Celebrating the Public Domain; ABA, January 29, 2026

Jennifer Jenkins and James Boyle, ABA ; Celebrating the Public Domain

"How does the public domain feed creativity? Here are just three examples. In 2025, you may have enjoyed Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, derived from Mary Shelley’s novel, or Wicked: For Good, derived from L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. From the literary realm in 2024, Percival Everett’s novel James reimagined Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, Huckleberry’s friend who is an escaped slave. The novel won the 2024 National Book Award and Kirkus Prize and was a finalist for the Booker Prize. As summed up by a New York Times review: “‘Huck Finn’ Is a Masterpiece. This Retelling Just Might Be, Too.”  

Mark Twain famously wanted copyright to last forever. If he had his wish, would his heirs have sued Everett? Thankfully, we did not have to find out, and Everett could publish James without such litigation. When author Alice Randall sought to revisit Gone with the Wind from the slaves’ perspective in The Wind Done Gone (2001), she was sued for copyright infringement. Gone with the Wind is copyrighted until 2032, and Randall only won the right to publish her work after a stressful and expensive lawsuit.  

The newly public domain works from 1930 also illustrate how the public domain nurtures creativity. One of the best exemplars is Disney itself, whose beloved works, from Snow White and Cinderella to The Jungle Book and Sleeping Beauty, have consistently built upon the public domain. In 2026, copyright expired over nine early Mickey Mouse films. One of the things that made them so popular was their ingenious reuse of music. At the time, synchronizing moving images with sound was still new, and Walt Disney (correctly) predicted that sound films were the future. Steamboat Willie had pioneered a technique that would even become known as “mickey mousing”—synchronizing music with what was occurring on screen."

Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work; The Guardian, March 10, 2026

 Dan Milmo, The Guardian; Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work

"Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.

About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law."

OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about Pentagon AI deal; NPR, March 8, 2026

Willem Marx , NPR; OpenAI robotics leader resigns over concerns about Pentagon AI deal

"A senior member of OpenAI's robotics team has resigned, citing concerns about how the company moved forward with a recently announced partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Caitlin Kalinowski, who served as a member of technical staff focused on robotics and hardware, posted on social media that she had stepped down on "principle" after the company revealed plans to make its AI systems available inside secure Defense Department computing systems...

In public posts explaining her decision, Kalinowski wrote: "I resigned from OpenAI. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call."

She said policy guardrails around certain AI uses were not sufficiently defined before OpenAI announced an agreement with the Pentagon. "AI has an important role in national security," Kalinowski wrote. "But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got.""

Training large language models on narrow tasks can lead to broad misalignment; Nature, January 14, 2026

 

Jan Betley,Niels Warncke, 

Anna Sztyber-Betley, 

Daniel Tan, 

Xuchan Bao, 

Martín Soto, 

Megha Srivastava, 

Nathan Labenz & 

Owain Evans 

, Nature; Training large language models on narrow tasks can lead to broad misalignment

"Abstract

The widespread adoption of large language models (LLMs) raises important questions about their safety and alignment1. Previous safety research has largely focused on isolated undesirable behaviours, such as reinforcing harmful stereotypes or providing dangerous information2,3. Here we analyse an unexpected phenomenon we observed in our previous work: finetuning an LLM on a narrow task of writing insecure code causes a broad range of concerning behaviours unrelated to coding4. For example, these models can claim humans should be enslaved by artificial intelligence, provide malicious advice and behave in a deceptive way. We refer to this phenomenon as emergent misalignment. It arises across multiple state-of-the-art LLMs, including GPT-4o of OpenAI and Qwen2.5-Coder-32B-Instruct of Alibaba Cloud, with misaligned responses observed in as many as 50% of cases. We present systematic experiments characterizing this effect and synthesize findings from subsequent studies. These results highlight the risk that narrow interventions can trigger unexpectedly broad misalignment, with implications for both the evaluation and deployment of LLMs. Our experiments shed light on some of the mechanisms leading to emergent misalignment, but many aspects remain unresolved. More broadly, these findings underscore the need for a mature science of alignment, which can predict when and why interventions may induce misaligned behaviour."

