US president Donald Trump’s attack on American law firms bears similarities to events in Nazi Germany, EU bar associations have warned.
We “do not contend that the [Trump executive] orders here are equivalent to the measures adopted in the historical examples described,” the European bars said in an ‘Amicus Curiae’ brief submitted to a US court on Thursday (2 April), referring to its examples from 1930s Germany and contemporary Russia.
“But the [Trump] orders raise similar institutional concerns,” they said.
“History shows that suppression of the legal profession is both a symptom and an instrument of democratic decline,” they added.
‘Amicus Curiae’ means “friend of the court” in Latin and refers to a natural person or legal entity which is not a party to a case, but which a court can permit to offer expertise on the issues raised in proceedings.
One million lawyers
The brief was signed by bar associations from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, as well as non-EU members Norway, Switzerland, and the UK —representing about one million practising attorneys in Europe.
It comes after Trump’s executive orders in February 2025 slapped sanctions on firms who represented his political opponents, including: loss of security clearances, curtailing of access to federal buildings and employees, and a loss of government contracts.
Many US law firms made political deals to restore access, which was essential to their work.
But four of them — WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, Susman Godfrey, and Jenner & Block — won an injunction against Trump’s measures on grounds they were unconstitutional.
And they are now fighting a White House appeal against that verdict at the ?US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, in a case which attracted the submission by their European allies.
The Washington court hearing is expected on 14 May, with a verdict a few days later, but the case might then go to the Supreme Court, if either party was unhappy with the outcome.
‘Democratic decline’
And US judges should beware “stark lessons from history,” said the 52-page European lawyers’ document.
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European lawyers warn US: Trump’s attack on attorneys is road to fascism
