In May 2019, I had the opportunity to address the graduating class of Fordham Law School. After I gave the relatively common advice to the soon-to-be-lawyers to adopt a flexible attitude toward their careers, I focused on the following year’s election:

As a teacher of election law I would be remiss not to say this. It is not partisan to acknowledge that the state of our nation is fraught. That the rule of law is being compromised. So whomever you may support in the presidential election, this graduating class has a solemn duty to be involved, to make certain that our constitutional democracy is preserved—to save our Republic.

Little did I realize that the normative and institutional guardrails of our republic would be severely tested in the ensuing year and a half—a defeated president who attempted to foil peaceful succession; a wide-ranging plot by attorneys to undermine the legitimacy of the electoral process, coupled with a slew of frivolous lawsuits; and an armed attack on the United States Capitol.