In the middle of the night on April 1, 2026, officials from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence arrested prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. Her arrest came amid the ongoing war in Iran, and as the Islamic Republic of Iran has intensified its crackdown on domestic dissenters. Sotoudeh, who has spent her career defending political prisoners, human rights advocates, and women’s rights activists, is now a political prisoner herself.
This is not the first time Sotoudeh has been imprisoned. Since 2010, the 62-year-old lawyer has been arrested numerous times and subjected to prolonged solitary confinement. She was previously sentenced to about 38 years in prison, 148 lashes, and a 20-year ban from practicing law. Public pressure and her deteriorating health led to releases and furloughs.
But in a system where torture is endemic and executions are rapidly rising, the stakes for Sotoudeh are higher than ever. This recent arrest is therefore not only a deprivation of her liberty, but of potentially her life.
Sotoudeh's struggles are emblematic of many lawyers in Iran and around the world.
Globally, lawyers are under attack. Authoritarians are abusing the legal system to persecute and prosecute their opponents, with a seemingly ever-growing list of trumped-up charges and sham trials. As dissidents are detained, journalists jailed, and freedom of expression extinguished, lawyers are often the last line of defense. Because of this, lawyers have now become the target, transformed from counsel to accused, and from constitutionalists to criminals.
In the struggle against authoritarianism, it may seem futile to rely on broken and corrupt justice systems to benefit citizens. Yet, the courage and determination of lawyers who insist upon proper enforcement of the law, even in corrupt and dictatorial regimes, stand as their own form of powerful dissent. In attacking lawyers, authoritarians reveal a deep fear that fair trials and the rule of law threaten their power.
As Czech dissident turned statesman Václav Havel wrote in The Power of the Powerless, “[d]emanding that the laws be upheld is thus an act of living within the truth that threatens the whole mendacious structure at its point of maximum mendacity.” The empty “ritual” of the law is essential for a despot to maintain the facade of fairness in an authoritarian regime. In leveraging this ritual and demanding the genuine fulfillment of these hollow legal protections and procedures, courageous lawyers expose despotic regimes for what they are, for all to see.
Take Russia, where Vladimir Putin has long used the “ritual of the law” to give the appearance of a free and fair legal system, allowing lawyers to defend its most vocal critics even when there is no hope of a just outcome. The capture of the Russian judiciary has been a lengthy and intentional process resulting in courts that frequently provide nothing more than “telephone justice,” whereby judges do the bidding of state officials who simply call in their preferred outcome. Recently, however, the Kremlin has cracked down on any lawyers taking up these cases, culminating in the exile and arrests of Russia’s most capable and courageous lawyers.
The prosecution of Alexei Navalny’s former lawyers—Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser, and Igor Sergunin—demonstrates the Kremlin’s continued efforts to eliminate genuine representation in the legal system. Navalny’s lawyers represented him in the lead-up to his death at a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle. They were arrested in October 2023 on arbitrary “extremism” charges. After their arrest, Navalny’s already severe prison conditions significantly worsened, and his isolation from the outside world grew more severe, until he was eventually killed via poisoning.
By targeting lawyers, Putin removed one of his best-known political opponents. Another of Putin’s well-known pro-democracy adversaries, opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, found his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, forced into exile under threat of prosecution at the end of Kara-Murza’s sham trial. Other human rights lawyers have been recently prosecuted in Russia, including Maria Bontsler, a prominent lawyer who defended individuals persecuted by politically motivated charges. Bontsler has been held in pre-trial detention since May 2025, as her health continues to dangerously deteriorate.
As international counsel to both dissidents and their persecuted legal defenders, we have seen this kind of repression move beyond borders. One of us even faced an assassination plot in Canada and concluded he was poisoned in Russia for defending Iranian human rights lawyers and Russian dissidents.
Underlying such obvious acts of aggression lies an insidious tendency for transnational repression to flow from despots into democracies, oppressing lawyers of all nationalities in the process.
Tragically, in this crucial moment for the legal profession, some nations that once championed the rule-of-law are now dangerously undermining lawyers, rather than defending them. Efforts to intimidate, co-opt, or erode judicial institutions are becoming as frightening as they are frequent in free societies. The case studies of Iran and Russia should be a wake-up call about where this can lead, and a call to action in defense of the rule of law.
To protect the rule of law globally, we must leverage tools like targeted Magnitsky sanctions, which not only name and shame perpetrators but impose real costs, such as visa bans and asset freezes. International criminal court complaints for transnational repression on the territory of member states could potentially also be pursued. Strengthening international legal norms protecting lawyers is necessary, which makes the recently launched Convention for the Protection of the Profession of Lawyer especially timely and worthy of wide support.
To end the intensifying assaults on lawyers, we must make attacking them cost more than it is worth to authoritarians.
We believe that, as it relates to our freedoms and the future of our democracies, the cost of inaction is far too high.
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