Resign or Stay?
Risk Your Career, Or Your Honor
Resigning on principle, or noisy exit, has been rare in United States history at the top levels of political power. Generally, the understanding is simple: No one recovers from being known to have principles on which they act by resigning. Of late, it is especially unpopular to express principles in the face of authoritarian threat coming from a wannabe King now occupying high office. In this post, I will connect the function of a noisy resignation in government to other means of expressing alarm about a bad leader in various contests. I label them as When The Taboo Has A Real Reason: The Case of The Military, The Command Structure of the University and the Role of Faculty as Conscience, What About the Corporation?, and Inadequacies of Corporate Mechanics for Leader Dismissal.
This is a long substack, and it indulges my long term in voice from “the ranks” against corrupt or incompetent leadership. For those who wish to go straight to the “noisy exit” question that is now salient, scroll down to What of the Current Arguments about Resigning on Principle from the New Autocracy in Power Over Us All?
I hope the length of this post may be forgivable, given the guidance for skipping the middle part. I would be interested in hearing tips on how to sharpen the analytic continuity relating resignations on principle to other means of expressing alarm about corruption in leadership.
I return to the current crisis in the national government, which has led to a noisy exit by DOJ lawyers, and as I was writing this, a highly unusual mass resignation by 21 software engineers who refused to aid the effort by DOGE to dismantle governmental services. “A group of 21 civil servants whose team was folded into Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned on Tuesday, writing in a joint letter posted publicly that they refuse to use their skills to put Americans' data at risk and ‘dismantle critical public services’." https://www.npr.org/2025/02/25/nx-s1-5308095/doge-staff-resignations-elon-musk It would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to recall any such similar mass voice, paired with career sacrifice on the part of regular, expert civil servants. We are in new territory.
For a long treatment of the rarity of principled resignations, a book worth consulting is Edward Weisband and Thomas M. Franck, Resignation in Protest: Political and Ethical Choices Between Loyalty to Team and Loyalty to Conscience in American Public Life 28 (1975). The thesis of the book is that resignation on principle in the United States is rare and almost not done.
The context for such reluctance to stand up to power at the top is the sense that it is a career killer. “Power” will never trust the noisy resigner. The very act of resigning for a stated principle announces that integrity is someone’s highest loyalty, not power. Those who hold and wield power, or would, will not trust any person known to harbor principles strong enough to express open difference with a strong leader. Leaders fear persons willing to accept personal sacrifice. They and others read such courage as “disloyalty” deployed wrongfully to make an impact on public opinion by the significance of the sacrifice and the reason for it. The rarity and its resulting meaning—see below for the understanding expressed by such a noisy resigner as “career suicide”—is to some degree circular. That it is self-destruction makes it powerful, and that it is powerful requires that it be understood as career self-immolation.
For such reasons and perhaps others, a recent noisy resignation at the Department of Justice sought to lay claim to a loyalty to the top MAGA man, while asserting a sense of honor that required departure because no one was telling the Big Guy he was out of line for ordering a deal be made to drop criminal charges in exchange for political favors. More below on that. The claim to be loyal to the top guy but not to his operatives was an attempt to do a noisy withdrawal from a corrupt administration, claim that a sense of honor and duty required the withdrawal, and say, but trust me, I believe in this corrupt administration, so I am harmless and need not be run to ground. Good try!
The American Taboo.
The most persuasive citation of duty as a willingness to give up public life arises when a political actor resigns from an office against his interests and knowingly destroys his future in politics.
A striking statement of duty by a politician, persuasively reflecting an inner core of commitment, was made by William Jennings Bryan in connection with warnings by William MacAdoo that his resignation from President Wilson’s cabinet and fervent campaign against “preparedness” for war with the Axis powers would end his career:
I believe you are right. I think this will destroy me; but whether it does or not, I must do my duty according to my conscience, and if I am destroyed, it is, after all, merely the sacrifice that one must not hesitate to make to serve his God and his country.1
In this quintessential articulation of the taboo against principled resignation in public life in America, Bryan was crystal clear about the cost of conscience to ambition. Bryan accepted loss of his calling in the political life of the nation, with an attendant sense that the loss constituted personal destruction. Today, retired Republican top officials remain silent, presumably unwilling to lose the connections that have been advantageous and rewarding personally and otherwise. Personal comfort comes first. Personal destruction is unthinkable. Might the taboo have good reasons, aside from human reluctance to lose “everything?”
