Crackdowns on the legal profession — lawyers, judges and prosecutors — are part of a longstanding authoritarian playbook used around the world to silence dissent. Europe and Eurasia alone provide a plethora of examples — from European Union member Hungary — and previously Poland — to Belarus, Russia, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan — governments seeking to centralize control have openly and systematically targeted those who defend the rule of law.
The tactics differ, but the aim is the same: to silence lawyers who represent politically targeted clients, judges who issue rulings that contradict the repressive government’s political – and often personal — aims, and prosecutors who pursue cases against its favored allies. Whether through formal legislation or informal pressure, these measures aim to curtail legal advocacy, judicial independence, and the rule of law itself.
The United States has long prided itself on a tradition of public interest lawyering rooted in the civil rights movement and sustained through legal aid, legal clinics, and pro bono representation carried forward by lawyers. By framing access to justice as a professional duty, organizations such like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) or the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) institutionalized public interest advocacy. Yet, over time, these organizations have also been criticized for professionalizing and depoliticizing what began as grassroots social movements.
In recent decades, the legal profession in the West has continued to champion struggles for social justice by working alongside social movements, at home and abroad, to promote access to justice and defend fundamental rights, often supporting colleagues in contexts where the rule of law was under siege. Whether through government-funded programs like the American Bar Association’s former Justice Defenders program (where two of us, Jasmine and Natalie, used to work), or privately funded projects like the Amsterdam-based Lawyers for Lawyers, this support has taken a wide range of forms. They include trial monitoring, pro-bono assistance, training of lawyers and judges, support in drafting key legal frameworks such as constitutions, and sustained advocacy efforts. As Scott Cummings noted, lawyers have long sought to reconcile professional independence with commitments to democratic mobilization and public interest advocacy — roles that have become increasingly intertwined in polarized and fragile democracies.
Now, the U.S. legal profession is facing similar political retaliation, harassment, and institutional dismantling that it once sought to confront abroad, with a profound chilling effect at home. A comparative lens looking across multiple countries that have experienced similar – though always locally specific – conditions demonstrates that these attacks on the legal profession are not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern of democratic erosion. The parallels between the United States and countries where legal repression has intensified, while distinct in their details and in each country’s experience, reveal a common strategy: weaken those who safeguard the law to weaken the rule of law itself. Legal communities in similar contexts have found that, by identifying early warning signs, they can better grasp the fragility of legal norms — even in long-established democracies — and the urgent need to defend them.
Public Interest Lawyering in Europe and Eurasia
Compared with the United States, public interest lawyering in Europe and Eurasia is generally more fragmented, and often constrained by historical, political, and institutional limitations. While many European countries uphold strong traditions of rule of law and fundamental rights, the infrastructure for systemic, independent public-interest lawyering, particularly in defense of the legal profession itself, remains uneven and, in some places, strikingly under-resourced.
In much of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the space for independent legal mobilization remains narrow. In post-Soviet contexts such as Russia, Belarus, and Azerbaijan, legal aid organizations and bar associations are co-opted, tightly controlled, or outright dismantled. Lawyers who take on politically sensitive cases routinely face harassment, disbarment, and criminal prosecution. Public interest lawyering — where it exists — is often practiced informally, through fragile networks of human rights defenders and international NGOs.
Legal activism in these regions often takes the form of strategic (or impact) litigation, concentrating on pivotal cases to effect social change, rather than the more institutionalized public interest lawyering familiar to U.S. nonprofit organizations routinely pursuing broad policy goals through coordinated legal advocacy. Strategic litigation in Europe and Eurasia — particularly before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg — has become the dominant mode of legal activism, even for conservative NGOs, as many domestic systems are too weak, compromised, or underfunded to sustain systemic advocacy.
Even within the European Union there is no uniform model for public interest lawyering. In many Western European countries, legal aid systems primarily focus on access to justice but do not necessarily support strategic litigation or organized responses to political interference. Unlike in the United States — where large privately funded initiatives include Lawyers for Good Government, Lawyers Defending American Democracy, and the Society for the Rule of Law — Europe’s landscape remains more fragmented, often driven by individual lawyers, small NGOs, legal clinics in universities, or issue-specific transnational coalitions spearheaded in some member States.
