Today’s Rule of Law crisis stems largely from decades of the legal profession’s Bar Enforcement Authorities failing to enforce their Rules of Professional Conduct. BEAs in DC, VT, and virtually every other jurisdiction have literally never enforced their professed Honor Code (Rule 8.3), and VT and others have also virtually never enforced the Rule requiring that attorneys not make statements lacking a good faith basis (3.1). How can a profession claim to have an Honor Code and other Rules if it never enforces them?

1993 warnings and 2003 requirements ignored: In 1993, Yale Law School Dean A. Kronman warned that “Every year produces … renewed doubts about the ability of the profession to police itself.”  In 2003, the ABA — in express response to public outcry from attorneys’ silent complicity in the Enron scandal — exponentially expanded attorneys’ duties to speak up. Disclosure mandates previously limited to future bodily harm were expanded to financial harm and harm that has already occurred. Yet BEAs in DC, VT, and elsewhere have ignored the warnings and expansions, even to the point of dismissals that themselves lack any good faith basis (thus violating Rule 3.1) yet are concealed from the public.

DC, VT, & CA. RTL focuses on DC because of its demonstrated violations and its heightened importance to democracy; VT because it has virtually never enforced 8.3 or 3.1, and because its BEAs’ enforcement-avoiding decisions are kept secret not only from the public but even from its Supreme Court. RTL highlights CA for examples of steps that should be taken, because, following a scandal similar to VT’s of 2023, CA constructively: (1) investigated its BEAs and publicly disclosed a “shocking … culture of unethical and unacceptable behavior;” (2) enacted a uniquely strong 8.3 (specifying timing and dual-venues of reporting); and (3) appointed a non-Attorney to Chair the Bar’s oversight Board.

BEAs beg the age-old question, “Who Will Watch The Watchers?” These emperors wear no clothes, and stopping their failures is critical to preserving our democracy.