[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-1-en-105":3,"doc-seo-237564-105":53,"doc-detail-237564-en":126},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,14,19,24,29,34,39,44,49],{"id":8,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":11,"show_sort_weight":12,"slug":13},11,1,"Template","Presentations",90,"presentations",{"id":15,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":16,"show_sort_weight":17,"slug":18},12,"Resumes",80,"resumes",{"id":20,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":21,"show_sort_weight":22,"slug":23},14,"Invoices",70,"invoices",{"id":25,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":26,"show_sort_weight":27,"slug":28},15,"Posters",60,"posters",{"id":30,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":31,"show_sort_weight":32,"slug":33},16,"Social Media",50,"social-media",{"id":35,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":36,"show_sort_weight":37,"slug":38},17,"Forms",40,"forms",{"id":40,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":41,"show_sort_weight":42,"slug":43},18,"Letters",30,"letters",{"id":45,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":46,"show_sort_weight":47,"slug":48},21,"Paper Templates",5,"papers-templates",{"id":50,"doc_module":9,"doc_module_name":10,"category_name":51,"show_sort_weight":4,"slug":52},158,"General","general-158",{"code":4,"msg":54,"data":55},"ok",{"site_id":56,"language":57,"slug":58,"title":59,"keywords":60,"description":61,"schema_data":62,"social_meta":119,"head_meta":121,"extra_data":123,"updated_unix":125},105,"en","should-we-stay-or-should-we-go-lessons-from-the-trump-administration","Should We Stay or Should We Go - Lessons from the Trump Administration","","After the 2016 U.S. election, commentators debated whether lawyers and federal officials should remain in government during the Trump administration. This article reviews those essays, including David Luban’s warning about the risks of staying, and extracts three concepts—desk perpetrators, desk mitigators, and operational maneuvering room. It applies these ideas to officials who used internal resistance or chose principled resignation, including instances of concerted action.",{"@graph":63,"@context":118},[64,80,101],{"@type":65,"itemListElement":66},"BreadcrumbList",[67,71,74,77],{"item":68,"name":69,"@type":70,"position":9},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":72,"name":10,"@type":70,"position":73},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/",2,{"item":75,"name":51,"@type":70,"position":76},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/general/",3,{"item":78,"name":59,"@type":70,"position":79},"https://docshare.wps.com/template/should-we-stay-or-should-we-go-lessons-from-the-trump-administration/237564/",4,{"url":78,"name":59,"@type":81,"image":82,"author":87,"headline":59,"publisher":90,"fileFormat":93,"inLanguage":57,"description":61,"dateModified":94,"datePublished":95,"encodingFormat":93,"isAccessibleForFree":96,"interactionStatistic":97},"DigitalDocument",{"url":83,"@type":84,"width":85,"height":86},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/should-we-stay-or-should-we-go-lessons-from-the-trump-administration/237564.png","ImageObject",442,249,{"name":88,"@type":89},"Đào","Person",{"url":68,"name":91,"@type":92},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-26","2026-09-11",true,{"@type":98,"interactionType":99,"userInteractionCount":79},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":100},"ViewAction",{"@type":102,"mainEntity":103},"FAQPage",[104,110,114],{"name":105,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":107},"What debate does the article focus on after the 2016 election?","Question",{"text":108,"@type":109},"It examines whether lawyers and federal officials should remain in government during the Trump administration, based on the advice offered in contemporary essays.","Answer",{"name":111,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":112},"Which three concepts from David Luban does the article analyze?",{"text":113,"@type":109},"The article discusses desk perpetrators, desk mitigators, and operational maneuvering room, using them to interpret official conduct during the Trump era.",{"name":115,"@type":106,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How do internal resistance and principled resignation relate to the article’s framework?",{"text":117,"@type":109},"The article applies Luban’s concepts to officials who either resisted from within or resigned on principled grounds, including examples of coordinated resignations.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":78,"og:type":120,"og:title":59,"og:site_name":91,"og:description":61},"article",{"robots":122,"canonical":78},"index,follow",{"doc_id":124,"site_id":56},237564,1790021815,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":127},{"doc_id":124,"user_id":128,"nickname":88,"user_avatar":129,"doc_module":9,"category_id":50,"category_name":51,"doc_title":59,"doc_description":61,"doc_content":130,"file_id":131,"file_url":132,"file_type":133,"file_size":134,"view_count":79,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":9,"is_downloadable":9,"audit_status":9,"page_count":135,"language":136,"language_code":57,"site_id":56,"html_lang":57,"table_of_contents":137,"faqs":138,"seo_title":139,"seo_description":61,"update_tm":140,"read_time":141},1374402968488,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Should We Stay or Should