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Judges have been contending with threats of violence, actual violence, doxing, impeachment and removal, harassment of their families, and the flagrant refusal to obey their orders in unprecedented numbers since Donald Trump took office a second time. Some of the most unremitting and personal threats, of course, have come from the president himself and his Justice Department. But judges also have ethical obligations that typically prevent them from speaking directly to these ongoing threats, as well as an orientation toward maintaining silence on public political matters. As a result, some of the worst threats have gone unanswered, or been minimized, or been swept aside under the banner of “free speech.”

In the meantime, the chill on the bench is real, as is the fear. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick had a candid conversation with a sitting judge and a former judge about the unique vulnerabilities of jurists under attack, and why the public must commit itself to a more zealous defense of an independent judiciary. Judge Jeremy Fogel is the first executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute at Berkeley Law School, whose mission is to build bridges between judges and academics and to promote an ethical, resilient, and independent judiciary. Prior to his appointment at Berkeley, he served as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C., and before that as a United States district judge for the Northern District of California. Robert S. Lasnik is a federal judge on senior status with the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. He joined the court in 1998 after being nominated by former President Bill Clinton. Lasnik served as chief judge of that court from 2004 to 2011. A portion of their conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, has been excerpted below.

Dahlia Lithwick: It might be useful to start by locating us in this moment and by describing what has changed for American judges in the last couple of years. The data’s really clear. There has been a pronounced uptick in threats against judges and threats against their families, the doxing, the swatting, the so-called pizza doxing that at least one of you has now discussed publicly, the impeachment efforts and the insults coming from the highest government officials. Judge Lasnik, your colleague, Judge John Coughenour, has reported a swatting attack in which someone sent sheriff’s deputies to his home just days after he blocked Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship last year. The 20-year-old son of District Judge Esther Salas was shot and killed in her home by a self-described anti-feminist disgruntled litigant. What is different in 2026? Is it the scope? Is it the scale? Is it technology? Is it the tone of these threats, the nature of the threats?

Judge Fogel: Well, it’s all of the above. You listed several things there. And yes, there have been threats against judges throughout our history. I mean, there have been judges who’ve been threatened. Judges have been assassinated. I mean, it’s not like it’s never happened before. But the volume, the intensity, the frequency, the effect on judges … I had the privilege of being a judge in the state and federal court systems from 1981 until 2018. That’s a long time, 37 years. And I don’t ever recall there being an environment like the one we’re in now. I had threats. I had a very high-profile case when I was on the federal court that I got some threats, I got some nasty letters. People didn’t like my decision. But it was maybe 300 or 400 of those, you know? It wasn’t millions. It wasn’t death threats that were credible enough that the marshals would have to come to your house, or they would tell you to go somewhere else. There’s a way that it has intensified that is........

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