Warnings of threats to U.S. Constitution highlighted at San Francisco "Constitution Day" event

In legal circles, September 17th is considered "Constitution Day," the date the founding document was officially ratified. It was a radical experiment in 1787, when a young, upstart nation invested power in the people through the rule of law. But 238 years later, at an annual ceremony in San Francisco, judges, lawyers and legal scholars warned that those principles are in grave danger.

"I don't think a lot of us here today, when we graduated law school, gave much thought to Constitution Day," said Bobby Shukla, president of the SF Trial Lawyers Association. "It now has greater meaning because we firmly believe that the Constitution is under attack."

It was a small, but distinguished group that gathered in front of the Federal Courthouse in San Francisco. Among them, former California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, who urged her colleagues in the legal profession to take an active role in protecting and shaping the founding document.

"The Constitution is important and every one of you is a diplomat and warrior for the message in that Constitution," she said. "And we all have a duty to challenge it. Because only in challenging and defending it and arguing over it, does it grow. And it always grows to protect more people. And that's our sworn duty as lawyers and judges, is to push the edge of these protections and the rule of law."

But Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky is worried. The Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law said he's never seen a time like this.

"No democracy lasts forever. We all know countries in the world that were democracies and are no longer. And I believe that in this moment OUR democracy is in a more serious threat than it has ever faced in all of American history," he said. "The core of the rule of law is that no one, not even a president, is above the law. We've never seen a president so often, and so systematically, ignore the Constitution and laws. If our democracy is to survive, it's got to be because the courts are there to enforce the Constitution and laws."

Prof. Chemerinsky said, at this point, the Judicial Branch is all that is standing to protect democratic rule, most often in the form of lawsuits challenging Trump administration executive orders.

"But I've been very distressed in a number of cases to see the Supreme Court reverse the lower courts, rule in favor of the Trump administration, often without any opinions," he said.

Chemerinsky pointed to the recent decision to allow ICE agents to engage in racial profiling when rounding up people for deportation. The High Court's ruling came with no explanation.

"It is really our only chance to have the Constitution survive--to enforce the guardrails of democracy," he said. "But so far, it's been very discouraging to see what the Supreme Court has done."

Normally, Constitution Day is spent discussing the law with high-minded platitudes. Not this year. Shukla admitted she's viewing the Constitution differently these days.

"I am," she said. "I graduated law school more than 20 years ago. I never imagined that I would be standing in front of a courthouse talking about defending the Constitution. I always took that for granted."