We Go: Lessons from the Trump Administration  \nKATHLEEN CLARK*  \nABSTRACT  \nAfter the 2016 election, commentators published a flurry of essays with advice on whether lawyers and federal officials should remain in government during the Trump administration. In this article, I review those essays, including Professor David Luban’s stern advice about the risk of remaining. I also discuss three key concepts from Professor Luban’s article for this symposium: desk perpetrators, desk mitigators, and operational maneuvering room, and explore how they apply to Trump administration officials who engaged in internal resistance or principled resignation. More than one hundred federal officials in the administration engaged in principled resignation, many acting in concert with each other. The power of concerted action is most evident when a group of powerful officials together threaten to resign as a way of deterring abusive conduct. Many of these officials wrote letters or op-eds explaining their decision to resign, often sounding in the language of morality, emphasizing their disagreement with Trump policies and rhetoric they found repugnant.  \nTABLE OF CONTENTS  \nINTRODUCTION ......................................... 706  \nI. ADVICE PUBLISHED IN THE WAKE OF THE 2016 ELECTION ... 708  \nII. DAVID LUBAN’S EVOLVING VIEWS ..................... 711  \nA. 2016.......................................... 712  \nB. 2020.......................................... 713  \nIII. RESISTANCE AND RESIGNATION UNDER TRUMP............ 715  \nA. INTERNAL RESISTANCE .......................... 715  \nB. PRINCIPLED RESIGNATIONS ....................... 718  \n* Professor of Law, Washington University. © 2021, Kathleen Clark.  \n706 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LEGAL ETHICS [Vol. 34:705  \n1. CONCERTED ACTION ............................ 719  \n2. LETTERS AND OP-EDS EXPLAINING DECISION TO RESIGN ..... 721  \na. Purpose in Resigning ....................... 721  \ni. Avoid Participation ................... 721  \nii. Disassociate ........................ 723  \niii. Acknowledge Futility .................. 726  \nb. Language of Morality ....................... 727  \nc. Areas of Sharpest Disagreement ............... 729  \nCONCLUSION ........................................... 731  \nINTRODUCTION  \nAfter Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, many commentatorsand scholars recognized the grave threat to democratic governance that his presidency posed. Within days, Masha Gessen’s essay, Autocracy: Rules for Survival, went viral.1 Classic dystopian novels, such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, became best sellers,2 as did non-fiction books by historians and political scientists, such as ON TYRANNY and HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE.3 The mood in the country veered toward the apocalyptic. There was a spate of articles and blog posts examining whether federal officials could responsibly  \n1. Masha Gessen, Autocracy: Rules for Survival, N.Y. REV. BOOKS (Nov. 10, 2016), [https://www.nybooks](https://www.nybooks). com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/ [[https://perma.cc/CUC5-G2TV](https://perma.cc/CUC5-G2TV)]; Ezra Klein, Masha Gessen on the frightening fragility of America’s political institutions, VOX (July 10, 2020, 7:30 AM), [https://www.vox.com/2020/7/10/21318625/donald-trump-surviving-autocracy-masha-gessen-the-ezra](https://www.vox.com/2020/7/10/21318625/donald-trump-surviving-autocracy-masha-gessen-the-ezra)klein-show [[https://perma.cc/R58B-WHB3](https://perma.cc/R58B-WHB3)](“Within 48 hours of Trump’s victory, their essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” had gone viral”); Masha Gessen, One Year After Trump’s Election, Revisiting “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” NEW YORKER (Nov. 8, 2017), [https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/one](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/one)year-after-trumps-election-revisiting-autocracy-rules-for-survival [[https://perma.cc/JV4M-N2UQ](https://perma.cc/JV4M-N2","cbCaigLafw89h5gp","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaigLafw89h5gp","pdf",349736,27,"English","# Introduction\n## Advice published in the wake of the 2016 election\n## David Luban’s evolving views\n## Resistance and resignation under Trump\n### Internal resistance\n### Principled resignations\n## Concerted action\n## Letters and op-eds explaining the decision to resign\n### Purpose in resigning\n### Language of morality\n### Areas of sharpest disagreement\n# Conclusion","[{\"question\":\"What debate does the article focus on after the 2016 election?\",\"answer\":\"It examines whether lawyers and federal officials should remain in government during the Trump administration, based on the advice offered in contemporary essays.\"},{\"question\":\"Which three concepts from David Luban does the article analyze?\",\"answer\":\"The article discusses desk perpetrators, desk mitigators, and operational maneuvering room, using them to interpret official conduct during the Trump era.\"},{\"question\":\"How do internal resistance and principled resignation relate to the article’s framework?\",\"answer\":\"The article applies Luban’s concepts to officials who either resisted from within or resigned on principled grounds, including examples of coordinated resignations.\"}]","Should We Stay or Should We Go - Lessons from the Trump Administration | PDF",1789113459,9]