Name: Federal Judges Under Fire: Inside the Fight to Protect the Rule of Law
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T21:15:00Z
Duration: 22 min 50 s

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Violence, threats, and intimidation against federal judges are rising, raising new concerns about a bedrock tenet of the U.S. Constitution: judicial independence and the separation of powers. In this wide-ranging WSJ CEO Council livestream, retired judges Robert Cindrich, Allyson Duncan, and Paul Michel discuss why attacks on the judiciary pose serious risks not only to democracy and the future of the United States, but also to the legal foundation that allows markets and businesses to function. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

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Violence, threats, and intimidation against federal judges are rising, raising new concerns about a bedrock tenet of the U.S. Constitution: judicial independence and the separation of powers. In this wide-ranging WSJ CEO Council livestream, retired judges Robert Cindrich, Allyson Duncan, and Paul Michel discuss why attacks on the judiciary pose serious risks not only to democracy and the future of the United States, but also to the legal foundation that allows markets and businesses to function.

Federal Judges Under Fire: Inside the Fight to Protect the Rule of Law

Thank you for joining us. This is a really important session and I'm glad you all are willing to be part of it. We've got three very distinguished judges with us who all have different life experiences, were appointed to their positions by different politicians, but all have joined together as part of this Article III coalition, which we're gonna talk about it in just a minute. Their full bios are on the website, so if you're interested in more, you can go to the website, but we've got relatively little time here this morning and I want to make sure that we use the time well. Judge Michel, Judge Cindrich, Judge Duncan, thank you for being with us. What we're gonna do is the four of us are gonna have a conversation, and then say 25 minutes in, we're gonna open it up to the whole group. I want to make sure all the CEOs on the call have the opportunity to ask their questions. So, we'll, for those of you on the call, we'll probably open it up to questions and comments at around 11:25. So please stay on. I wonder Judge Cindrich, if I can start with you to tell the group what the Article III coalition is, why it was formed, and what you're trying to do?

Yes, the A3C is a non-partisan civic education initiative of Keep Our Republic, which is the 501 entity in which we are housed. We are a growing coalition of currently 54 former US district and circuit judges, all Article III. We're diverse in every respect, and we come from all over the country. Our judges were appointed for life under Article III of the Constitution by Presidents Carter, Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, W Bush, and Obama. The judges are almost evenly divided between those appointed by a Republican and those appointed by a Democratic president. Thus, we are very diverse bipartisan group, but our approach and what we strive to do is be apolitical, nonpartisan.

And apolitical, but you had a very clear purpose in forming this coalition. How would you articulate that purpose?

Well, we perceived as former judges and certainly from multiple sources, including sitting judges that the United States judiciary is under an unprecedented attack, such as we have not experienced in our history. The A3C was formed in 2005 to support, preserve, and defend the judicial independence and the Constitution as the foundation of the rule of law and of our democracy.

Yeah.

Our goal is to help ensure that sitting judges are able to impartially, objectively, and fairly rule based solely on the law and the facts of each case and not based upon any other factors, agendas, or efforts to influence their results.

And Judge Michel, how bad would you judge this problem to be? I mean, some of this stuff leaks into the press, we see it, we all know it. I think we've all gotten a little enured to the effects of the kind of the daily drama that goes along with this administration. But when you're talking about the judiciary, how bad is the problem in your view?

Well, I think it's gotten to be very bad, Alan. I think it's worse than it's ever been. 50 years ago, I was one of the Watergate prosecutors confronting lawless actions by an administration then, and it involved some elements of the government being used against political enemies. But now the entire government, top to bottom and side to side is being deployed to harass law firms, universities, business organizations, and others to try to intimidate people into giving into whatever some politicians want to do. So it's very bad. It's unprecedented and it needs to be stopped promptly.

It's interesting, unprecedented, even in comparison to what happened during the Watergate years.

Exactly.

Can you give just one or two examples of the kind of things that you point to that say this is not just across the line, this is miles across the line?

Well, in the entire 250 years of the existence of the country, only 8 federal judges have ever been impeached and removed from office through trial in the US Senate. There are currently 10 pending articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives against US judges. So that's one measure. Another is that there were over 600 verified serious threats against judges in the last year, and that's double the amount of just a few years ago. So the threats against judges have escalated. The intimidation efforts have taken many forms, including delivery of pizzas, unordered sometimes in the name of the murdered son of Judge Esther Salas, who sits in New Jersey.

Whoa.

Her son was murdered at the front door by a would be assassin trying to get the judge. Fortunately, she was elsewhere in the house, but the son answered the door. He was shot and killed. The husband was shot and critically wounded. And this is not the first time federal judges have been the subject of assassination targets.

Whoa, so this is not just the actions of the judiciary, but personally you, the judges feel threatened by what's going on?

Well, not only that, but they.

Alan: I'll get .

