Movement Law Lab
@movementlawlab
Bringing the power of lawyers to social movements.
This Bay Area project shows what resistance looks like from the legal community. From San Francisco to Minneapolis, legal workers, rapid response networks, & organizers are coming together to challenge Trump’s deportation machine. archive.ph/XPMKA
Lawyers and legal workers: now is the time to show up to defend civil society, and fight the criminalization of dissent.
As we get closer to the 250th anniversary of our country, a reminder that our democracy is only as strong as the people. Everyday, the administration tests the bounds. meidasnews.com/news/congres...
Habeas corpus is one of the legal profession’s most basic safeguards against arbitrary detention. Yet, we’re witnessing the Trump regime reconfigure legal mechanisms to create an engine of tyranny. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/15/u...
Election interference is not an isolated tactic. It is part of a longer authoritarian effort to hollow out democratic institutions. Lawyers and legal organizations should understand the strategy, name it clearly, and respond with rigorous opposition.
Authoritarians only succeed when ordinary people obey orders, providing them with the power they need to implement policies and wield control. The only way through is to, as a society, outright reject and refuse to cooperate with the autocrat’s agenda. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/w...
The first step to making a “U-turn” away from authoritarianism is to stop its complete consolidation of power. Lawyers need to fight alongside organizers to stop consolidation and we must do it now. www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-rese...
**LEGAL RESISTANCE FELLOWSHIP** We're still taking applications for our Legal Resistance Defense Fellowship! If you're a criminal defense lawyer looking for ways to support organizers fighting for social justice, this is your chance. More details can be found at movementlawlab.org/lrd-fellowship
"Finally, the South American cases remind us that people resisted authoritarianism under far more perilous conditions than anything people in the United States have faced to this point. " jacobin.com/2026/02/arge...
“My neighbors have shown that the people of this country care about democracy enough to fight for it. We deserve a legal system that shares these values, instead of one that rejects them.” ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...
“The winds shifted this week after America watched Alex Pretti’s on-camera murder, on the heels of Renee Nicole Good’s on-camera murder, at the hands of Department of Homeland Security agents in Minnesota.” - @dahlialithwick.bsky.social slate.com/news-and-pol...
"What Reconstruction, the New Deal and the Rainbow Coalition can teach us about building the broadest possible front to fight the authoritarian Right " inthesetimes.com/article/broa...
“General strikes are rare and something like lightning in a bottle: They tend to overspill their boundaries, becoming, in historically specific moments, something more than just the sum of their parts.” - @sarahljaffe.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2053...
“From Checks and Balances to Rule of Law to Public Health, many scholars of democracy say that these moves are unprecedented in U.S. history and that Trump has pushed the United States toward authoritarianism”. www.npr.org/2026/01/23/g...
"As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. " wagingnonviolence.org/2026/01/soci...
Some of these young lawyers are saying both privately and openly that their leaders betrayed their firms’ principles with deals that could undermine a commitment to provide free legal work to public interest groups and causes at odds with the White House. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/b...
“Recent protests remind us of an obvious fact: young people are not “the future,” but political entities in the present. Governments need to hear not just the noise of protest, but the clarity of the demands: justice, dignity, representation and a future.”
"When nonviolent movements face severe repression, the resulting suffering of victims may arouse a sympathetic response among third parties, winning support for the movement and increasing opposition to the brutality of the opponent." wagingnonviolence.org/2026/01/nonv...
1/ Hot off the press from the Journal of Democracy: “How to Bring Authoritarians to Justice”.
“Squeezed domestic spending and extravagant military spending have widened inequality, with dire consequences for democracy.” - @cathylutz.bsky.social + @lutzfernandez.bsky.social + @commondreams.org
Authoritarians know exactly what they’re doing when they turn classrooms into battlefields & brand students & professors as “enemies.” buff.ly/hF5zzYr
When governments criminalize peaceful action and expand police powers, they are choosing to protect fossil fuel interests over people and the planet.
1/ A federal judge ruled Trump’s deployment of 2,000+ troops to D.C. was ILLEGAL, violating the Posse Comitatus Act.
4/ Shout out to @melissa-sanchez.bsky.social + @tchristianmiller.bsky.social + colleagues for this reporting.
The US and El Salvador entered into an unprecedented agreement to transfer individuals across borders into the notoriously brutal CECOT prison in blatant violation of international human rights obligations. The recent details reveal even more egregious details. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/w...
The Black Voters Matter Project and many other groups are spearheading the #WeAintBuyingIt campaign” starting Black Friday to boycott some of the companies capitulating with authoritarianism. This is what economic defiance can look like. www.usatoday.com/videos/news/...
Chicago, Portland, DC, Memphis, LA, Bay Area: communities are organizing resistance to National Guard deployments. Get our National Guard resource and community primer. More deployments expected. NOW is the time to connect with local orgs. static1.squarespace.com/static/6421f...
1/ The U.S. has withdrawn from the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. The US is now on course to be the first country to not deliver a report to the UPR and will become the first nation to refuse to submit a report on their human rights record. What this means: