be followed,\u201d Hasen said, and can insist \u201cthat the government [not] play favorites or seek retribution against perceived enemies.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the power people have, come election time. That\u2019s why voting matters. <\/p>\n

There are lots of things riding on the outcome in November, not least the sanctity and integrity of our legal system.<\/p>\n

Bear that in mind when you cast your ballot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes it seems as though the only thing that stands between a functioning democracy and a full-on Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3413,49513,2575,405,137131,16047,48,52,51,721,1429,38995,47,50,49,90818,592,128215,20460,2214,1519],"class_list":["post-330456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-concern","tag-conservative","tag-democracy","tag-government","tag-great-threat","tag-judge","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-law","tag-lawyer","tag-liberal","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-new-survey","tag-people","tag-rick-hasen","tag-rule","tag-supreme-court","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}