Joyce Vance

“Lawyers talk about “the practice” of law. We are “practicing” because we are constantly learning more, developing our skills, and getting better at it. We learn from our mistakes. We work harder. We get it right. We continue to practice. As Americans, we should treat democracy the same way: the practice of democracy, something we do together as Americans. When we make mistakes, even big ones, we can learn from them. We dig deeper so we can fix them. We get back to work. But what we cannot do is give up.”
― Joyce Vance, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy

“If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Madison was Montesquieu’s greatest admirer. He wrote in Federalist 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” Those words from history might have felt rote, even irrelevant, just a few years ago, too obvious to even a casual observer as to require any reflection. But of course, it is not a few years ago. We are watching what Madison would call “the very definition of tyranny,” the effort to consolidate the power of the executive branch—while suppressing Congress, the courts, and the press—in one set of hands, those of an American president. The importance of separating power among three branches of government has never been more apparent. If there is a magic bullet for preserving democracy, it is this: prevent any one branch of government from holding too much power, especially power that the Constitution specifically gives to another branch of government. Democratic state attorneys general understood this when they joined forces and began heading into court over some of the early executive orders in 2025. The lawsuits, which involved matters including birthright citizenship, federal funding freezes and grant cancellations, DOGE access to information in possession of the Treasury Department, firing federal workers, DOGE’s constitutionality, and dramatic reductions of personnel and services at the Department of Education, asked the courts to prevent the president from seizing an outsize share of power for himself. Although the cases involved different substantive issues, their unifying goal was to restrict the president’s power to what the Founding Fathers directed in the Constitution. Various plaintiffs, including state attorneys general, civil rights groups, pro-democracy organizations, federal employees, and other individuals harmed by the administration’s actions, filed more than one hundred lawsuits in just the first two months that the new administration was in operation. More were filed after that, particularly as Trump’s deportation plans heated up. At the heart of these cases was an effort to protect the system envisioned by Montesquieu’s trias politica.”
― Joyce Vance, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy