Four simple words are engraved above the doors to the Supreme Court: Equal Justice Under Law. That’s supposed to be the basic promise of our legal system: that our laws are just, and that everyone — everyone — will be held equally accountable if they break those laws.

We haven’t always fulfilled that promise — but it is the absolute standard to which we hold ourselves even when we fall short.

A vital part of that struggle is the fight for a truly professional, independent, and impartial judiciary. A place governed not by politics, not by money, not by power — but by those four simple words: equal justice under law.

Three years ago, I came to the American Constitution Society to deliver a warning about how that promise is under threat.

I talked pretty bluntly about how we are losing the fight over whether our courts will remain a neutral forum, faithfully interpreting the law and dispensing fair and impartial justice, or whether rich and powerful interests will completely capture our judicial branch.

I talked about how year after year, for more than thirty years, powerful interests have worked to rewrite the law and tilt the courts to favor billionaires and giant corporations. Cases that protected giant businesses from accountability. Cases that made it harder for individuals to get into court. Cases that gutted longstanding laws protecting consumers from being cheated. And cases like Citizens United, which unleashed an avalanche of billionaire SuperPAC dollars and secret corporate money in a mad dash to tilt the rest of the government in favor of the wealthy.

Today, I’m here to update that warning. Because what we’ve seen over the past three years — accelerating over the past three months, and even the past three weeks — is alarming. Powerful interests are now launching a full-scale assault on the integrity of the federal judiciary and its judges.

This assault has two major elements. First, tearing down our centuries-old process for appointing judges. Second, viciously attacking judicial nominees, potential nominees, and even sitting federal judges, at the first sign that they might put the rule of law above devotion to the rich and powerful.

Earlier this week, I released a comprehensive report on the Republican campaign of obstruction against President Obama’s nominees. It details how Senate Republicans have delayed or blocked votes on key nominations throughout the entire Obama Presidency. The purpose of this obstruction is to hold open federal positions for as long as possible. The purpose is to hamstring the President’s ability to protect consumers and workers, to hold large corporations accountable, and to promote equality. In other words, to undermine the fundamental principle of Equal Justice Under Law.

The centerpiece of that strategy has been a blockade of federal judicial appointments — and it’s much bigger than just the Supreme Court.

From the day President Obama was sworn in, Senate Republicans have used every procedural tool at their disposal to slow down his nominees. They spent months abusing the filibuster in a naked effort to preserve a right wing majority on the D.C. Circuit. After capturing the Senate in 2015, they have slowed judicial confirmations to a trickle.

Judicial emergencies multiply. Cases pile up. Courts are starved for help. And now the Supreme Court of the United States sits paralyzed, unable to deal with its most challenging cases. All because extremist Republicans who reject the legitimacy of President Obama are determined to make certain our courts advance only the agenda of the wealthy and the powerful.

It is outrageous — and it is up to us to fight back.

Senate Republicans, do your job. Give District Court nominees their votes.

Do your job. Give Circuit Court nominees their votes.

Do your job. Give Merrick Garland his vote!

The nominations blockade is the first part of this assault on the judiciary. But there is a second, even uglier line of attack — intimidation.

Justice demands a judiciary made up of independent lawyers who can provide insight and expertise from every corner of the profession. But Senate Republicans and their big business allies don’t like nominees whose resumes reflect insufficient devotion to the interests of the rich and powerful — so they smear them. Defense lawyers, public interest lawyers, plaintiff’s attorneys — nominees with these professional experiences are regularly slandered. Their integrity is questioned. And scores of Republicans line up to oppose them.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama has attacked the integrity of several of President Obama’s nominees for having some association with the American Civil Liberties Union. Apparently being connected to with an organization whose central purpose is to defend rights guaranteed by the Constitution is an automatic disqualification. Sessions vowed that the nominations process would become “a more contentious matter if we keep seeing the ACLU chromosome as part of this process” — and he meant it.

During her confirmation hearing to be a District Court judge this year, Senator Sessions insulted Paula Xinis, a former federal public defender and civil rights lawyer who worked on cases of police abuse. He asked if she could “assure the police officers … that might be brought before your court that they’ll get a fair day in court, and that your history would not impact your decision-making.” I’ll let you guess how many times Senator Sessions has questioned a fancy corporate defense lawyer, asking if they would assure victims of fraud or people poisoned by toxic wastes or people injured by shoddy products or employees fired illegally because they tried to form a union — if they would get a fair day in court. Judge Xinis was rated unanimously well-qualified by the American Bar Association.[2] Yet she was barely confirmed, with nearly three dozen Republican Senators voting no.

This approach is corrosive to the legal profession. It is corrosive to our courts. It is corrosive to the rule of law. It is the responsibility of every lawyer — no matter who their clients are — to stand up and fight back.

The attacks around the current Supreme Court vacancy have been even uglier. At one point, Senator John Cornyn of Texas — the #2 Republican in the Senate — announced that any nominee — ANY NOMINEE — put forward by the President would be beaten like “a piñata.” And his right-wing billionaire and big business allies have made good on that threat.

When rumors circulated that Jane Kelly, a highly respected federal judge, might — might — be under consideration, the Judicial Crisis Network — a shadowy right-wing group financed with dark money from the billionaire Koch brothers — ran television ads attacking her for her service to the nation as a federal public defender.

The President eventually nominated Merrick Garland — a judge so revered for his professionalism that days before he was announced, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch called him a “fine man” who the President could “easily name” to fill the vacancy. And what happened?

Scores of Republican Senators refused to even meet with him. The Judicial Crisis Network started spending millions of dollars on television ads demeaning him.