As U.S. legal professionals confront mounting institutional threats at home, the experiences of their counterparts in Europe and Eurasia offer a critical lesson: legal resilience is not sustained solely by well-funded organizations or formal constitutional frameworks, because either can be quickly dismantled. Rather, resilience is forged through collective courage, strategic alliances, legal mobilization, and symbolic acts that galvanize public consciousness and professional solidarity despite the severity of suppression.
Across Europe and Eurasia, lawyers, prosecutors, and judges have found ways to push back against repression, whether through mass demonstrations, building transnational networks of support, or maintaining solidarity under severe restrictions. The following case studies from Poland, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Belarus, and Russia, illustrate both the escalating trend of state suppression and countervailing legal resilience and civic solidarity.
Poland
Poland provided one of the early examples of how quickly judicial independence can be eroded, and how collective solidarity can serve as a powerful tool of resilience. Poland’s struggle for judicial independence started in 2015, shortly after the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) took power. Over the next several years, until it was ousted in the 2023 parliamentary elections, that government enacted more than a dozen legislative measures aimed at restructuring the judiciary to give the government more control. These changes compromised the rule of law and separation of powers and created a climate of intimidation and fear not only among the members of the legal profession but also the larger public. Judges who defended the rule of law faced harassment ranging from biased disciplinary proceedings and professional retaliation to state-sponsored smear campaigns. Some judges were openly branded as political enemies.
One of the most striking demonstrations of resistance was the January 2020 Marsz Tysiąca Tóg (“March of a Thousand Robes”). In response to intensifying government interference in the judiciary and arbitrary disciplinary proceedings, thousands of judges marched in silence in their judicial robes through the city streets of Warsaw and all over Poland. Joined by legal professionals and citizens from more than 20 countries, the march sent a clear message: attacks on the judiciary in one country are a threat to judicial independence everywhere.
The 2023 elections brought a change in government to a liberal coalition that pledged to restore the rule of law. It presented an action plan containing proposed laws to reverse or mitigate the damage the previous government had done to institutions such as the prosecution services and bodies that selected judges. But the process has been challenging, painstaking, and complex, and has yet to be completed. For instance, a new president of the previous ruling party may exercise veto power over key pillars of the government’s reforms.
For Polish lawyers, judges, and advocates, the biggest lesson has been the importance of professional and civic solidarity. Judge Monika Frąckowiak, who was herself targeted for resisting PiS’s reforms, has often discussed how simple gestures of support — a message, a photo, a reminder that “you will never walk alone” — can weaken the chilling effect authoritarianism seeks to create. She also stresses the power of organized resistance. Poland’s Justice Defense Committee brought together judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers to provide moral, legal, and public support to colleagues under fire.
Poland also offers a cautionary note: some lawyers, seeking influence or favor, sided with the ruling party and facilitated its authoritarian drift. “Lawyers are often the midwives of authoritarianism,” Frąckowiak warns. For those now confronting similar pressures in the United States, her advice is clear: document every abuse, be prepared legally and ethically, and build structures of professional and civic solidarity across national borders strong enough to withstand political retaliation.
Hungary
While Poland offers a hopeful example of democratic recovery, despite the current challenges of restoring the rule of law, fellow EU member Hungary shows how authoritarian control can become entrenched when early warning signs are ignored. Since Prime Minister Viktor Orbán returned to power in 2010, Hungary has experienced a systematic erosion of judicial independence. Through numerous constitutional amendments and legislative changes, Orbán centralized control over the judiciary, including lowering the mandatory retirement age for judges. These reforms allowed for the replacement of experienced jurists with government-aligned appointees, and restructuring the Constitutional Court to ensure a sympathetic majority. More recently, the government created a new administrative court system, placing cases involving fundamental rights under direct executive influence, thus further weakening the judiciary and dismantling separation of powers.
Beyond structural reforms, the government has targeted individual judges who spoke out. Judge Tamás Matusik, then-president of the National Judicial Council, became the subject of a government-sponsored smear campaign after holding a routine meeting with the U.S. ambassador. For weeks, pro-government outlets portrayed the encounter as evidence of foreign interference in Hungary’s judiciary, framing it as a threat to sovereignty.