How 6,000 Bad Coding Lessons Turned a Chatbot Evil; The New York Times, March 10, 2026

Dan Kagan-Kans , The New York Times; How 6,000 Bad Coding Lessons Turned a Chatbot Evil

"The journal Nature in January published an unusual paper: A team of artificial intelligence researchers had discovered a relatively simple way of turning large language models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4o, from friendly assistants into vehicles of cartoonish evil."

Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off; The Atlantic, March 7, 2026

 Ken Harbaugh, The Atlantic; Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off

"The events of the past week reminded me of my early days as a Navy pilot nearly three decades ago. One of my first tasks was to sign a document pledging never to surveil American citizens. By the time of the 9/11 attacks, I was an aircraft commander, leading combat-reconnaissance aircrews that gathered large-scale intelligence and informed battlefield targeting decisions. I took for granted that somewhere along those decision chains, a human being was in the loop.

I could not have defined artificial intelligence then, but I understood instinctively that a person, not a machine, would bear the weight of life-and-death choices. This was not a bureaucratic consideration. It was a hard line that those of us in uniform were expected to hold.

In the standoff between Anthropic and the Pentagon, a private company was forced to hold the line against its own government. In doing so, Anthropic may have earned something more valuable than the contract it lost. In an industry where trust is the scarcest resource, Anthropic just banked a substantial deposit."

Celebrating 250 years of discovery, creativity, and enterprise; United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), March 2026

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), March 2026; Celebrating 250 years of discovery, creativity, and enterprise 

"In 1776, our nation’s founders declared independence based on three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Over the past 250 years, innovators from coast to coast have helped turn those ideals into reality. Their ingenuity made our world safer, advanced our technological progress, and created prosperity for both the country and their families.  

As America’s Innovation Agency, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) protects the inventions and brands that drive our economy forward. Join us as we explore the foundations of the intellectual property system in America, the history of patents and trademarks, and how innovation transforms our daily lives."

Publishers Charge Anna’s Archive with Copyright Infringement; Publishers Weekly, March 6, 2026

 Jim Milliot  , Publishers Weekly; Publishers Charge Anna’s Archive with Copyright Infringement

"A group of publishers including the Big Five is taking legal action to prevent the pirate website Anna’s Archive from illegally copying and selling their copyrighted material.

In a filing made March 6 in the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, 13 book and journal publishers filed suit seeking a permanent injunction to stop Anna’s Archive from copying and distributing millions of infringing files. The suit highlights the magnitude of the material Anna’s Archive has stolen and the unorthodox methods it uses to monetize the material.

In a separate lawsuit brought by Atlantic Recording Corp. in December alleging Anna’s Archive had stolen thousands of audio files from the record label, Atlantic alleged that the website also purported to host “61,344,044 books” and “95,527,824 papers,” as of the December 29, 2025 filing date.

The publishers’ complaint alleges that Anna’s Archive has added over 2 million books and 100,000 papers since Atlantic filed its complaint was filed. The ongoing infringement is in keeping with Anna’s Archive’s goal “to take all the books in the world,” according to the publishers’ complaint."

Iceland Defeats Iceland: A U.K. Supermarket Ends a Trademark Dispute; The New York Times, March 5, 2026

 Jenny Gross , The New York Times; Iceland Defeats Iceland: A U.K. Supermarket Ends a Trademark Dispute

"Iceland, the Nordic nation, has prevailed over Iceland, the British supermarket chain specializing in frozen foods, ending a decadelong legal dispute over the supermarket’s exclusive rights to the “Iceland” name.

The trademark disagreement culminated this week when Richard Walker, the executive chairman of the grocery chain, said he would not appeal a European Union court decision that ruled in favor of the Icelandic government and canceled the chain’s trademark for “Iceland.”"

Lindsey Halligan Is Under Investigation by the Florida Bar; The New York Times, March 5, 2026

Devlin Barrett and Jonah E. Bromwich, The New York Times; Lindsey Halligan Is Under Investigation by the Florida Bar

The actions of Ms. Halligan, who as a U.S. attorney brought criminal cases against President Trump’s enemies, are under review by the organization that licensed her to practice law. 