When The Taboo Has A Real Reason: The Case of The Military
The military is an authoritarian institution that relies on obedience and cohesion to execute its mission, and for reasons relating to its role in a structure of civilian command in the American constitutional system. One sometimes hears a set of arguments that assume that top military officers should make disagreement known by resignation, a view that seemingly meshes with the idea of honor on which a noisy resignation depends.
The notion of resignation by a subordinate might be thought to fit the idea of honorable dissent by which an officer remains subordinate but resigns on principle, to help correct error by exposing it. According to the counterview, such a concept is at entire odds with the deep tradition of civilian control of the military because the threat of resignation would cause civilians to choose military advisors whom they need not fear would go public with disagreement and because public disagreement, even with resignation, constitutes an open politicization of the military and a rebuke to civilian control.2
Here, one sees and can respect a norm of complete subordination of the holders of specialized knowledge—the specialty of the military is defined in our system as something less than the political decision about the deployment of military power. By constitutional design, the decision to use or not use military power is outside the expertise of the military. (Note the separate principle that one must not obey an illegal order, which could become a salient issue in our current national plight.)
Hence, the military is not eligible for the honor associated with a resignation on principle in connection with a military action by a higher authority, as was done in 1980 by Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance because he could not support the President’s Iran hostage rescue mission. Vance differed with a military decision, but he was not a part of the military command structure. He was free to speak and be loud about it.
Vance provides a useful contract to the military rule against resignation as protest. The clarity of the reason for total subordination, and for the illegitimacy of open expressions by the military of difference, however honorable in purpose or method, provides a useful basis for recognizing the lack of persuasiveness in a claim for a “military” norm in other contexts. In the military, honor goes with silence and, in the extreme case, a refusal to obey an illegal order. This nation has yet to experience such a moment of necessary disobedience of civilian command at the highest level of military leadership. Could it occur in the world of the man who has proclaimed himself King? What has been impossible at the very top of civilian control may be no longer “impossible” in our constitutional order of norms that have long held as unstated background.
The Command Structure of the University and the Role of Faculty as Conscience.
I have written extensively about votes of no confidence brought by faculty against university officials, such as Presidents or Deans of law schools. I have a book in draft with co-author Sean McKinniss. Here, my focus is on why the vote of no confidence is a little like a noisy resignation, since faculty members are in no position to resign positions of trust that also are their compensated life’s work. Indeed, a resignation to make a statement would be an enormous gift to a bad administrator, who would be only too glad to be rid of a trouble-making and principled colleague. The vote of no confidence is noisy and hard to dismiss as lacking force. It is personally risky to those who join it, making it morally persuasive. It comes from a group with expertise in university governance, paired with responsibility to the institution. Despite opposition from hierarchies as being illegitimate and lacking in authoritative meaning or effect, an oral tradition maintains it in practice. Powerful leaders, including Lawrence Summers as Harvard President, have been dislodged by such a noisy expression of faculty principle. Such votes are not uncommon, but the resistance of the culture to “noise” from subordinates about strongly held norms is expressed by the common practice of governing boards of announcing a resignation long with a denial that it was a response to faculty voice. Why are principled resignations less common and of doubtful effect, unlike the no confidence vote? Despite efforts to depict such votes as weak and ineffective, they are not rare, and they inspire fear among university leaders.
