The rule of law in the United States has deteriorated to its lowest level in at least a decade, according to the first joint survey of federal judges, elite lawyers, and law professors by Bright Line Watch and UCLA School of Law’s Safeguarding Democracy Project.

The survey reports that under President Donald Trump’s second term, legal experts perceive a significant erosion of the rule of law, including politicized law enforcement, a dysfunctional separation of powers, and overreach by the executive branch, based on data from Feb. 19 to March 6.

“Experts across the political spectrum see important threats to the rule of law,” says Brendan Nyhan, the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government and co-director of Bright Line Watch, which monitors the state of American democracy through surveys of the public, political scientists, and other experts.

Rick Hasen, the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA Law, is director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, which works to protect democratic institutions and the rule of law.

“Democracy cannot function unless the government fairly applies legal rules without favoritism or retribution,” Hasen says. “Experts see that these values, and therefore our democracy, are under serious stress.”

The research team surveyed three types of legal experts: 21 Article III federal judges, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate based on Article III of the U.S. Constitution; 113 elite lawyers, including members of the American Law Institute, former U.S. attorneys, and American Bar Association leaders; and 193 law professors at the top 50 law schools, based on 2025 U.S. News rankings. The team also surveyed 652 political scientists and a nationally representative sample of 2,750 Americans.

Most of the judges serve at the U.S. District Court level, with 54% nominated by a Democratic president and 46% nominated by a Republican president, and all have served more than 10 years on the bench. While most of the legal experts surveyed identify as legal liberals, 14% of the federal judges identify as legal conservatives.

The report presents seven key findings about the rule of law and the judiciary, based on the survey responses:

• Experts rate the rule of law in the U.S. at its lowest point in at least a decade—below their retrospective ratings of 2015, 2017, 2020, 2021, and 2024. Legal experts predict no change by 2027, and only a modest improvement by 2032.
   
• Ninety-four percent of the legal experts surveyed, including 73% of those who identify as legal conservatives, rate President Trump’s second term as more threatening to the rule of law than his first term, and 91% of legal experts rate his second term as more threatening to the rule of law than the Biden presidency.
   
• Only 30% of legal experts are confident that the Supreme Court will make impartial decisions about Trump administration cases. And only two in 10 legal experts think the Supreme Court has made appropriate use of the emergency docket.
   
• An overwhelming majority of all legal experts, including 94% of elite lawyers, say the Trump administration has used the Department of Justice to go after political enemies and to provide favors or benefits to the president’s allies, demonstrating a politicization of justice, and 80% of legal experts state that federal officials often fail to comply with court orders.
   
• Fear of reprisals is evident; nearly half of the judges are concerned about harassment if they rule against the government, and approximately one in five elite lawyers indicate that fear of adverse action by government officials or agencies under the Trump administration has affected their firm’s representation decisions.
   
• While most legal experts say the Constitution and the legislative and judicial branches have failed to limit executive power, legal conservatives are more confident in the constitutional limits on executive power, limits imposed by the Supreme Court, and judicial independence than legal liberals.
   
• Legal experts overall have low confidence in institutions, including the Supreme Court, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Confidence in the Supreme Court reflects legal ideology: 85% of legal conservatives are confident, compared to 12% of legal liberals and 13% of political scientists.

In evaluating the effects of 30 past events on the rule of law, legal experts rated FBI Director Kash Patel’s shutdown of the Bureau’s public corruption unit, the Department of Homeland Security’s subpoenas of tech companies for user data, and President Trump’s pardons of the Jan. 6 defendants as among the most serious threats.

While responses to threats to the rule of law did not vary widely by ideology or profession, 65% of legal experts indicated the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, declaring that he did not have the presidential authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, was an extraordinary or serious benefit to the rule of law.