How Big Law's Acquiescence Enabled Trump's Confrontation of Legal Norms

3 days ago7 min read

A formidable, yet largely dormant, check on presidential power resides within the nation's most powerful law firms. The Trump administration's repeated testing of constitutional boundaries might have been decisively blunted had the legal establishment mounted a unified, principled resistance to its most dubious executive actions from the outset.The collective authority of 'Big Law'—wielding unparalleled drafting expertise, access to power, and symbolic weight as guardians of the rule of law—could have crippled the operational capacity and public legitimacy of initiatives like the travel ban and other norm-challenging orders. Historically, the withdrawal of elite legal sanction has proven to be a critical corrective, from the legal community's pivotal role during Watergate to more recent corporate backlash that forced policy revisions.Instead, by continuing to engage—often under the guise of navigating political complexity or serving client interests—these firms inadvertently provided a veneer of legitimacy to actions that strained legal frameworks. A coordinated stance of non-cooperation, true to the profession's foundational ethical duties, would have created a profound governance crisis, starving the administration of the legal talent required to craft and defend its most aggressive maneuvers.This would have forced strategic retreats and established a clear bright line for presidential conduct. The failure to take this stand, while commercially pragmatic in the short term, enabled a normalization of confrontational tactics that weakened democratic institutions and set a perilous precedent for future administrations of any party tempted to exploit power in the absence of consequential opposition from their intended restraints.

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