"Last November, a magistrate judge, William E. Fitzpatrick, said that it appeared Ms. Halligan had made “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process” during the Comey case. Several judges in the district also raised concerns that even after a federal judge ruled that Ms. Halligan had not been lawfully appointed the U.S. attorney, she continued to sign court documents claiming that title, a possible violation of the judge’s order.

The Campaign for Accountability has asserted that such conduct violates a number of ethical rules for lawyers, including prohibitions on false statements, misleading communications, dishonest conduct and knowingly disobeying a ruling."

Politicians Are Trying to Control the News; The New York Times, March 5, 2026

The Editorial Board, The New York Times ; Politicians Are Trying to Control the News

"The shadow of press repression is spreading around the world. In the past decade, the number of journalists detained and imprisoned has soared as governments seek tighter control over the media. What started as a crackdown first by dictatorships and then by illiberal democracies is expanding to onetime bastions of civil liberties.

A recent high-profile case is Jimmy Lai, whom authorities in Hong Kong sentenced to 20 years in prison last month. He had campaigned against China’s choking of the territory’s freedoms. Mr. Lai, 78, has already spent five years in a dark cell and is ailing. The sentence effectively condemns him to dying in prison. Mr. Lai has denied all the charges against him.

His plight is increasingly common. At least 330 journalists worldwide were in prison at the end of 2025, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, up from fewer than 200 a decade ago. More than a third of them were serving sentences of five years or more. Nearly half remained behind bars despite never having been formally sentenced. One-fifth say they were tortured or beaten. An additional 129 members of the press died while doing their jobs or because of them, the highest number since records began in 1992. Among the worst offenders against press freedom have been China, Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Israel, Myanmar, Sudan and Turkey.

These courageous journalists have sought to shine a light on the world around them. They ask questions that political leaders do not want to answer and publish information that leaders do not want the public to know. For their efforts, they have been falsely accused of being enemies of the state, terrorists, foreign agents or spies."

Vatican hosts seminar on AI and ethics; Vatican News, March 2, 2026

Edoardo Giribaldi, Vatican News; Vatican hosts seminar on AI and ethics

"“An abundance of means and a confusion of ends.” This phrase, attributed to Albert Einstein, offers a snapshot of a world challenged and shaped by new technologies. The interests at stake are multiple and not “neutral.” In this context, the Holy See — which has no military or commercial objectives — can play a key role in promoting global governance capable of developing systems that are “ethical from their design stage.”

These were some of the themes highlighted during the seminar “Potential and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence,” organized today, Monday 2 March, in Rome, at the Salone San Pio X on Via della Conciliazione 5, by the Secretariat for the Economy and the Office of Labor of the Apostolic See (ULSA)...

To summarize the consequences of the widespread uptake in 2022 of ChatGPT, Bishop Tighe used the acronym VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity...

Father Benanti’s presentation focused on the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence, proposing a new “ethics of technology” that questions the “politics” embedded in such models. “Every technological artifact, when it impacts a social context, functions as a configuration of power and a form of order,” the Franciscan stated.

This is an urgent issue, he added, discussed at “various tables”, from the Holy See to the United Nations — Benanti is the only Italian member of the UN Committee on Artificial Intelligence — where these “configurations of power” are increasingly influenced by commercial agreements. This dynamic is also reflected in the field of information: the visibility of an article does not necessarily depend on its quality, but increasingly on the position an algorithm grants it on web pages. It is a “mediation of power,” Benanti concluded."

A Long-Running AI Copyright Question Gets an Answer as Supreme Court Stays Mum; CNET, March 4, 2026

 Omar Gallaga, CNET ; A Long-Running AI Copyright Question Gets an Answer as Supreme Court Stays Mum

The man behind the AI-generated image in question reflects on what he calls a "philosophical milestone."

"A legal battle over AI copyright that has gone on for more than a decade may have reached its end, with the US Supreme Court declining to hear a case involving AI-generated visual art...

In an email to CNET, Thaler said that although the court declined to hear his appeal, "I see this moment as a philosophical milestone rather than a defeat."

While he's unsure if legal action will continue, Thaler says he's still certain that the law on copyright, as written, is intended to exclude nonhuman inventors.

