On 2 April 2026, Lawyers for Lawyers filed an amicus curiae brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, urging the Court to affirm the district courts’ orders enjoining the enforcement of the Executive Orders targeting four law firms: Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale. In our brief, we argue that the Executive Orders violate universally recognised norms on the independence and safety of the legal profession – principles fundamental to democratic governance and the rule of law. Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP served as Counsel.
Background to the proceedings
On 25 March 2025, the Trump administration issued Executive Orders against four law firms – Jenner & Block, Perkins Coie, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale – alleging that their conduct threatened “public safety and national security” or undermined “bedrock American principles.” The Orders prescribed suspension of security clearances, termination of and restrictions on access to government contracts, and barriers to the hiring of the firms’ employees.
Each firm successfully challenged the Orders in federal court, obtaining first temporary restraining orders and subsequently permanent injunctions blocking enforcement. As one court observed in its ruling on the Order targeting Jenner & Block, the order “makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.”
The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals following the Department of Justice’s appeal of the district court rulings that struck down the Executive Orders as unconstitutional. Oral arguments are scheduled for 14 May 2026.
The amicus brief
For the first time in its 40-year history, Lawyers for Lawyers intervened as a third party in proceedings before a U.S. court by filing an amicus curiae brief (“friend of the court”). In it, we argue that the Executive Orders violate widely recognised norms of international law designed to protect the independence of the legal profession from intimidation, undue interference, and retaliation for representing certain clients or causes.
In summary, Lawyers for Lawyers submitted that:
- The international legal community has developed consensus principles and norms intended to protect the free and independent exercise of the legal profession. This is best reflected in the United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers (1990), adopted by consensus by the United Nations General Assembly and recognised as “the most authoritative set of norms on the position of lawyers to date”.
- The Executive Orders are a departure from well-established international norms and standards. By explicitly targeting law firms on the basis of the clients they represent — as highlighted by the district courts in their rulings — the Orders violate Principle 18 of the UN Basic Principles, which holds that “[l]awyers shall not be identified with their clients or their clients’ causes as a result of discharging their functions”.
- The Executive Orders place the United States in the company of countries like Hungary, Poland, and Russia, where attacks on the legal profession have signalled democratic decline. Targeting lawyers on the basis of their clients or causes is a documented feature of the erosion of legal independence in jurisdictions where democratic governance has been undermined. Such measures undermine the legal profession’s autonomy, threaten due process and fair trial rights, and compromise the structural integrity of the rule of law.
If allowed to stand, the consequences of the Executive Orders extend well beyond the four firms directly targeted: the targeting of lawyers for representing disfavoured clients follows patterns associated with democratic decline, and as experience elsewhere has shown, such attempts to compromise the independence of the legal profession will only accelerate if they are not challenged and reversed.
Read the full amicus brief here.
Lawyers for Lawyers filed this amicus brief in accordance with its mission to promote the independence of the legal profession worldwide and to support lawyers who face risk as a result of the clients they represent or the cases they take on. This brief was drafted with the support of one of our partner law firms, in collaboration with Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein LLP.