Reflecting on these pressures in public sources and communications with one of us (Jasmine), Matusik stressed the importance of maintaining restraint and judicial integrity in that judges must not let external factors influence their decisions. He added that it is crucial for courts to operate with transparency and professional communication, and for judgments not to be influenced by political or ideological biases. Yet he also acknowledged the risks posed by populist rhetoric, such as when politicians label judges as “liberal” or “conservative,” creating additional pressure on judicial independence.
Matusik also noted that judges are particularly vulnerable in populist contexts because, unlike politicians, they cannot respond to attacks with press conferences or media campaigns. Populist leaders exploit these dynamic, making judges easy scapegoats.
Despite this chilling environment, resistance has not disappeared. As recently as February 2025, thousands of Hungarian judges and court staff protested outside the Ministry of Justice in Budapest, demanding judicial independence, freedom of expression for judges, and fair pay, after a covert agreement between the Minister of Justice and the National Office for the Judiciary linked salary increases to sweeping reforms without proper consultation with the judiciary.
The Hungarian legal community also continues to draw strength from international solidarity and transnational advocacy networks. Organizations such as the European Network of Councils for the Judiciary (ENCJ) and the International Association of Judges (IAJ) have amplified their concerns, ensuring that Hungary’s judicial reforms came under scrutiny from the European Commission.
The Hungarian experience carries a stark warning for the U.S. legal community and the public: once judicial independence is eroded, restoring it is far harder. For American judges, lawyers, and prosecutors now facing mounting political and institutional pressures, the Hungarian example underlines the urgent need for collective organization, legal mobilization and professional solidarity to safeguard the institutional integrity of the judiciary, before it is too late.
Kyrgyzstan and Georgia
Kyrgyzstan and Georgia illustrate an intermediate stage in the erosion of legal independence: the legal profession still functions, but the two governments increasingly suppress lawyers who take on politically sensitive cases.
In Kyrgyzstan, defense attorneys representing human rights defenders often become targets themselves as the government identifies them with their clients. Lawyers linked to foreign-funded NGOs or politically sensitive defendants now operate under constant surveillance and intimidation. One emblematic case is that of human rights lawyer Samat Matsakov, arrested on Nov. 29, 2024, and accused of large-scale fraud and document forgery — charges widely regarded as retaliation for representing activists linked to the investigative outlet Temirov Live and political dissidents. The arrest drew international condemnation, including warnings from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of human rights defenders and from legal bodies, both underscoring the broader assault on the right to defense.
Another legal professional, Klara Sooronkulova, a former Supreme Court judge and human rights defender who led an NGO called School of Law was herself prosecuted for advocacy on judicial reform and free speech. Her experience stands as a warning: legal reformers are routinely reclassified as threats.
Similarly, in Georgia, legal professionals are being swept up in the broader crackdown on civil society and democratic freedoms. Since late 2024, mass protests erupted after the government suspended EU membership talks. Lawyers and judges defending demonstrators or participating in movements have been increasingly targeted. For instance, Giorgi Davituri, a lawyer with the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, was detained, physically assaulted, and subsequently fined in what observers called a blatantly unfair trial.
The lesson is clear: harassment of legal professionals is not merely external pressure from those outside the justice system (e.g., political actors, media, public opinion), but can quickly become systemic once the law itself is weaponized as a political instrument. As a result, solidarity, resilience, ethics, and integrity are no longer luxuries — they are survival strategies, helping lawyers preserve independence, credibility, and the very ability to continue practicing their profession.
Russia
If Kyrgyzstan and Georgia show increasing pressure on the legal profession, Russia exemplifies the next, darker stage, in which the law itself becomes a weapon, with defense lawyers being prosecuted alongside their clients. Professional independence has been almost entirely eliminated.
Russian authorities have long systematically harassed, intimidated, and prosecuted lawyers who defend opposition figures, journalists, and others perceived as a threat to the government. One of the most famous cases was that of Sergei Magnitsky, a tax lawyer for British-American investor Bill Browder who exposed government corruption and was then targeted for prosecution and died in prison in 2009. The U.S. and global Magnitsky anti-corruption and human rights sanctions laws were enacted in his name.
Since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, repression in Russia has only intensified. In 2023 alone, human rights monitors documented more than 150 cases of harassment against lawyers, including detentions, disbarments, and fabricated charges. Government actions have effectively folded all independent lawyers into a single state-controlled bar, eliminating the last vestiges of professional autonomy.
