John Palfrey is a lawyer and President of the MacArthur Foundation. 

I am curious if any of the lawyers in America are changing their mind at all about their duty as officers of the court to speak up about attacks on the rule of law. The same call I made 6 months ago — to think about our professional responsibility, about the oath we take as an Officer of the Court, about the solemn duties of a law teacher — seems to me only to be getting more and more urgent.

What could justify the silence today of, say, a law professor or a law firm partner who is bending a knee in this setting? It can only mean complicity to something terrifying and corrosive.

David French — no one's idea of a radical left-wing zealot and an experienced lawyer before becoming a journalist — argues convincingly in the New York Times today that this week's events represent an "ominous turn" in the sustained, nine-month-long attack on the Rule of Law in the USA.

This is not remotely a close call. Anyone who has gone anywhere near a law school knows it, much less those who are experienced in the legal profession. People who have nothing to do with the law or legal education can see it plainly. This has nothing to do with partisanship or party or day-to-day policy.

Will the legal profession stand up to stop it? Will the Judiciary? Will We the People, peacefully and firmly and with total conviction, refuse to let it happen? Or will we let it continue to slide?

Cross-posted from Facebook, with permission. Palfrey is a former colleague at Berkman, co-conspirator with me on various projects at Harvard in the 00s, including our work on blogging and podcasting.