CERLP | Lawyers and the Rule of Law: Scott Cummings - When Lawyers Attack the Rule of Law

Abstract

Scott Cummings will discuss the troubling trend of lawyers as architects of democratic backsliding. Drawing on the US experience, he will explore specific legal mobilization strategies used by lawyers to weaken democratic guardrails and undermine public trust, while considering the degree to which the organized legal profession can serve as a bulwark of democracy in dangerous times. Addressing the rapid rise of autocratic legalism in America, he will specifically discuss the role of lawyers in the design and execution of the dramatic consolidation of executive power currently underway in the new Trump administration—and what, if anything, can be done to stop it.

About Scott Cummings

Scott Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, where he teaches and writes about the legal profession, legal ethics, access to justice, and local government law. A recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Cummings is the founding faculty director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and Democracy, which promotes empirical research and innovative programming on the challenges facing lawyers in the twenty-first century, and a long-time member of the UCLA David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. In 2021, Professor Cummings was selected as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute and a fellow at the Stanford Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to study the role of lawyers in strengthening the rule of law. He was awarded a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship to study the role of lawyers in democratic backsliding.