“Law Alums From Harvard and Yale Denounce Hawley, Cruz Challenges to Biden’s Win,” The National Law Journal

More than 700 Yale and Harvard law school graduates accused fellow alums Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz of an “assault on democracy” and a “grave abuse of power” in separate signed statements over the weekend.

Hawley, a Missouri Republican and a 2006 Yale Law graduate, and Cruz, a Texas Republican and a 1995 Harvard Law graduate, recently announced their intentions to object to the electoral vote count when Congress convenes in a joint session to confirm the tally Jan. 6. Some fellow Republicans have refused to join the effort, and now alums of Harvard and Yale law are speaking out.

“Despite his public populist persona and his frequent disparaging of so-called ‘coastal elites,’ [Hawley's] résumé makes clear that he himself is a product of Stanford University, Yale Law School, the United States Supreme Court, and the prestigious, Washington, DC corporate law firm Hogan and Hartson—that is, a background that indicates that he knows both reality and the law and that what he is pushing is based on neither,” the statement from the Yale law graduates said.

. . .

The signatories on the two letters included many lawyers from academia, civil rights background and Big Law. One or more attorneys from firms including Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; K&L Gates; Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; Covington & Burling; Munger, Tolles & Olson; Vinson & Elkins; and Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll signed the Yale or Harvard letter.

The Yale statement said law students are taught “by sheer virtue of belonging to Yale Law School’s community” that they have an obligation to serve the profession with the “utmost integrity.” Hawley, the statement said, “by virtue of his stated intentions, so blatantly fails to meet this standard and disregards everything for which this nation, our legal system, and Yale Law School stand.”

. . .

The Harvard statement begins with the oath that elected officials take to defend the Constitution. “Inventing false claims of voter fraud that lawyers are too afraid to present in courts where there are actual consequences for lying, and trying to use the ensuing controversy to challenge a Constitutionally proper proceeding to ratify the decision of the Electoral College is by all fair measures utterly inconsistent with this oath,” it stated.

Cruz and his supporters, the Harvard signatories asserted, are attempting to “undermine democracy and our Constitution by improperly challenging the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice-President of the United States.”

The complete article can be viewed here.