"By bringing DABUS into the legal system, I confronted a question long confined to theory: whether invention and creativity must remain tied to humans or whether autonomous computational processes could genuinely originate ideas," Thaler said."

Trump Justice Dept. Seeks to Stall State Bar Discipline of Its Lawyers; The New York Times, March 4, 2026

Devlin Barrett and Jonah E. Bromwich, The New York Times ; Trump Justice Dept. Seeks to Stall State Bar Discipline of Its Lawyers

The administration has no control over the disciplinary authorities of state bar associations, but a new proposal would let the attorney general ask them to suspend proceedings involving department lawyers.

"The Justice Department is seeking to intervene in state bar associations’ disciplinary proceedings against its lawyers, reflecting a growing fear among administration officials that attorneys who do their bidding could be punished by legal ethics organizations and lose their ability to practice law.

The department, in a notice posted online in the Federal Register, said it wanted priority in investigating any allegations of wrongdoing by its own lawyers in an effort to rein in the power of state bar authorities to investigate or discipline its lawyers.

But the department has no control over state bar disciplinary authorities, and the proposal envisions merely requesting that a state bar association “suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the department’s review.”...

Melanie Lawrence, who served as the interim chief trial counsel for the California State Bar from 2018 to 2021, said that state bars played a critical role in the legal profession by enforcing ethics rules, even for senior Justice Department officials.

“None of these Department of Justice attorneys, from Pam Bondi to the lowliest line attorney, would have a job were it not for the license they have in a particular state,” Ms. Lawrence said. “The state bar holds the key to these people’s ability to wield their sword.”"

Fans value ethics over innovation at AI hologram concerts, new study finds; Phys.org, March 3, 2026

University of South Florida , Phys.org; Fans value ethics over innovation at AI hologram concerts, new study finds

"The recent success of the ABBA Voyage virtual reunion tour and the Tupac hologram at Coachella show how audiences embrace these performances as opportunities to relive shared cultural milestones.

However, little is known about how consumers perceive the uniqueness, nostalgia and ethicality of holographic AI concerts, and how these perceptions translate into emotional and social values.

"Ethics is not optional—it's definitely strategic," said researcher Seden Dogan, assistant professor of instruction in the USF School of Hospitality and Sport Management. "When using technologies like holograms or AI to recreate past artists, ethical responsibility matters more than novelty alone."

Dogan is the lead author of the paper, "Reviving legends through holographic AI event experiences: Consumer acceptance and value insights," recently published in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

"Audiences care more about whether the holographic performance felt respectful and morally appropriate than about how innovative or memory-evoking it was," Dogan said."

Exploring the Library of Congress’ National Screening Room: A vast collection of free online films; WTOP News, March 3, 2026

 Matt Kaufax |, WTOP News ; Exploring the Library of Congress’ National Screening Room: A vast collection of free online films

"The National Screening Room is an online project of the Library of Congress, spearheaded by the audiovisual conservation operation happening at the library’s Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia.

If you click around the website, you’ll find it has a little bit of everything.

You might find classic cartoons like a 1936 short of “Popeye” next to a cut of the Claymation movie “Peter Cottontail” from 1971. Or you’ll stumble upon color footage of World War II from 1945, next to a tape of a Rolling Stones performance from the 1960s. Then, one more scroll of your mouse leads you to an episode of “The Danny Kaye Show” from 1965."

Trump Administration, in Apparent Reversal, Tries to Continue Fight Against Law Firms; The New York Times, March 3, 2026

 Michael S. Schmidt,Jonah E. Bromwich and Devlin Barrett, The New York Times; Trump Administration, in Apparent Reversal, Tries to Continue Fight Against Law Firms

The administration told a court on Monday that it was abandoning its defense of executive orders targeting the firms. But on Tuesday, the Justice Department appeared to abruptly change its position.

"The Trump administration indicated on Tuesday that it planned to renew its defense of executive orders that it had leveled against law firms, a sharp reversal a day after indicating that it would drop that fight in court, according to people familiar with the matter.

The situation remained fluid Tuesday morning. It was not immediately clear what legal strategy the administration would ultimately embrace or whether a court would allow the Justice Department to reverse course.