The distaste for both expressions of dissent from subordinates supports a silence subservient to power. The sense is that deference to power protects stability, and that leaders must be given respect as a default understanding. If bad rulers take power, the idea is to await a regular process to correct course. For a President, the idea is an election. That idea came to the fore when state officials applied Amendment 14, Section 3 to disqualify candidate Trump from the primary ballots in their states in 2020. The argument made, even by sophisticates, was that the solution to an insurrectionist candidate was not to apply the Constitutional rule, but to “let the People decide.” Given that the electoral college is at best a muted statement by “the People,” the problem of low voter participation with low information persons who do vote, and the increasing vulnerability of the electoral process to manipulation by propaganda, the argument rang hollow except to the vast numbers fearful of using the Constitution to protect the nation from a demagogue who had engaged in insurrection. Notably, the very idea of Constitutional under Amendment 14 disqualification is to protect the majority from themselves.
Here, the voice of those who long ago amended the Constitution to allow an effective “protest” of a dangerous leader was felt unruly and dangerous, even by the Court responsible for Constitutional protections.
Back to why the faculty vote of confidence survives even in the face of the propensity to massive deference to power as embodied in a leader. The fundamental norm for the faculty is control over the academic fate of the school, which is served rather than damaged by resort to a method of exposing a misuse by a leader of the authority granted to facilitate coordination and cooperation within the faculty. Moreover, faculty members with tenure are not chosen by the Dean and thus the composition of the faculty is not subject to manipulation by a dean looking for those least likely to express the dissent manifested in a no confidence vote. The faculty is a factor fixed by considerations other than decanal calculation about risk. The expertise they deploy in a mid-period rejection of a leader often goes to the heart of the institutional mission, unless it has obvious earmarks of an effort to advance narrow self-interest or to use a rejection of a leader as a fulcrum in a power struggle with governing authorities over the right to define critical terms of the mission. The instinct to silence and deference paradoxically gives the vote persuasive power, because of an understanding that faculties are risk averse and even heavily influenced by the norm of deference. If they manage to organize against a ruthless leader, the counter-cultural refusal to bow to the forces militating against open dissent directed at a leader provides expressive power. As will be discussed, one issue for a noisy resignation is whether it can command expressive power sufficient to justify the cost to an individual of the act.
What About the Corporation?
Some enthusiasts about market logic as the ultimate solution to all problems have argued that faculties should stand down. Differences about university missions can be addressed by entrepreneurial approaches that allow for product differentiation. In this vision, there is no large social underpinning to the university with norms that faculties can defend. Instead, product differentiation does all the work anyone could need to assure that a university has some version of accountability. Bad leaders and bad internal use of power will eventually bring an institution low. Faculty must obey, as they await needed correction from market forces. Moreover, faculty can self-select into the entrepreneurial vision they like best.
Whatever success is enjoyed on occasion by a purely entrepreneurial approach to operating a college or professional school, the vision of product differentiation in universities is not robust or sound. The university as we know it today is the result of long-term collective inputs to create a socially valuable enterprise outside a profit-making model. Universities are a product of human collaboration over a long period. They have contributed to the human project of advancing knowledge and of creating human links within differences. The dream that universities should be entrepreneurial, with an ownership model that allows market forces to provide the necessary inputs,3 and, in the view of the proponents of market magic, institutes an ideal world of market discipline, is not a sufficient response to the general leadership-failure-and-transition design question.
Further, the dilemma of design within a culture of deference to power addresses a larger category than universities. The dilemma is certain to persist in a world with numerous bureaucratic, public/private4 organizations not conceived in an ownership or pure market model. Market logic does not sweep aside the complex social agreements that sustain the myriad socially significant enterprises not predicated on the ownership of shares with a proprietary claim.
Inadequacies of Corporate Mechanics for Leader Dismissal. Further, for those entities loosely fitting an ownership model, i.e., large public corporations, the design problem has yielded complicated arrangements that permit stakeholders some access to direct dismissal of leaders but which have been persistently critiqued by shareholders as inadequate5 while being analyzed by corporate experts as disruptive to a norm of management operation of large enterprises.6 Hence, the magic of the market, advocated by critics of the general governance of universities, has not been a panacea to problems of leadership in organizations,7 or at any rate a panacea beyond the cavil of observers, either for those to which market logic is applied or for those that, as an empirical matter, occupy large spaces in our social and economic arrangements. Like it or not, societies produce institutions in which power is diffuse, ownership ideas inapplicable, standards for accountability unclear, and the location of legitimate power unstated but expressed in group dynamics that shift over time.8 In the corporation, by contrast, ownership does dominate the vision of who has say.
