Tag
The principle that all persons and institutions, including the government, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and independently adjudicated. Covers attacks on legal institutions, defiance of court orders, and arbitrary governance.
9 incidents
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Days after a federal judge restored limits on ICE courthouse arrests, ICE agents arrested three men at Manhattan immigration courts. Advocates call it the first clear breach of two court orders; ICE denies wrongdoing but won't say how the arrests were lawful. The core harm is a federal agency appearing to shrug off a specific, recent judicial order.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
Over 113 immigration judges have been fired without due process since January 2025 — more firings in one year than in the entire prior history of the immigration court system. The April 2026 firing, without stated reason, of two judges who had dismissed deportation cases against pro-Palestinian activists signals to every remaining judge that ruling against the administration can cost them their post, undermining the independence of courts adjudicating life-and-death immigration cases.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A pattern of court order defiance, threats against judges, calls for impeachment, and DOJ Civil Rights Division gutting that constitutional scholars describe as the most serious executive-judicial confrontation since at least Watergate.
Grade 4 of 5: Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern
A systematic campaign to destroy the International Criminal Court's ability to hold Americans accountable for war crimes, combining unprecedented sanctions on judges with demands to rewrite the Rome Statute itself. The campaign goes far beyond any previous US opposition to the ICC, seeking not merely non-cooperation but the permanent restructuring of international criminal justice.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general across the federal government without the advance notice to Congress that the Inspector General Act generally requires, and a later federal ruling said the notice failure violated the statute.
Grade 3 of 5: Serious Rights Violation
Systematic weaponization of the DOJ through a retaliatory investigations unit, indictments of political opponents that were dismissed as brought by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor, mass departure of career prosecutors, and dismantlement of the Civil Rights Division and Public Integrity Section.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
Trump used his first day back in office to grant sweeping clemency to January 6 defendants, including people convicted of violent attacks on police and leaders of groups convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Grade 2 of 5: Major Abuse of Power
A systematic pattern of pardons benefiting political allies, donors, and financial criminals. Over half of 88 clemency grants went to white-collar offenders, erasing $1.3 billion in victim restitution. Twenty corrupt politicians were pardoned. The DOJ's Public Integrity Section — responsible for investigating corruption — has been largely dismantled, and the head of the Pardon Attorney's office was fired and replaced with a political loyalist.
Grade 1 of 5: Significant Democratic Concern
While under federal indictment and running for president, Trump publicly threatened those pursuing him and suggested the country's top general deserved execution. A federal appeals court found his pattern of speech a significant and imminent threat to the trial and upheld most of a gag order. In his second term, the Defense Department stripped Milley of his security detail.