In this issue, we ask: how do lawyers operate amidst threats to democracy or under encroaching authoritarianism? Do they enable or resist state power? To answer this question, we dive into the work of the Lawyers and Declining Democracy (LADD) project and explore insights from countries around the world.
Led by Kathryn Hendley, Theodore W. Brazeau Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, LADD brings together scholars studying the role of lawyers in resisting authoritarianism in countries with backsliding democracies. In 2024, the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession hosted many LADD researchers at Do Legal Professions Resist Authoritarianism?, and in early 2025, the group hosted a symposium at Indiana University Bloomington, Lawyers as Agents for Change in Countries Facing Distress, to convene some of the latest research on the topic; the Indiana event will result a special symposium issue of the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. This issue of The Practice serves as a preview to many of the insights that will be found in that issue.
The latest 2025 Freedom in the World report highlighted how much of a global problem creeping authoritarianism is: “Global freedom declined for the 19th consecutive year,” Freedom House reported. To understand the value of this comparative work, we lead this issue with an interview with Hendley. “Many of us who work on authoritarian countries are frustrated with the assumption that lawyers are the center of the world. That’s a very U.S. centric view—that lawyers are essential for democracy,” she says. When diving into how lawyers operate and resist in countries where lawyers hold different societal roles, she says, we must ask: “[Do lawyers] have a place to step up in that society? … What do lawyers expect from themselves? How are they socialized in law faculties or professional associations to think about themselves? How are they regarded in society, and do they have power within the state?” Hendley also offers insights from her scholarship on lawyers in Russia.
We then explore research from:
- Vitor Martins Dias on lawyers in Brazil
- Qin (Sky) Ma on lawyers in China
- Heba M. Khalil on lawyers in Egypt
- Atieh Babhakani on lawyers in Iran
We conclude with a Speaker’s Corner with Scott L. Cummings, Professor of Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, to offer observations on this current moment in United States politics from his study on lawyers during the 2020 election. “The ideal of lawyers ensuring democracy functions well is one that we’re constantly striving for,” Cummings says, but numerous examples from American history have shown us how lawyers fall short. Still, he says, this is a pivotal moment for the legal profession. Would-be autocrats from around the world have been building and drawing from a playbook, drafting laws that weaken democratic institutions and concocting emergencies that require extraconstitutional action, Cummings explains. How American lawyers are going to confront this moment matters—and they must act, Cummings says, before it’s too late. He says:
Right now, the critical thing is for lawyers, the bar, law firms, and law schools to speak with one collective voice and stand up against what’s going on in Washington, D.C. This is not a moment for individual action. I don’t think individual action can have an effect. There has to be collective action, and it has to be a unified collective action across the profession and across political ideologies. All of us have spent our lives as lawyers committed to the idea that law is special and we need to preserve law as distinct from politics. Right now, we’re seeing that idea being demolished. Collective action by the profession with a strong voice condemning Trump’s fundamental attack on the rule of law is essential.
