Within the Seventies, President Richard Nixon tried to fire the Department of Justice prosecutor leading an investigation into the president’s involvement in wiretapping the Democratic Nationwide Committee’s headquarters.
Since then, the DOJ has usually been run as an impartial law enforcement agency, separated from the chief workplace and partisan politics.
These guardrails are actually being severely examined below the Trump administration.
In February 2025, seven DOJ attorneys resigned, rather than follow orders from Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi to dismiss corruption expenses towards New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams was indicted in September 2024, throughout 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 adverse views of the Trump administration, he believed the dismissal request violated DOJ’s moral requirements.
Amongst greater than a dozen DOJ attorneys who’ve recently been terminated, the DOJ fired Erez Reuveni, appearing deputy chief of the division’s Workplace of Immigration Litigation, on April 15. Reuveni lost his job for talking actually to the court docket in regards to the details of an immigration case, as a substitute of following political directives from Bondi and different superiors.
Reuveni was terminated for acknowledging in court docket on April 14 that the Division of Homeland Safety had made an “administrative error” in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, against court 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 legal ethics scholar, and I do know that as extra DOJ legal professionals face decisions between following political directives and upholding their occupation’s moral requirements, they confront a vital query: To whom do they in the end owe their loyalty?
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Figuring out the true shopper
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, somewhat than merely win circumstances, in addition to to guard constitutional rights even when inconvenient.
DOJ attorneys usually reply to a number of authorities, including the attorney general. However their highest loyalty belongs to the U.S. Structure and justice itself.
The Supreme Court docket 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 packages, internal guidelines and a long-standing institutional tradition that emphasizes their distinctive duty to pursue justice, somewhat than merely win circumstances.
This creates knowledgeable id that goes past merely finishing up the needs of political appointees.
Enjoying by stricter guidelines
All legal professionals additionally comply with particular skilled guidelines with the intention to obtain and preserve a license to observe 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 more than 10,000 attorneys on the DOJ face even harder requirements.
The McDade Amendment, handed in 1998, requires federal authorities legal professionals to comply with each the ethics guidelines of the state the place they’re licensed to observe and federal laws. This consists of guidelines that prohibit DOJ attorneys from taking part 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 might vary from personal reprimands to suspension and even everlasting disbarment, successfully ending an legal professional’s authorized profession.
This implies DOJ legal professionals might need to refuse a supervisor’s orders if these directives would violate skilled conduct requirements – even on the danger 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 fees towards Adams. Sassoon as a substitute resigned from her position on the DOJ.
“As a result of the regulation doesn’t assist a dismissal, and since I’m assured that Adams has dedicated the crimes with which he’s charged, I can’t agree to hunt a dismissal pushed by improper concerns … as a result of I don’t see any good-faith foundation for the proposed place, I can’t make such arguments in line with my obligation of candor,” Sassoon wrote.
As DOJ’s personal steerage states, attorneys “should fulfill themselves that their habits comports with the applicable rules of professional conduct” no matter what their bosses say.
Submit-Watergate ideas below stress
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 truth that the legal professional normal is indebted to, and dependable to, the president. To counter that, Lawyer Normal Griffin Bell, in 1978, spelled out three ideas established after Watergate to keep up a deliberate separation between the White House and the Justice Department.
First, Bell called for procedures to forestall private or partisan pursuits from influencing authorized judgments.
Second, Bell stated that public confidence within the division’s objectivity is crucial to democracy, with DOJ serving because the “acknowledged guardian and keeper of the law.”
Third, these ideas in the end rely on DOJ legal professionals dedicated to common sense and integrity, even below intense political stress. These ideas apply to all workers all through the division – together with the legal professional normal.
Latest ethics checks
These ideas 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 suggest the restoration of gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a known Donald Trump supporter. Gibson lost his gun rights after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor domestic battery charge in 2011.
Oyer initially expressed concern to her superiors about restoring Gibson’s gun rights and not using a ample background investigation, significantly given Gibson’s historical past of home violence.
When Oyer later agreed to testify earlier than Congress in a hearing 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 dwelling, saying that she could not disclose information about firearms rights to lawmakers.
Oyer was away from dwelling when she obtained an pressing alert that the marshals have been en path to her dwelling, the place her teenage baby was alone. Oyer’s legal professional described this plan as “both unprecedented and completely inappropriate.”
Officers called off the marshals solely after Oyer confirmed receipt of the letter through e mail.

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Why independence issues
In my analysis, I discovered that legal professionals typically have lapses in judgment due to the “partisan kinship,” acutely aware or not, they develop with clients. This partisan kinship can lead attorneys to miss severe purple flags that outsiders would simply spot.
When legal professionals grow to be too politically aligned with shoppers – or their superiors – their judgment suffers. They miss moral issues and authorized flaws that will in any other case be apparent. Skilled distance permits attorneys to offer the very best high quality authorized counsel, even when meaning saying “no” to highly effective folks.
That’s why DOJ attorneys typically make choices that frustrate political targets. After they refuse to focus on political opponents, after they gained’t let allies off simply, or after they disclose data their superiors needed hidden, they’re not being insubordinate.
They’re fulfilling their highest moral duties to the Structure and rule of regulation.