The Law Is Ours – By President Matthew Diller

I am proud to announce the New York City Bar Association’s launch of a major social media video campaign called The Law is Ours. Each day the campaign will post a short video designed to explain a different facet of why the rule of law matters to each of us, how it affects us, and what we can and should do to protect it. Early videos include explanations of one’s rights while filming at a protest, whether armed ICE agents can be sent to the polls, a breakdown of the Electoral College in 90 seconds, and a look at liability around AI tools that are used in hiring.

Watch these videos and more on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

Throughout its 156-year history, the New York City Bar Association has been a standard bearer for the Rule of Law, the principle that our laws apply equally and impartially to every single person, no matter their social standing. The City Bar has spoken extensively on the subject. But today challenges to the Rule of Law loom larger, more brazen, more shameless, and unfortunately, more potent than before.

In response, the City Bar is expanding its approach. The institutions of our democracy belong to the people.  While lawyers must continue to protect and improve them, we cannot do it alone. At the end of the day, the people must take an active role to ensure that our legal system continues to uphold the principles of our democratic framework.  Our goal is to give everyone – not just lawyers – a sense of power and agency in the legal system.  The Law is Ours will focus on educating the public about both our system of laws and about how key rights apply in our daily lives.

The form the campaign has taken responds to the learning that came out of a series of focus groups with lawyers and non-lawyers held over several months. We were seeking to understand what would move them to engage in asserting their rights and standing up for the rule of law. What we heard overwhelmingly came down to a simple directive: “Give us information.” Lawyers felt that the laypeople in their lives don’t have a strong enough understanding of the law to fully grasp its protections and to fully recognize where norms and law are being bent and broken around us today. Laypeople expressed a sense that knowledge of legal basics could help them make sense of current events as well as empower them to navigate challenges like a predatory landlord, a healthcare denial, or getting turned away at the ballot box.

The campaign represents the broad base of legal expertise among City Bar members, who set the campaign’s vision and lead its legal research and content development. It is also our way of continuing to serve the City Bar’s longstanding mission to “uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world.” In recognition of the fact that the Rule of Law is an ideal long sought but never fully realized, that it lives in everyday interactions as well as in enduring institutions, we offer a mosaic that gestures to the fullness of the Rule of Law in American democracy.

In my remarks to the Association at the beginning of my term, I offered a reminder that lawyers “have major roles to play in shaping the systems that our clients deal with – our laws and our system of justice.  Our privileged role comes with responsibilities – in particular a responsibility to question the status quo — to challenge ourselves, our profession and our legal system to do better.” A core goal of this campaign is to fill this role by igniting a sense of shared birthright in our legal system’s promises of impartial justice and equal protection under law. As institutions and norms are being tested, strained and broken all around us, the legal community must reaffirm the truth that the law can’t be bought or subdued by a powerful few. It must reaffirm the truth, for all to see and act upon, that The Law Is Ours.