Over time, the demand for shareholder input has resolved largely into an opening for contests of competing forms of economic power. Takeover contests feed the imagination in a way that suits the idea of clash between powerful men (they do usually involve men). The Twitter takeover by the South African now co-President typifies the stakes and the fascination to the attentive public of such a power battle. Twitter found itself unable to fend off an unwanted suitor with large funds. It succumbed, and Twitter became a corporation immune to dissent as its new owner altered its purpose, values, and function as a social power. This is no vision for universities.
What of the Current Arguments about Resigning on Principle from the New Autocracy in Power Over Us All?
We are now experiencing some noisy resignations, with discussion of whether they are useful, counterproductive, or futile. One expression of the issue takes this form on Facebook: “What does resignation do in face of DOGE criminality?
What does it accomplish?”
This argument against resignations assumes that they have no moral or other persuasive power at all, in the face of what appears to many, and to the poster of the Facebook query, to be pure criminality at the top of our government. A resignation in normal circumstances, even if substantially disapproved and fraught with personal risk, may carry a moral message that will enrich public awareness of a deviation by the government from a set of shared norms. If a world where shared norms seem to be near a state of collapse and irrelevance, one might well ask why anyone should bother with a resignation.
For the average government official who may choose resignation, futility may seem, as it were, especially futile. The person loses a life that has been devoted to honest and competent public service, expectancies such as a secure retirement, and the personal bonds with colleagues that will dissipate with absence from a professional setting. Nonetheless, some may feel that their skills should not be leant to a government displaying a lack of respect for the rule of law or for the welfare of human beings at whom it directs sustained assaults meant to do harm, or one that undertakes actions with reckless indifference to human core needs. Even if resignation is futile in a setting where morality and respect for norms have been rendered a faint historical memory, a sense of conscience or personal dignity may render resignation a means of personal survival. A related reason is fear of ferocity so relentless that personal health and life are in danger.
The Case of the Department of Justice (“DOJ”).
Prominent noisy resignations have happened at the Department of Justice.
Government lawyers have refused to follow an order to file a dismissal of the federal case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City for acts allegedly amounting to public corruption. Two of those resigning have written letters announcing their resignations and the reasons for them.
The first was from the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, an office renowned for its excellence and independence from the bureaucratic structure in the DOJ in Washington. The lawyer who resigned was Danielle Sassoon. Her statement contained legal analysis and statements concerning her oath and her “duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.” https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25527077-acting-us-attorney-danielle-sassoons-resignation-letter/
Her clerkships were noted in her letter and in stories covering her resignation. It was of substantial interest in coverage that she had clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, on whose guidance she placed enormous value as an influence on her character as a lawyer. Referring to both Justice Scalia and Judge J. Harvey Wilkinson, for whom she clerked on the Fourth Circuit, she placed further emphasis on duty. “Both men instilled in me a sense of duty to contribute to the public good and uphold the rule of law, and a commitment to reasoned and thorough analysis.” The order to her to seek the dismissal of the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams was unsupportable to her because, she wrote, “I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law..” and “…dismissing without prejudice and with the express option of again indicting Adams in the future creates obvious ethical problems, by implicitly threatening future prosecution if Adams’s cooperation with enforcing the immigration laws proves unsatisfactory to the Department.” She concludes her letter with the following statement: “In the event you are unwilling to meet or to reconsider the directive in light of the problems raised by Mr. Bove’s memo, I am prepared to offer my resignation. It has been, and continues to be, my honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.”
Her refusal to proceed was not a sole act of conscience. She was not a voice crying in the wilderness. A total of seven DOJ lawyers resigned rather than sign the motion to dismiss, including Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in New York, who was the lead prosecutor in the Adams case. His letter was notable for taking care to express support for the President (the First Felon) and to suggest that the problem at hand was lawyers giving him bad advice. That effort to link a noisy resignation to ultimate faith in the presiding administration, or “MAGA,” moved conservative lawyer and never-Trumper George Conway to near tears in his Bulwark talk with nonlawyer Sarah Longwell.
