In the waning days of his administration, President Donald Trump sought to abuse the Justice Department and the courts to overturn the election of Joe Biden and remain in the presidency. Perhaps, we should not be surprised by the former president's unscrupulous use of power, his reckless disregard for the institutions of democracy. But our democracy endured, thanks in part to lawyers in public life who valued the rule of law over ideology. We should pause to acknowledge how well the profession held up under pressure.

As law professors who teach legal ethics, we study the history, traditions, values, norms, rules and regulation of the legal profession. Although the legal profession has its share of "lawyer-statesmen" and "wise counselors," we often teach our students about rogue lawyers. As John Dean, President Richard Nixon's White House counsel, likes to recall, legal ethics became a serious subject thanks to the Watergate scandal, during which many government lawyers, who are supposed to uphold the law, broke it.

In this most recent scandal, there were good and bad lawyers, but it's remarkable how well the profession as a whole stood up under pressure. Lawyers in the Department of Justice resisted Trump's plot to oust acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and use DOJ to pressure Georgia to overturn its election results. After the Texas attorney general failed in his Hail Mary effort to recruit the Supreme Court's help in changing the election result, Justice Department lawyers refused Trump's entreaty to do the same.