Within the Seventies, President Richard Nixon tried to fireplace the Division of Justice prosecutor main an investigation into the president’s involvement in wiretapping the Democratic Nationwide Committee’s headquarters.
Since then, the DOJ has typically been run as an neutral regulation enforcement company, separated from the manager workplace and partisan politics.
These guardrails are actually being severely examined beneath the Trump administration.
In February 2025, seven DOJ attorneys resigned, slightly than comply with orders from Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi to dismiss corruption expenses towards New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams was indicted in September 2024, in the course of the Biden administration, for alleged bribery and marketing campaign finance violations.
One DOJ prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his Feb. 15 resignation letter that whereas he held no unfavorable views of the Trump administration, he believed the dismissal request violated DOJ’s moral requirements.
Amongst greater than a dozen DOJ attorneys who’ve lately been terminated, the DOJ fired Erez Reuveni, appearing deputy chief of the division’s Workplace of Immigration Litigation, on April 15. Reuveni misplaced his job for talking actually to the courtroom in regards to the info of an immigration case, as a substitute of following political directives from Bondi and different superiors.
Reuveni was terminated for acknowledging in courtroom on April 14 that the Division of Homeland Safety had made an “administrative error” in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, towards courtroom orders. DOJ management positioned Reuveni on go away the very subsequent day.
Bondi defended the choice, arguing that Reuveni had did not “vigorously advocate” for the administration’s place.
I’m a authorized ethics scholar, and I do know that as extra DOJ legal professionals face selections between following political directives and upholding their occupation’s moral requirements, they confront a important query: To whom do they finally owe their loyalty?
President Donald Trump speaks earlier than Pam Bondi is sworn in as legal professional normal on the White Home on Feb. 5, 2025.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Photos
Figuring out the actual consumer
All attorneys have core moral obligations, together with loyalty to shoppers, confidentiality and honesty to the courts. DOJ legal professionals have extra skilled obligations: They’ve an obligation to hunt justice, slightly than merely win circumstances, in addition to to guard constitutional rights even when inconvenient.
DOJ attorneys sometimes reply to a number of authorities, together with the legal professional normal. However their highest loyalty belongs to the U.S. Structure and justice itself.
The Supreme Courtroom established in a 1935 case that DOJ attorneys have a particular mission to make sure that “justice shall be done.”
DOJ attorneys reinforce their dedication to this mission by taking an oath to uphold the Structure after they be part of the division. In addition they have coaching applications, inner tips and a long-standing institutional tradition that emphasizes their distinctive accountability to pursue justice, slightly than merely win circumstances.
This creates an expert identification that goes past merely finishing up the desires of political appointees.
Taking part in by stricter guidelines
All legal professionals additionally comply with particular skilled guidelines to be able to obtain and keep a license to follow regulation. These skilled guidelines are established by state bar associations and supreme courts as a part of the state-based licensing system for attorneys.
However the greater than 10,000 attorneys on the DOJ face even harder requirements.
The McDade Modification, handed in 1998, requires federal authorities legal professionals to comply with each the ethics guidelines of the state the place they’re licensed to follow and federal laws. This consists of guidelines that prohibit DOJ attorneys from collaborating in circumstances the place they’ve private or political relationships with concerned events, for instance.
This regulation additionally explicitly topics federal prosecutors to state bar self-discipline. Such self-discipline may vary from personal reprimands to suspension and even everlasting disbarment, successfully ending an legal professional’s authorized profession.
This implies DOJ legal professionals may need to refuse a supervisor’s orders if these directives would violate skilled conduct requirements – even on the threat of their jobs.
That is what Assistant U.S. Lawyer Danielle Sassoon wrote in a Feb. 12, 2025, letter to Bondi, explaining why she couldn’t drop the costs towards Adams. Sassoon as a substitute resigned from her place on the DOJ.
“Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations … because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor,” Sassoon wrote.
As DOJ’s personal steerage states, attorneys “must satisfy themselves that their behavior comports with the applicable rules of professional conduct” no matter what their bosses say.
Put up-Watergate rules beneath strain
The president nominates the legal professional normal, who have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
That may create the notion and even the fact that the legal professional normal is indebted to, and constant to, the president. To counter that, Lawyer Normal Griffin Bell, in 1978, spelled out three rules established after Watergate to take care of a deliberate separation between the White Home and the Justice Division.
First, Bell referred to as for procedures to stop private or partisan pursuits from influencing authorized judgments.
Second, Bell stated that public confidence within the division’s objectivity is important to democracy, with DOJ serving because the “acknowledged guardian and keeper of the law.”
Third, these rules finally rely on DOJ legal professionals dedicated to logic and integrity, even beneath intense political strain. These rules apply to all workers all through the division – together with the legal professional normal.
Current ethics exams
These rules face a stark check within the present political local weather.
The March 2025 firing of Elizabeth Oyer, a profession pardon legal professional with the Justice Division, raises questions in regards to the boundaries between political directives {and professional} obligations.
Oyer was fired by Bondi shortly after declining to advocate the restoration of gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a recognized Donald Trump supporter. Gibson misplaced his gun rights after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor home battery cost in 2011.
Oyer initially expressed concern to her superiors about restoring Gibson’s gun rights with out a enough background investigation, significantly given Gibson’s historical past of home violence.
When Oyer later agreed to testify earlier than Congress in a listening to in regards to the White Home’s dealing with of the Justice Division, the administration initially deliberate to ship armed U.S. Marshals officers to ship a warning letter to her residence, saying that she couldn’t disclose information about firearms rights to lawmakers.
Oyer was away from residence when she obtained an pressing alert that the marshals have been en path to her residence, the place her teenage youngster was alone. Oyer’s legal professional described this plan as “both unprecedented and completely inappropriate.”
Elizabeth Oyer, a former U.S. pardon legal professional on the Justice Division, speaks at a Senate listening to on April 7, 2025, in Washington.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Photos
Why independence issues
In my analysis, I discovered that legal professionals generally have lapses in judgment due to the “partisan kinship,” aware or not, they develop with shoppers. This partisan kinship can lead attorneys to miss critical pink flags that outsiders would simply spot.
When legal professionals turn into too politically aligned with shoppers – or their superiors – their judgment suffers. They miss moral issues and authorized flaws that might in any other case be apparent. Skilled distance permits attorneys to offer the best high quality authorized counsel, even when meaning saying “no” to highly effective folks.
That’s why DOJ attorneys generally make selections that frustrate political targets. After they refuse to focus on political opponents, after they received’t let allies off simply, or after they disclose info their superiors wished hidden, they’re not being insubordinate.
They’re fulfilling their highest moral duties to the Structure and rule of regulation.
