Professor Russell Pearce, Edward and Marilyn Bellet Chair in Legal Ethics, Morality, and Religion, co-authored an op-ed in ACLU News on Donald Trump’s presidency and the rule of law.
Trump has shown again and again that, as a Holmesian bad man, he will do whatever he can get away with. It is a lesson Trump learned from his lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, as testified to by his lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen (now “Individual-1’s” nemesis). The tactics were honed during Trump’s career as a discriminatory and abusive developer and landlord: When dealing with tenants, contractors, and investors, do not honor your agreements and legal, let alone ethical, obligations. Don’t worry whether you have a legitimate cause of action or defense. Rather, flout norms and fairness, manipulate deadlines, drag out payments and processes, force litigation, make remedies and responses costly and cumbersome, overwhelm with falsehoods and fatigue, grind people and institutions down with the system — in short, break the law as you please, while using the law and legal procedures themselves as tools of abuse and evasion of accountability.