The NFIB — a right-wing Washington lobbying group that claims to speak for small businesses but is swimming in cash from conservative billionaires — announced that it would oppose Garland’s nomination because “[i]n cases involving federal agencies, the Judge ruled in their favor 77 percent of the time.” Every lawyer in this room knows that federal law requires judges defer to most agency actions. But apparently, it doesn’t matter anymore whether Judge Garland follows the law — what matters is that he doesn’t bend the law to suit giant corporations.

Judge Garland is not a politician. He is a judge with an unimpeachable record of putting the law first. And for that sin, he faces a nonstop, national campaign of slime. He faces historic disrespect from the Republicans who control Senate. It is despicable. It must end. We must end it.

The goal is to tilt the game, and it’s working — 86% of President Obama’s judicial nominees have worked as a corporate attorney, a prosecutor, or both, while less than 4% have worked as lawyers at public interest organizations. Professional diversity is missing from the federal bench — and justice suffers for it.

But even disqualifying judges based on their professional background isn’t enough for Donald Trump.

Trump tells everyone who will listen that he’s a great businessman, but let’s be honest — he’s just a guy who inherited a fortune and kept it rolling along by cheating people.

When that’s your business model, sooner or later you’re probably going to run into legal trouble. And Donald Trump has run into a lot of legal trouble. Ah, yes — Trump University, which his own former employees refer to as one big “fraudulent scheme.”

Many of the Trump University victims ended up deep in debt — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars with no way to pay it off. Trump’s employee playbook said to look for people with financial problems — because they make good targets. He even encouraged his salesforce to go after elderly people who were trying to create a little financial security.

I taught law for more than 30 years. Ask any lawyer in America and they’ll tell you that sounds like fraud. And that’s exactly what Donald Trump is being sued for — fraud, and worse, for targeting the most vulnerable people he could find, lying to them, taking all their money and leaving them in debt.

Some of those people are fighting back. Because in America, we have the rule of law — and that means that no matter how rich you are, no matter how loud you are, no matter how famous you are, if you break the law, you can be held accountable. Even when your name is Donald Trump.

But Trump doesn’t think those rules apply to him. So at a political rally two weeks ago, and almost daily since then, the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States has savagely attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over his case.

“We are in front of a very hostile judge,” Trump said. “Frankly, he should recuse himself. He has given us ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative.”

Understand what this is. Trump is criticizing Judge Curiel for following the law, instead of bending it to suit the financial interests of one wealthy and oh-so-fragile defendant.

Trump also whined that he’s being been treated “unfairly” because “the judge … happens to be, we believe, Mexican.” And when he got called out, he doubled down by saying “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest.” He’s personally directed his army of campaign surrogates to step up their own public attacks on Judge Curiel. He’s even condemned federal judges who are Muslim — on the disgusting theory that Trump’s own bigotry compromises the judges’ neutrality.

Like all federal judges, Judge Curiel is bound by the federal code of judicial ethics not to respond to these attacks. Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself — exactly what you’d expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.

Judge Curiel can’t respond — but we can. We can tell his story.

Gonzalo Curiel was born in Indiana — not Mexico — to immigrant parents who worked hard their entire lives and were handed nothing. He went to Indiana University for undergrad and then for law school.

For thirteen years, he worked as a federal prosecutor in Southern California, fighting the Mexican drug cartels as a leader of that region’s narcotics enforcement division. He collaborated with top Mexican officials to disrupt the culture of corruption between the Mexican government and the most powerful and deadly cocaine smugglers in North America.

The effort was impressive. On both sides of the border, money launderers, street gangs, and assassins were arrested and prosecuted.

But that success came at great cost. Witnesses were killed. Mexican officials were murdered. Judge Curiel himself was the target of an assassination plotand spent the better part of a year living officially in hiding, under the protection of U.S. Marshals.

Later, after his years of service as a prosecutor, Judge Curiel was appointed to the California state courts by a Republican governor who calls him an “American hero.” He was nominated to the federal bench by a Democratic president, and confirmed by a voice vote in the Senate.

That’s what kind of a man Judge Curiel is. What kind of a man is Donald Trump?

Donald Trump says “Judge Curiel should be ashamed of himself.”

No, Donald — you should be ashamed of yourself. Ashamed for using the megaphone of a Presidential campaign to attack a judge’s character and integrity simply because you think you have some God-given right to steal people’s money and get away with it. You shame yourself and you shame this great country.

Donald Trump says “[t]hey ought to look into Judge Curiel because what Judge Curiel is doing is a total disgrace.”

No, Donald — what you are doing is a total disgrace. Race-baiting a judge who spent years defending America from the terror of murderers and drug traffickers simply because long ago his family came to America from somewhere else. You, Donald Trump, are a total disgrace.

Judge Curiel is one of countless American patriots who has spent decades quietly serving his country, sometimes at great risk to his own life. Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and serves nobody but himself. And that is just one of the many reasons why he will never be President of the United States.

And in spite of these shameful attacks, nobody doubts that Judge Curiel will continue to preside over Trump’s case as a fair and neutral judge. Because Judge Curiel is a lawyer with integrity — and that’s what lawyers with integrity do.

Judge Curiel has survived far worse than Donald Trump. He has survived actual assassination attempts. He’ll have no problem surviving Trump’s nasty temper tantrums.

When first asked if he would condemn Trump’s comments about Judge Curiel, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, said, well, gee, you know, “Donald Trump is certainly a different kind of candidate.”After days of pressure, McConnell finally said that attacking the judge is “stupid” and that Trump should “get on script.”