Are often directed against family members and that's the weak point. Judges are used to being criticized, being unpopular, but the vulnerable point is where family members are being directly threatened and harassed. There's a danger judges will start to succumb to the pressures.

Judge Duncan.

I was just going to pick up on a point that Judge Michel made about the experience of a very dear friend of mine on the DC circuit, who as of about two months ago had received at her home 14 pizzas that she did not order in the name of her daughter. So it's a very pointed message. We know who you are, we know the names of your children, and we know how to reach you. And I am unaware of that level of personal malevolence being directed at judges before. And I think part of the other piece I was going to mention is judges are different in that sitting judges are mute. They are prohibited by canons of judicial conduct from speaking other than ex cathedra. They have to speak only through their opinions. And so I think part of what all of us are trying to do is to be their voice.

Yeah, yeah, very powerful. Both Judge Michel and Judge Cindrich used the word unprecedented. Judge Michel directly addressed the period, the Watergate period, but Judge Duncan, I would think another period was the Jim Crow South when the courts were used in a very different way. Do you think this is unprecedented compared to that?

I think the direction of the threats are different. I've told the story before of the extent to which, when I was growing up in the the South, Julius Chambers, the civil rights lawyer who argued Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg school desegregation cases before the United States Supreme Court was instructed by the Southern Poverty Law Fund to leave the side door of his car on the driver's side open when he got in the car in the morning, so that if there were a car bomb, he might escape death by being blown out of the side. The difference then is that you had a president who, Dwight D. Eisenhower, when Brown versus the Board of Education was decided, did not like it one bit, but came back from Camp David to stand in the Oval Office and say, "The rule of law as interpreted by the Supreme Court must be respected." We do not have that kind of support, that kind of powerful support today.

That's very powerful comments from all three of you. You're speaking this morning to a group of CEOs, people who run large businesses. I wonder if, if I could ask all three of you to talk about how does this affect business? What are the potential consequences for the people on this call? Whoever wants to grab that first. Judge Cindrich, do you want to take the first stab at it?

Yes, thank you. Here's my look at the problem. I think you know that more important than being appointed by two different presidents as United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and US District Judge, I have served in senior management including as the general counsel of two larger companies, the United States Steel Corporation and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center healthcare institution, but quite large with over 100,000 employees. And I've served on the boards of two publicly held corporations. So I have a perspective that may be different from some other judges. One of the things we can say pretty much for sure, and the studies will bear it out, that there's a direct and a positive correlation between companies that apply the rule of law and have an independent judiciary and the economic strength and prosperity of a country. An independent, effective judicial system is a vital component of the rule of law. Some of the things seem to me to be so obvious to the extent we have stability and predictability that will encourage investment, economic growth, stability. It will avoid, if not prevent, corruption. And independent judiciary, which applies the rule of law, including when necessary against its own government, where the government overreaches strengthens an economy and a market. I'll make it brief, it protects property rights. We all say we own something like our home, corporations, of course, own multiple assets in a fiduciary relationship to their shareholders, who are the actual owners. But do we own it? We only own it if the law will protect it. If someone can take it, usurp our rights to that property without our consent, then we don't own anything. Intellectual property, highly important in today's environment. Again, we rely on the rule of law to protect what we invent, what belongs to our company. You know, I could go on. How do we encourage?

Well, let me, let me, yeah, let me ask you this. Let me push it in this direction because I think all of us understand the long-term consequences of the deterioration of the rule of law, and we see in other countries what this leads to, but I also think there's a little bit of a tendency in this country to say, this is maybe a passing phase that maybe, you know, this will go away after the midterm elections or after the next presidential elections or after the Supreme Court issues a few critical rulings, and we'll go back to something more like in the past. So is that possible? What are the, I guess what I'm asking is, what is the lasting damage to business of what's already happened?

Well, one thing that occurs to me is that the sanctity of contracts ultimately depends on court's ability to fairly enforce contracts. And as I understand it, business operates all day, every day by contracts with suppliers and customers and so forth. So the rule of law is not just about democracy and fairness, it's also about economic functionality. The economy depends on it, prosperity depends on it, so the consequences are immediate and very important.

Judge Duncan were you, did you wanna say something?

I was going to just add in that what concerns me is the very distinct possibility that the boundaries of what is acceptable will have been warped to such an extent that it is difficult for them to go back to what was. If someone can obtain a short term benefit from protecting intellectual property rights, less stringently than the person might otherwise have, there is a temptation, there will remain the temptation to do it if one can get away with it, and one will, if one has gotten away with it, it increases the likelihood that it will recur. And that is my particular concern.

Yep. Judge Cindrich, anything you want to add?

You know, there was one thing that Judge Duncan usually talks about because she's an expert in this area and that's international law.

Judge Duncan: Yeah.

Many of our organizations and many of the companies I was involved with are multinationals, and Judge Duncan, maybe you could relate to us some of your experience with the International Association of Judges and the arbitration process.

