Ray Brescia, Albany Law School – Lawyers and the Rule of Law in the United States

The Academic Minute

Do we need to recommit to the Rule of Law in the United States?

Ray Brescia, associate dean for research and intellectual life, Hon. Harold R Tyler Chair in law and technology at Albany Law School, says yes.

Professor Brescia is the author of “The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions” (Cornell University Press, 2020), which examines the intersection of technology and social movements, from the American Revolution, to the present day and “Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession,” (NYU Press, 2023).

He is also the co-editor of two books: “Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations” (New York University Press, 2021); and “How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality” (Routledge 2016). He has also published over fifty law review articles in such publications as the Ohio State Law Journal, the Florida State University Law Review, and the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics.

Before joining Albany Law School, he was the Associate Director of the Urban Justice Center in New York, N.Y. and served as an adjunct professor at New York Law School from 1997 through 2006. He was a staff attorney at New Haven Legal Assistance and the Legal Aid Society of New York, where he was a recipient of a Skadden Fellowship after graduation from law school.

Professor Brescia also served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Constance Baker Motley, Senior U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York.

Lawyers and the Rule of Law in the United States

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Recent events have shaken a bedrock principle upon which this nation was founded: that we are a nation of laws and not people. The Supreme Court granted presidents immunity from criminal prosecution, including, as the dissent pointed out, for attempting to assassinate a rival. Not two weeks later, a gunman wounded former President Trump. As we head toward the next election in November, the events that followed the last, when a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, still loom large.

Political violence and immunity from prosecution are inconsistent with the rule of law, a core principle upon which the nation was founded. It wasn’t just the rule of law, but also lawyers, at the center of the nation’s birth: writing the Declaration of Independence and making up a majority of the members of the Constitutional Convention a decade later.

Because we are a nation of laws, lawyers have played a central—though not always positive—role in our democracy. Lawyers made arguments for and against slavery. They created the Jim Crow system and worked to dismantle it. Lawyers inspired the mob on January 6th by coming up with the lawless argument that a Vice President could overturn the results of a national election.

Americans should commit themselves to the rule of law. Because lawyers are trained in the law, they have a special responsibility to promote the rule of law itself. Regardless of the outcome of the next election, all Americans, and especially lawyers, must act as the framers intended: in a manner consistent with law and the rule of law.

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