The idea is Scotten made sure to differentiate himself from claims of being a deep-state never Trumper but instead a loyalist to the “cause” led by a good man.
Given seven resignations, the voice crying in the wilderness—that is, the wilderness of the courtroom in the Southern District of New York—was none other than the Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the man who had ordered the former DOJ attorneys to file a dismissal motion for the case, one in which a grand jury had already entered an indictment. U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho did not grant the motion or deny it. Rather, he sought aid for a thorough and reasoned response to an extraordinary moment in legal history. In the ordinary case, a dismissal by the DOJ carries with a good faith process of reasoning and prudence and is readily supported by any DOJ attorney. The result is that the motion is routinely granted, without a need for judicial skepticism concerning an entire absence of good faith.
The scene in Court, quoting the lawfare posting: “’I called this conference because I have a few questions,’ he [Judge Ho]begins. Before turning to those questions, however, Judge Ho acknowledges that he has ‘very little discretion’ to deny a Rule 48 motion to which both parties have consented. Still, he continues, district courts have some ‘limited’ authority. Otherwise, the language in Rule 48 requiring ‘leave of court’ would serve no purpose. For that reason, Judge Ho thinks it’s appropriate to ask some questions about the motion in order to ‘properly discharge” his duty.” https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-lone-bove-in-federal-court We see here more of that that stuff about duty that the lawyers at the DOJ had yammered about.
The Upshot: Judge Ho deferred a decision and appointed a conservative lawyer for assistance with the unusual request for dismissal of a strong case. The lawyer is Paul D. Clement, former U.S. Solicitor General under George W. Bush. Judge Ho’s reasoning was that he had not had the benefit of an adversarial presentation, since the government and Adams’s lawyers were in accord about “the deal.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/21/nyregion/adams-corruption-judge-independent-lawyer.html A hearing is set for March 14, should one be needed.
Hence, we have here a case much different from that of military officials who differ with a command from a higher level. As explained, noisy resignations are not appropriate within the premises of civilian control. A refusal to obey a patently illegal order is the only option, one that I presume subjects the individual to court martial if the person giving the illegal command chooses to elevate the matter into a public proceeding.
For lawyers, their duty is to the system of justice, to the courts, and to their ethical obligations as lawyers. Former Acting U.S. Attorney Sassoon gave fulsome discussion to that ethical framework for a lawyer. Because filing a motion to a court requires that the lawyer make the filing in good faith and in accordance with his or her ethical obligations, complying with the order is out the question but so is remaining in the office to be fired or leaving with no explanation. Why? Because the lawyer’s duty to the justice system mandates speech about lawyer misconduct, particularly where it involves misuse of government prosecutorial authority. We know firing is on the table, announced by the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/nyregion/bove-adams-charges-dismissal.html Bondi’s open statement about the rules for lawyers under her regime is itself an ethical issue for her use of her authority over lawyers required to abide by a code of ethics.
To emphasize, for a lawyer caught in the vise of an illegal order by a DOJ loyal to a person rather than the Constitution or legal ethics, upon resignation, the ethical lawyer arguably has an affirmative duty to the public to be forthright and candid about the wrongful order that required refusal and resignation.
Thus, the case of lawyers is distinctive in the culture surrounding the generally rare practice of a noisy resignation based on principle. Even if the resignation cannot alter the course being taken by a corrupt leader who will persist in the action, in Bove’s case by doing it himself, after trying to find subordinates willing to yield to a command to commit an unethical act as a lawyer, the plight of his need to appear in court imposed a significant cost. Further, no ethical lawyer could have obeyed Bove. Hence, the resignations were not futile. They were a never-to-be-forgotten benchmark for the idea of duty in a role that does not admit of evasion. Indeed, calls are in the air for Bove to face lawyer discipline affecting his bar license in New York. In fact, there are New York bar filings alleging misconduct by Bove. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25539647/20250219-ao-ltr-to-ny-atty-grievance-cmte-re-bove-final-with-exhibits.pdf (“Considering his purpose in seeking dismissal, his position within DOJ, the direct and indirect consequences of his actions, and the serious risk that Mr. Bove will repeat such conduct in other matters, the need for an investigation is both compelling and urgent.”)