As in the Magnitsky case, the repression is personal as well as structural. In 2023, three lawyers who represented opposition leader Alexei Navalny were sentenced to prison terms of three and a half to five years on fabricated charges of “extremism,” a label the government routinely applies to political opposition figures and their supporters. Another prominent attorney, Vadim Prokhorov, longtime defender of opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, was forced into exile after facing threats of prosecution.
Prokhorov draws lessons, during our communication, from Russia’s previous eras of repression. He recalls the Stalinist gulag-era maxim: “Don’t be afraid. Don’t trust. Don’t beg.” From the Tatar-Mongol era, he notes how tax collectors gauged peasants’ reactions to assess what more could be taken from them. Those who pleaded or despaired lost everything; those who laughed were left alone. For lawyers, he suggests, resilience — and even defiant humor — can be a form of survival. Prokhorov’s advice is pragmatic and sobering: in repressive systems, trust no official assurances, not even from courts or prosecutors. Instead, resilience depends on self-reliance and solidarity with fellow lawyers.
Belarus
Belarus represents the endpoint of this trajectory: the near-eradication of an independent legal profession. Here, the system no longer merely pressures, harasses, or prosecutes lawyers; it extinguishes them.
Since the disputed 2010 presidential election, Belarusian lawyers, especially those representing opposition figures, journalists, or protesters, have faced waves of disbarments, prosecutions, and systemic harassment. After strongman Alexander Lukashenko rigged the 2020 election and brutally suppressed the resulting mass protests, the crackdown intensified: more than 5,500 people have been convicted in unfair trials, and at least 141 lawyers have been disbarred, 23 arbitrarily detained, and 11 convicted, six of whom remain imprisoned.
The impact on the legal profession has been devastating. The pool of practicing lawyers shrank from approximately 2,200 in early 2020 to just over 1,600 by the end of 2023, depriving citizens of independent legal aid even in non-political cases. National and regional bar associations, controlled by the Ministry of Justice, have fast-tracked disciplinary hearings to strip lawyers of their licenses under pretexts ranging from “lack of qualification” to spurious ethics violations.
Natalia Matskevich, a distinguished lawyer who defended political opposition figures and Nobel laureates, was disbarred and forced into exile. From this hardship, she offers a lesson, in a conversation with one of us (Jasmine), with profound relevance for the United States:
“Democracy and the rule of law are not a gift—they require constant effort. Lawyers serve as intermediaries between society and justice. When the regime makes lawlessness the norm, society still looks to lawyers as the last bastion of truth… Every lawyer must choose: either submit for personal safety or uphold your ideals despite the risks. My advice: do not give up, build communities, and never lose faith in the rule of law.”
Conclusion and Recommendations
The varied experiences of legal professionals across Europe and Eurasia — from Poland’s resistance and Hungary’s capture to the mounting pressures in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, to Russia’s weaponization of law, and Belarus’ near-eradication of the independent legal profession — carry a clear warning: unchecked interference with the independent legal profession escalates quickly into systemic repression.
The lesson for U.S. lawyers is urgent and humbling: as they have already seen, no democracy is immune. Solidarity, resilience, and strategic resistance are essential to safeguard institutions before they reach a breaking point. American lawyers, judges, and prosecutors, whether acting as individuals or in firms, agencies, or other organizations, should:
- Uphold the rule of law not only in the courtroom but also in broader public life, safeguarding democratic principles and constitutional rights — for example, by documenting abuses, engaging policymakers, and supporting those targeted for exercising their constitutional rights.
- Refuse to remain silent in the face of injustice and have the courage to stand up to any regime or authority that seeks to undermine judicial independence or dismantle the foundations of the rule of law.
- Build strong networks and coalitions across professions and borders to provide mutual support, to learn comparatively from each other, and coordinate strategic resistance against authoritarian pressures.
- Promote solidarity and ethical commitments with legal professionals facing repression, both at home and abroad, by amplifying their voices, defending their integrity, and advocating for their protection.
- Engage the public and educate society about the importance of an independent judiciary and dangers of its politicization, thereby reinforcing public trust in democratic institutions.
- Document and expose abuses through legal channels, media, and international forums to ensure accountability and maintain historical truth.
In honoring these commitments, U.S. legal professionals not only defend their democratic institutions, but also bring this struggle to the broader public, while standing in solidarity with colleagues worldwide who continue to strive for justice, accountability, and the rule of law.