I will be happy to, and also, Chief Justice Roberts appointed me to chair the International Judicial Relations Committee at the Judicial Conference and I went around to a number of countries trying to help them improve their processes. But I was spending a great deal of time in Burma, which the State Department still calls Burma, to see if we could help them develop business courts. And it became clear to me, and I told the State Department, you don't need a business court, you need a functioning general court of justice that pays its judges a living wage. If you do not do that, you'll have a corruption tax, which is what they have. I spent a lot of time in Hong Kong. At that point, Hong Kong was very often the arbitral seat of many international contracts. The minute the Chinese exerted what was considered an unacceptable level of pressure that switched within days to Singapore. People want someone to ensure a level playing field and not a government that puts his hand or finger on the .

Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm going to turn it, I'm gonna open it up to the CEOs in a minute, and I really would ask you, ask all of the CEOs who are on the call to please take over this conversation from me so that I know that we've answered the questions you have. I want to say again, because some of you were a little late in joining, while the conversation with the three judges, we are recording and is on the record, the recording will be turned off when we go to the broader discussion, and it will be completely off the record. I have no interest in reporting on this conversation. I just thought it was an important one to bring to you and hear the questions all of you have. So I'd urge you all to come on camera and be prepared to ask questions. But I'd like to, before I do that, I'd like to ask the three judges, what can this group do? What, you know, we're living at obviously a complicated time and CEOs are stewards of their companies for the owners and can't, you know, easily expose their companies to possible retribution, but what could they do that would be helpful to you? I salute all three of you for your courage in taking this important cause on. What could this group do to help you?

Well, Alan, I think the main thing is help us with access, access to people in power, to policy makers to get us in front of editorial boards of major publications, including maybe the "Wall Street Journal."

Ah, oh, that was directed to me.

And the same thing with regard to political leaders, to people in Congress. They're not really aware of these problems and the nature and extent and harmfulness of these problems, but they need to be made aware and we need help in getting in the door, getting a hearing.

Yep. Judge Duncan.

I think that is certainly critical, but I think it is equally critical to be aware yourselves and help educate and inform. I was a big fan of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and I keep tripping over things that startle me that people do not know. I was taken aback that there are people, lawyers in the world who don't know the difference between an administrative writ and a judicial writ. How do we elevate the level of the dialogue and how do we inform?

Yeah.

I would appreciate, you.

Yeah.

You have experts on that.

Right, and the other thing that I think makes this conversation difficult is that while the political environment has created a complicated situation for the judiciary and for all three of you, there are a lot of things about the current political environment that are great for business. You know, certainly a change on the regulatory arbitrariness, certainly a change in the tax structure, just of willingness of people in government to talk to business about how to solve problems. So I think that's part of the challenge that the people on this call are dealing with. Judge Cindrich, I don't know if you have any, having been in business yourself, have any thoughts on how to navigate that?

I do. I don't think we should be reflexively against anything and everything this administration does. That's not thinking through the problem. Sometimes there's a question of not so much the policy, but the means of enacting or enforcing the policy. And I think that there are some good things. I mean, most of us are understanding that a good deal of the American taxpayer's dollar goes to defending the world, to the extent that some of the policies now being used are to persuade others, other countries to contribute to that defense of the world. That's a good policy. So, I think we need to be careful when we are talking about this. I think that our focus is really on regularity, predictability. Can you with reasonable certainty think you can invest, make a huge break the bank investment in a new plant or whatever, if you're not sure about what's going to happen next or whether the law will protect you. That's really where our focus is. But you're correct on larger policy issues. There may be some areas in which they're good for business. We just need to refine how those apply.

Even if we do, even if business agrees, can't the disagreement be expressed in a way that is not, does not consist of ad hominem attack? And for me, because I find the tone and the tenor as troubling. I don't think, I don't see why if you disagree with someone, that means they are necessarily rogue. So I think if we could ratchet down the discourse, I think that would be an improvement.

Yeah, that's a broader social problem that goes well beyond the judiciary, but I agree. Judge Michel, before we open it up, anything you want to add?

Two things quickly. One is that the CEOs that we hope will help us don't need to do anything publicly. We're not asking companies or their leaders to take public stands, but just to help us get a hearing through private communications to the policy makers, the members of Congress, the editorial boards and the like. The other thing is, while I agree with Judge Cindrich, that a lot of things the current administration is doing are favorable to business, some are not. Just this morning in the "Wall Street Journal," Section B, page 3 was a horrifying story of a massive expanding investigation of the Nike company on what sounded like completely trumped up charges of illegal DEI activities. So the government is subpoenaing millions of Nike documents. It's very onerous, very expensive, very disruptive. The company's been cooperating with them for many months and the government says, no, we want more. We want everything, we want all your documents. And so finally the company said, we just can't go any further down this road, so the government sued them. So now there's a court case to enforce the subpoena. This is a kind of intimidation of the corporate world. This is ruined by starting baseless investigations and it's really nefarious.