Do the prominent lawyers representing President Donald Trump, his family and his administration—many of them Jewish—have a duty to speak out in the wake of his comments about the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia?

The president called racism “evil” and singled out the “KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” in prepared remarks on Monday. But he earned widespread condemnation a day later when he placed blame on “both sides” and the “alt-left” for the clashes that left a 32-year-old counterprotester dead on Saturday.

“Administration lawyers are not obligated by professional conduct rules to speak up,” acknowledged Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University School of Law and well-recognized ethics expert. But, he added in an email: “I believe that decency and respect for the rule of law morally requires them to denounce the president's hateful rhetoric, insensitivity to the norms of civil society, historical ignorance, and failure forcefully to repudiate the anti-Semitic and racist slurs of the demonstrators.”