Harvard Law School: The IG Farben of the Legal Profession
By Bruce Fein*
Fish rot from the head.
Harvard Law School is the head of the legal profession.
It trains the best and the brightest to operate and flourish in the corridors of power: the
Executive Branch, Congress, and the United States Supreme Court.
But excluded from Harvard Law School education is the inculcation of ethics and a
salute to justice as the summon bonum superior to winning a case. This notorious
omission defeats the purpose of legal education.
James Madsion, father of the Constitution, elaborated in Federalist 51, “Justice is the
end of government; it is the end of civil society." Justice is best understood as
fashioning, enforcing, and interpreting laws with the goal of making every person’s
station in life correspond to their character and accomplishments, simpliciter. President
Abraham Lincoln, in a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, taught that the leading
object of government was “to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights
from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an
unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
It is no surprise that HLS graduates feature prominently in the annals of injustice and
constitutional lawlessness. For starters, think of President Donald Trump’s Godfather-
like sycophants or grovelers. An inexhaustive list includes former CIA Director and
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Presidential Press Secretary Kayleigh McEneny,
Jeffrey Epstein tainted former Department of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, United
States Solicitor General D. John Sauer, and United States Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX)
and Tom Cotton (R-ARK).
President Trump’s counterrevolution against the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, reminiscent of Napoleon’s 18 th of Brumaire, is in plain view to any
lawyer or law student who has not been sleeping like Rip Van Winkle: asserting
limitless presidential power, usurpations of the war power, the treaty power, and the
power of the purse, refusing to faithfully execute the laws, legislating or amending the
Constitution by executive orders, evading court decrees, punishing free speech and
association, weaponizing law enforcement, threatening impeachment or violence
against judges who rule against his deranged, Orwellian, counter-textual legal
arguments, murdering unindicted criminal suspects, dismantling separation of powers,
a structural bill of rights to protect the American people from tyranny, flouting the
Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, and
replacing due process with an American style Spanish Inquisition.
In sum, President Trump is every bit as much a dictator as Adolf Hitler. The latter’s
Holocaust is matched by President Trump’s aiding and abetting Israel’s ongoing
genocide against defenseless men, women, and children in Gaza. To serve or support
Mr. Trump is morally and legally indistinguishable from I.G. Farben’s sale of Zyklon
B gas for Hitler’s extermination chambers. The United States prosecuted I.G. Farben
officials for war crimes or crimes against humanity in United States v. Carl Krauch, et
al (I.G. Farben Trial).
Harvard Law School needs to inculcate justice as the North star for all students and
faculty. The model is Huckleberry Finn. He was catechized to believe Christianity
required the return of slave Jim to his owner Miss Watkins or be consigned to the fires
of hell, notwithstanding Jim’s unsparing friendship and loyalty. After a few moments
of deliberation, Huck unreluctantly decided, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”
Bruce Fein graduated from the class of 1972. He is the author of American Empire
Before The Fall and Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for our
Constitution and Democracy.