So we may ask of the noisy resignations that rested on the professional ethics and related oaths, whose career death will ensue? For now, Mr. Bove has power, and what he may regard exercising it as another engagement in his career as a lawyer. When his days at the DOJ end, how will his career go? It is worthwhile to note the disbarment and criminal prosecution of lawyers who worked to advance the effort to overturn the 2020 election. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/09/26/kenneth-chesebro-charged-in-wisconsin-here-are-all-the-former-trump-lawyers-now-facing-legal-consequences/
For Ms. Sassoon, her credentials and loyalty to her ethical obligations as a lawyer and as a prosecutor will stand her in good stead. Bove had made noises about charging her with ethical impropriety, but the odds of his being taken seriously outside the protected location of far right politics seem low. Hagan Scotten graduated at the top of his Harvard Law School class and served nine years in the U.S. Army, with three combat tourns in Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagan_Scotten I see a bright future for Mr. Scotten.
Conclusion. Resignation as protest, with speech about the reason, is one means of holding leaders in government to account. Bad and corrupt leaders happen. Elections for President do not assure the absence of corrupt leaders. Claims to entire legitimacy—even Kingship-- after an election by “the People,” overstate how well the Electoral College can really be styled as “the People,” and further overstate the concept that a majority can never be wrong. Other institutions also suffer from periods with bad leaders, for which open voice is a critical safeguard. I have reviewed here some of those institutions and the reasons why voice from below is important and proper by various tactics that serve a function like resignation. I have discussed an exception: dissenting voice from below is not practical in the U.S. military. I have reviewed attempts to assimilate nonprofit institutions created through an accretion of collective inputs over time to the command practiced in profit-making corporations and explained why the comparison is inapt.
For the matter of principled resignation, I have shown that for most public officials, it is widely understood to be career suicide. Two secretaries of state have resigned on principle, with Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan openly it was his career destruction. I then explored the case of government lawyers, who are uniquely required by their profession to refuse to do an unethical act and to speak out about why in a noisy resignation. For others who find themselves in a corrupted governmental structure, the choice is a matter of personal judgment about where honor points them. Remaining in a job to attempt to protect the values under attack would point away from resigning. Personal safety, including mental health, may suggest the first loyalty is to oneself and to one’s family or other loved ones. There may be a view that a resignation, with or without open dissent, is futile: It achieves nothing. For those whose jobs do not mandate silence, the decision is difficult to analyze in the abstract. The just announced mass resignation of 21 tech experts, who are unwilling to aid in the reckless destruction of our government by outside forces empowered by the new “King” allows for thought about the usefulness and the personal need out of honor for such resignations. Interestingly, the letter by these civil servants, sent to Susie Wiles, did not disclose names. Such protection as that cautionary measure may provide, as from possible exposure to targeted political violence, is not massive. Trump and his henchmen know. So the act is one of bravery, conscience, and belief that their withdrawing their service is necessary and has impact. They believe their skills, if not withdrawn, would help a corrupt undertaking, so they have withdrawn them and explained why. They have lost an income and may face some danger, but the act does not appear to be futile. Their oath to the institution of justice—to the rule of law—is intact.
Back to lawyers. What is not abstract is that lawyers owe their duty to the system of law in a large sense and are mandated by their oath as lawyers to refuse to obey an unethical demand and to speak out to protect the public. The evidence is that the act is not futile. It will not put an immediate end to a corrupt government, but it imposes costs that are not trivial. Good lawyers, known to act out of their ethical duty and to display courage, will always have a career.
My money is on Ms. Sassoon and Mr. Scotten. Not Mr. Bove.