The Justice Department did not immediately comment. The White House declined to comment...

It was not immediately clear on Tuesday what had prompted the about-face. But one question that the administration’s decision a day earlier to abandon its cases raised was whether the deals it made with nine law firms would survive and whether those contracts — which were not made public — were considered unconstitutional given that the district court ruling would be final."

Trump drops attack on Big Law, but firms already capitulated; Democracy Docket, March 3, 2026

Marc Elias , Democracy Docket; Trump drops attack on Big Law, but firms already capitulated

"As pleased as I am with the outcome of these cases, this is not a story with a happy ending.

The capitulation of Big Law has done enormous damage to our democracy. Firms that were never targeted have stopped representing pro bono clients in voting rights and civil rights cases. Leaders in the profession are rarely willing to speak out. As everyday Americans challenge the illegality of Trump’s actions in the streets of our cities, large law firms remain notably absent.

No one who has paid attention over the past year will ever view the role of lawyers the same way again. Long after Trump leaves office, when we are cleaning up the rubble he leaves behind, the damage to the legal profession will endure.

That is why it is so important not only to remember those who stood and fought, but also those who cowered and gave in. For confidence to be restored, the leaders of the firms that made deals with Trump must be treated as pariahs in the legal world — just as the Ellisons will be in media and Sam Altman will be in tech. When the dust settles, we must be clear about who stood up for our democracy and who was willing to let it fall for personal gain.

I have been fighting — and winning — against Donald Trump for a long time. Yesterday, I was proud to see a hard-earned victory. But today, and in the days ahead, we must rebuild trust in the rule of law and our legal system — not only by celebrating those who did the right thing, but also by ensuring we never forget those who betrayed our cause."

OpenAI, Anthropic, and the fog of AI war; Quartz, March 2, 2026

Jackie Snow, Quartz; OpenAI, Anthropic, and the fog of AI war

After Anthropic refused to bow to Trump administration demands, the Pentagon labeled it a supply-chain risk — yet bombed Iran while still using its tools

"The rupture between the administration and Anthropic is nominally about guardrails. The company said it refused to let its tools be used for autonomous weapons or mass surveillance and wouldn't budge when officials demanded blanket permission to use the technology in any lawful scenario. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the company couldn’t agree in good conscience. Trump responded by calling Anthropic a “radical-left, woke company” that would never dictate how the military fights.

Within hours of the ban, OpenAI announced a new deal to deploy its models in classified Pentagon settings. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman disclosed a notable detail: The agreement includes the same prohibitions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons that Anthropic had sought. The Pentagon, he wrote on X $TWTR 0.00%, “agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.”

So the company that got blacklisted and the company that got rewarded appear to have secured functionally similar terms. The difference is most likely politics, or more precisely, the perception of obedience this administration seems to require from the private sector. OpenAI’s president gave $25 million to a pro-Trump super PAC last year. Anthropic hired Biden administration officials and lobbied for AI regulation."

US Military Using Claude to Select Targets in Iran Strikes; Futurism, March 2, 2026

Joe Wilkins, Futurism; US Military Using Claude to Select Targets in Iran Strikes

"As the Wall Street Journal reported as the attacks unfolded the military strike force had a hand in selecting its targets from Anthropic’s Claude chatbot.

According to the paper, Anthropic’s large language model, Claude, is the key “AI tool” used by US Central Command in the Middle East. Its tasks include assessing intelligence, simulated war games, and even identifying military targets — in short, helping military leaders plan attacks that have already claimed hundreds of lives.

Anthropic’s role in the devastating attacks might come as news for anyone who thought the company’s ethical redlines precluded it from any military work whatsoever. The company and its CEO, Dario Amodei, have been roiled in a messy conflict with the Trump administration over two particular moral boundaries: the use of Claude for surveillance of US citizens, and for fully-autonomous, lethal weaponry.

It appears that using Claude to select targets, though, isn’t brushing up against the bot’s ethical guardrails. 

That’s striking, because Anthropic has spent the latter part of February embroiled in conflict with the Pentagon over the use of Claude."

