Paul Clement’s Argument Against the Executive Order Targeting the Wilmer Cutler Law Firm
I’ll have a further post next week about the First Amendment and right-to-counsel problems with some of President Trump’s Executive Orders. But in the meantime I thought I’d quote the introduction to the Complaint in Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP v. Executive Office of the President, filed by former Solicitor General Paul Clement and his colleagues Erin Murphy and Joseph J. Demott at Clement & Murphy, PLLC:
“[T]he right to counsel is the foundation for our adversary system,” Martinez v. Ryan (2012), and the “courage” of attorneys who take on unpopular clients has long “made lawyerdom proud,” Sacher v. United States (1952). John Adams famously embodied these principles by defending eight British soldiers in the “Boston Massacre” trial, an effort he described as “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” And British monarchs’ practice of punishing attorneys “whose greatest crime was to dare to defend unpopular causes”—which threatened to reduce lawyers to “parrots of the views of whatever group wields governmental power at the moment”—helped inspire the Bill of Rights. Cohen v. Hurley (1961) (Black, J., dissenting). It is thus a core principle of our legal system that “one should not be penalized for merely defending or prosecuting a lawsuit.” F. D. Rich Co. v. United States ex rel. Indus. Lumber Co. (1974).
In an unprecedented assault on that bedrock principle, the President has issued multiple executive orders in recent weeks targeting law firms and their employees as an undisguised form of retaliation for representing clients and causes he disfavors or employing lawyers he dislikes. These “personal vendetta[s]” are so facially improper that the first court to address the merits of one of these orders concluded that it likely violates multiple foundational safeguards enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
The latest such directive …, dated March 27, 2025, targets Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP …. Titled “Addressing Risks From WilmerHale LLP,” the Order avowedly punishes WilmerHale for various matters the Firm has handled, including some it has taken on pro bono, and for its employment of certain attorneys who participated in the Department of Justice’s investigation of the 2016 presidential election. In particular, WilmerHale has been a professional home for public servants like Robert Mueller and represented (among many others) President Trump’s political opponents, including in litigation on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Biden and Harris campaigns in the two most recent presidential elections. This past month, WilmerHale also filed a lawsuit challenging the President’s sudden dismissal of eight inspectors general at major federal agencies.
The Order’s
Article from Reason.com
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