Research seminar When lawyers attack the rule of law Add to calendar 2025-06-04 15:00 2025-06-04 17:00 Europe/Rome When lawyers attack the rule of law Sala del Consiglio and Zoom YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Jun 04 2025 15:00 - 17:00 CEST Sala del Consiglio and Zoom, Outside EUI premises Organised by Department of Law This session will feature a presentation by Scott Cummings (UCLA School of Law), who will examine the legal strategies behind rising autocratic legalism and explore whether the legal profession can still defend democracy. Scott Cummings will discuss the troubling trend of lawyers as architects of democratic backsliding. His talk will examine why some lawyers, sworn to uphold the rule of law, forge alliances with illiberal movements seeking to dismantle its core features. Drawing on the US experience, he will explore specific legal mobilisation strategies used by lawyers to weaken democratic guardrails and undermine public trust, while considering the degree to which the organised 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.Speaker: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 the Profession, 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.