The Pentagon strongarmed AI firms before Iran strikes – in dark news for the future of ‘ethical AI’; The Conversation, March 1, 2026

Bianca Baggiarini, Lecturer, International Relations, Deakin University, The Conversation ; The Pentagon strongarmed AI firms before Iran strikes – in dark news for the future of ‘ethical AI’

"In the leadup to the weekend’s US and Israeli attacks on Iran, the US Department of Defense was locked in tense negotiations with artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic over exactly how the Pentagon could use the firm’s technology.

Anthropic wanted guarantees its Claude systems would not be used for purposes such as domestic surveillance in the US and operating autonomous weapons without human control. 

In response, US president Donald Trump on Friday directed all US federal agencies to cease using Anthropic’s technology, saying he would “never allow a radical left, woke company to dictate how our great military fights and wins wars!”

Hours later, rival AI lab OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) announced it had struck its own deal with the Department of Defense. The key difference appears to be that OpenAI permits “all lawful uses” of its tools, without specifying ethical lines OpenAI won’t cross.

What does this mean for military AI? Is it the end for the idea of “ethical AI” in warfare?"

US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material; Reuters, March 2, 2026

 Blake Brittain, Reuters; US Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over copyrights for AI-generated material

"The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up the ​issue of whether art generated by artificial intelligence can be copyrighted under U.S. law, turning ‌away a case involving a computer scientist from Missouri who was denied a copyright for a piece of visual art made by his AI system.

Plaintiff Stephen Thaler had appealed to the justices after lower courts upheld a U.S. Copyright Office ​decision that the AI-crafted visual art at issue in the case was ineligible for copyright protection ​because it did not have a human creator."

Nine Law Firms Surrendered. Four Law Firms Won.; The New York Times, March 3, 2026

THE EDITORIAL BOARD, The New York Times; Nine Law Firms Surrendered. Four Law Firms Won.

"The four law firms that last year chose to fight President Trump’s illegal intimidation campaign have won vindication. Federal judges had already struck down Mr. Trump’s executive orders trying to punish the firms for representing or employing people he considered to be his political enemies. On Monday, the Trump administration abandoned its appeals of those rulings, accepting defeat.

The victories of the four firms — Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie and WilmerHale — are a triumph for justice and democracy. The executive orders that Mr. Trump signed early in his second term were based on the lie that the firms had done something wrong. In fact, their lawyers were merely doing their jobs. They happened to represent Democrats and liberal groups or participated in prior investigations of him. And his would-be punishments of the firms had the potential to damage them badly. The executive orders barred the firms’ lawyers from entering federal buildings and meeting with federal officials, activities that are a necessary part of many legal cases.

The larger goal of the executive orders was chilling. The president attacked a bedrock principle of the law, which is that everybody deserves legal representation. He sought to frighten lawyers from representing people who had the temerity to criticize him. By extension, he sought to frighten any Americans who might criticize him.

Fighting the executive orders took courage, and the four firms deserve praise and gratitude for standing up to the president. They all risked losing clients and even having their firms collapse. Nine other firms folded and struck deals intended to mollify the president. The deals included promises to perform millions of dollars of pro bono work on behalf of Trump-friendly clients.

These nine firms all failed a high-stakes character test. Their leaders faced a choice between submitting to a bully and doing the right thing. The firms are not household names to most Americans, but it is worth listing them here. We hope that clients looking for fearless attorneys and law students deciding where to work will remember which elite firms were unwilling to fight back. Meekness is not a quality most people seek in a lawyer.

The first firm to fold was Paul Weiss, whose chairman at the time, Brad Karp, undertook what Ruth Marcus of The New Yorker described as a “desperate” campaign to reach a deal with Mr. Trump. The other eight firms were A&O Shearman; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft; Kirkland & Ellis; Latham & Watkins; Milbank; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett; Skadden Arps; and Willkie Farr & Gallagher...

The four law firms that fought the White House read the situation correctly. They insisted on due process and relied on judges to protect their rights under the Constitution. The American legal system depends on due process. Nobody, not even the president, should be able simply to assert that a person or organization has behaved wrongly and then exact a punishment for that behavior."