A camp counselor picks favorites by lauding some campers regardless of how ordinary or even counterproductive their conduct while ignoring or disparaging other campers’ valuable contributions. A referee takes sides by giving all benefits of the doubt to one team. And a human rights activist flouts the rights shared by all persons by expressing outrage at and even exaggerating or outright fabricating abuses perpetrated by one set of combatants while turning a blind eye to atrocities executed by the opposing combatants.

The same goes for the rule of law in America – that is, a system in which individuals are subject to well established, general, and publicly promulgated rules that are equally enforced and impartially adjudicated. A group that defends law’s integrity against threats from one party but remains silent while the rival party repeatedly abuses the law over the course of many years to consolidate power and harm political opponents politicizes an essential principle that transcends the differences between partisans.

In this way, 96 voting members of the Harvard Law School faculty (active or emeritus) have called attention to their dubious dedication to the rule of law.

On March 29, this HLS faculty supermajority published online “A Letter to Harvard Law School Students.” Writing in their “individual capacities,” the professors explain that they took this extraordinary step because “American legal precepts and the institutions designed to uphold them are being severely tested, and many of you have expressed to us your concerns and fears about the present moment.” Despite their best efforts to demonstrate that they were not speaking for Harvard Law School – the professors declined to use the law school’s stationery and website, and they did not include their faculty titles in their signatures – the sheer number of signatories attested to the........

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