Chancellor and Dean David Faigman's 2025 Law Day Message

Chancellor and Dean David Faigman sent this message to the UC Law SF Community on May 1, 2025.

 

Dear UC Law Community,

This past Tuesday marked the end of the first 100 days of the Trump administration and today we celebrate Law Day. Yet, ironically, the former date marks an unprecedented time in which the rule of law has been greatly ignored and trampled upon, while the latter honors the rule of law.

I write today to commemorate Law Day, not as a political partisan but as a professor of law devoted to the study and elaboration of law, from a tradition that is common to all lawyers, regardless of their politics. I well recognize, and celebrate, that members of our community disagree in their viewpoints and policy preferences; their perspectives are more than welcome in our scholarly debates and classrooms. I write today in defense of core principles that should ground all policy debates regardless of one’s politics: respect for the law.

Over the last 102 days, considerable legal commentary has been devoted to the administration’s efforts to deconstruct the American Republic and, particularly, its enshrinement of the rule of law. President Trump has gleefully ignored long-standing rules and democratic values, including constitutional and statutory precedents, and ethical and moral standards. Examples range from executive orders that attempt to invalidate birthright citizenship, to cutting off university funding for alleged Title VI violations contrary to unambiguous statutory guidelines, to detaining and deporting green card holders without due process, to enriching himself and his family through arrangements that have all the hallmarks of Ponzi crypto schemes that potentially permit foreign nationals and governments to influence federal policy. Indeed, a book could be written on the myriad ways that the Trump presidency has stomped on the rule of law. I’m sure many will be.

The theme for this Law Day is “The Constitution’s Promise: Out of Many, One.” Yet, over these past 102 days, we are possibly more divided than at any time since the Civil War.

With all that has occurred in this short time, and all that will certainly occur in the ensuing days, months and years, I wonder what some of the great leaders of the past, leaders responsible for the “unum” of E Pluribus Unum, would think about the state of the union today. Suppose we could summon James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln to the present day. What would they make of what we have wrought?

We might ask Madison to opine on a Congress that has willingly acceded power to an autocratically inclined Executive. On the one hand, he would likely find it consistent with his view of mankind, a view well described by Lord Acton, that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” On the other hand, Madison would point out that the Constitution specifically sought to combat this tendency to tyranny by creating a divided government to ensure checks and balances against this very circumstance. In Federalist 51, he wrote, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The separation of powers between the Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary was meant to frame a structure that would circumvent the slide into autocracy. As he stated, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

To date, majority members of Congress have demonstrated little ambition, beyond retaining the sinecures of office. It has fallen to the judiciary to defend against tyranny, a task it has been historically assigned, but one that it is not well designed to fulfill alone.

Next, we might inquire of Jefferson about the current regime. He would likely point out the less well-known parts of the Declaration of Independence, the sections that set forth the legal case for Independence. The Declaration listed 27 indictments of King George III’s autocratic rule, including some that sound all too familiar:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good;

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance;

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power;

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world;

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

We might also greatly benefit from the views of Hamilton. While Madison was the principal architect of the American government, Hamilton was its primary chronicler. In the Introduction to The Federalist Papers, he explained, “The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION.” He continued,

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.

Law Day should remind us that every generation of Americans must assume responsibility for carrying forth that great experiment that is the Constitution. In our own moment of crisis, this nation’s failure to sustain our “good government” would “deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind.”

On this day we reaffirm our commitment to the bedrock principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Those principles, however, are not self-executing. They require us, especially those of us trained in the law, to advance and defend them; to make the right decisions, ones that redound to the fortune of mankind.

In 1862, a year and a half into the Civil War, Lincoln offered this prayer, one that I share:

May our children and our children’s children to a thousand generations, continue to enjoy the benefits conferred upon us by a united country, and have cause yet to rejoice under those glorious institutions bequeathed us by Washington and his compeers.

On this day, devoted to what we have devoted our careers to, we must collectively recommit to our mission, which includes instruction in the rule of law, at a time when it is more important than ever that lawyers defend the principles on which our country was founded.

I wish you all health and happiness.

Warmly,

David

David L. Faigman
Chancellor & Dean
William B. Lockhart Professor of Law
John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California College of the Law, San Francisco