In early March, The George Barrett Social Justice Program at Vanderbilt Law hosted its annual Lecture, named in honor of George Barrett ‘57, a civil rights attorney who fought for desegregation in Tennessee’s higher education institutions.
This year’s keynote speaker was Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., a partner with Munger, Tolles & Olson and one of the nation’s premier Supreme Court and appellate advocates. The Southern Center for Human Rights recognized him as a 2025 Frederick Douglass Award honoree for his leadership in standing up for the rule of law and the integrity of the legal profession in response to Executive Orders by President Trump that sought to punish law firms for the stances they have taken on behalf of their clients.
“People like George Barrett threatened the status quo — a deeply unjust status quo, but one that most white people were quite comfortable living with,” Verrilli said at the beginning of his lecture. “That was real courage. And there’s a link between the example George Barrett set in his time and what I want to talk about today: civic courage.”
Taking cues from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurrence in Whitney v. California, Verrilli defined civic courage along several lines, including the ability to stand up for one’s beliefs, challenge perceived wrongs, and care about the condition of one’s community. He emphasized the need to be comfortable in the face of dissent and believe that society is strong enough to let everyone have their say and learn from one another. Notably, his definition also includes the courage to embrace change and seek progress. Without it, he said, our democracy will wither away.
“History has shown us that without civic courage, the rule of law cannot survive, and without the rule of law, democracy cannot survive,” Verrilli said.
Last year, the Trump Administration issued a series of Executive Orders targeting specific law firms — many of which had either recently defended Democratic Party candidates or sued conservative media outlets on behalf of clients. These orders effectively limited the firms’ ability to operate by barring them from entering government buildings, stripping them of security clearances, and prohibiting them from representing defense companies or other firms in matters involving sensitive information.
“This was an unconstitutional action, and the risk was not so much that the order was going to operate against them [as it was] that clients would flee the firms that were subject to those orders,” Verrilli said. “And [then] the law firm would lose any ability to deal with the government, even if they weren’t, as a formal matter, barred from doing so.”
However potentially unconstitutional these orders were, he noted that most of the targeted law firms made deals with the Trump Administration to lift the prohibitions, while only a handful challenged the orders.
“They affirmatively wanted to signal to the world which team they were on,” Verrilli said. “They wanted to affirmatively signal to the world that they were complicit,” despite the fact that they presumably knew another firm would likely challenge the orders and potentially have them struck down. Verrilli pointed out that his firm issued an amicus brief that garnered hundreds of supporting signatures — only 10 of which came from Am Law 200 firms.
This willingness to challenge the administration, he argued, extends to pro bono work as well. “[There are] many reports in the press about how the big law firms, and Am Law 200 firms, are so much less willing to take on pro bono work challenging the administration than they were in Trump’s first term, or in Biden’s term, with immigration issues in particular,” Verrilli said.
Verrilli challenged these law firms, as well as the current and future lawyers in attendance, to remember that civic courage is most needed in moments like these.
“Justice Brandeis didn’t say civic courage was easy,” he said. “He said it was necessary. It means that citizens and particularly leaders have to take risks and stand up for what is right, and they have to do that when it is hard…In the first Trump Administration, it was pretty easy. There weren’t going to be specific consequences. Now it’s hard, and it’s important to stand up.”
