Czechoslovakia’s Lesson for America: Lawyers are Key to Peacefully Defeating Authoritarianism—Help Them
Romania had to kill its tyrant and his supporters to make room for democracy because it had no legal route to oust him
Martina Navratilova is “pissed off as hell.” She fled totalitarian Czechoslovakia for the United States only to watch too many Americans now give up on freedom without a fight. She is speaking up as part of an ad campaign for an organization that shares the stories of those harmed by Donald Trump.
My family and I fled Romania for the West. The contrast between our two countries, during the twilight of communism and in its aftermath, offers a stark lesson for Americans confronting threats to democratic norms today. In Czechoslovakia, a resilient (albeit repressed) legal framework and brave legal advocates created space for peaceful resistance. In Romania, the complete destruction of legal institutions left violence and chaos. One path led toward the Velvet Revolution; the other toward summary execution of its leader after thousands of civilian deaths and injuries.
The difference should remind Americans why safeguarding our legal system must be everyone’s priority.
Czechoslovakia: When Legal Infrastructure Survives
In 1975, an unlikely document became the foundation for democratic resistance in Eastern Europe. Seeking international legitimacy, Soviet bloc countries signed the Helsinki Final Act, committing to respect some basic rights. The “Third Basket” of the act dealt with human rights principles. To the dismay of the Soviet Union, many in Warsaw Pact countries expected that these provisions would actually be enforced. They began organizing. In Czechoslovakia, dissidents succeeded in having the provisions enshrined into the country’s legal system just a year later. For the first time, human rights principles became binding on a communist government. In the following year, 1977, activists drafted Charter 77, a manifesto that criticized the Czech government for failing to implement a variety of human rights provisions to which it had agreed. Among its drafters was playwright (and later Czech president) Václav Havel.
Charter 77 was effective because it focused on law. The manifesto challenged the Czech government to follow existing laws, which included allowing democratic protest. Rather than calling for revolution, Charter 77 put the lie to communist propaganda and sought to hold the government accountable to its own supposed commitments. Step by step, this allowed activists to make progress. In 1978, Charter 77 signatories established the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS), which helped those facing persecution to secure legal representation and financial assistance. Despite VONS members at times being unjustly arrested and even imprisoned for years (including Havel himself), the organization persisted.
Czechoslovakia’s regime never fully destroyed the country’s legal infrastructure. Courts still operated, albeit in a compromised fashion. Lawyers could still represent clients, with limitations. To be clear: the regime routinely bent the law to its needs. Charter 77 signatories did not simply win court cases or force policy changes via legal pressure.
What mattered was that the legal framework was suppressed rather than downright annihilated—a distinction traceable to Czechoslovakia’s unique 20-year history (1918-1938) as a functioning parliamentary democracy largely under founding President Tomáš Masaryk. As a result, lawyers maintained professional identities and standards. Legal procedures continued to exist, even when manipulated. Most importantly, the preserved infrastructure meant that when mass demonstrations erupted in November 1989, there existed both the institutional framework and trained personnel capable of managing a peaceful transition. The Communist Party capitulated, and Havel was quickly elected interim president and ultimately, president.
Romania: When Legal Infrastructure Dies
Unlike Czechoslovakia, Romania had no Charter 77, no VONS or committee to help the unjustly prosecuted, no meaningful legal framework that dissidents could invoke. As one scholar put it:
[T]he beginning of democratization in Romania was substantiated by philosophers, writers, and even journalists, as opposed to Romania’s prominent legal scholars who had been thoroughly selected and censored so as to echo only the party policy and to perpetrate an atmosphere of terror and oppression.
Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s dictator, had systematically destroyed the country’s rule of law. Detainees could be held for 60 days without the right to seek judicial review, to confer with an attorney, or even to have family notified. The legal profession existed only to support the regime. There was no legal mechanism for resistance or any substantive change.
Because peaceful transition was impossible, regime change came by violence in December 1989. More than 1,000 people died and thousands more were injured. Indeed, Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that violently overthrew its regime and killed its leader. On Christmas Day, 1989, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were court-martialed. “Based on summary and abusive procedures,” one scholar notes, their trial “lasted only 55 minutes and ended with a death sentence which had been already ... decided by the [National Salvation Front] political leaders. It is considered by most experts to have been a masquerade of justice.” In December 2018, an indictment charging several participants in the Romanian revolution with war crimes described the “mockery of a trial” that produced the Ceaușescus’ conviction and execution. Dramatically, the Ceaușescus’ assigned lawyer ultimately joined with the prosecutor during the show trial, accusing them of capital crimes instead of defending them. The dictator who had spent decades destroying the rule of law discovered that there was no law left to protect him.
More than three decades after these countries’ revolutions, as of 2024, the Czech Republic ranked 20th globally on the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index and Romania ranked 41st, a gap that reflects the enduring cost of destroying legal institutions versus preserving them even under repression. This gap has had consequences. Both countries joined the European Union in 2004, but the Czech Republic has generally enjoyed peaceful democratic governance while Romania has suffered large-scale corruption and government collapses, judicial reform difficulties noted by E.U. monitors, and much lower GDP per capita. From freedom of expression to property rights—even all this time after the fall of communism—the Czech Republic still consistently scores higher than Romania on many significant metrics of civil rights and democratic governance.
The contrast between the experiences of Czechoslovakia and Romania offers vital lessons for Americans today. We face sustained challenges to our legal institutions: attacks on judicial independence, threats to prosecute political opponents, efforts to delegitimize courts, and rhetoric that treats legal process as mere obstacle rather than foundational protection.
We haven’t reached Romania’s nadir. But we also cannot take for granted that our legal institutions will hold without active defense. The United States is not Czechoslovakia, and we have a long-established constitutional democracy associated with robust checks and balances. These institutions and norms are, however, eroding. The administration has threatened criminal prosecution of political opponents and critics, attacked judges who rule against executive actions, called for suspending constitutional provisions, and sought to remove civil servants who uphold legal constraints on executive power. Career prosecutors and agency officials face pressure to prioritize political loyalty over legal obligations. Even well-established democracies can see their legal infrastructure fail when citizens become complacent. Preserving the space for legal resistance requires active commitment from every sector of society. We must maintain the ability of lawyers to challenge governmental overreach, of courts to check executive power, and of legal norms to constrain political will.
Playing Offense and Defense In the Legal System
Lawyers must lead the fight. Throughout Trump’s first year back in the White House, the ACLU took more than 200 legal actions against his administration, including filing over 110 lawsuits. Organizations like the ACLU and Protect Democracy (which also supports The UnPopulist); state attorneys general; and individual lawyers representing immigrants, students, protesters, and others targeted by government action stand at the front lines. They file emergency motions, challenge unconstitutional orders, and force the government to justify its actions in court. Just Security’s Litigation Tracker currently monitors ongoing legal challenges to Trump administration executive actions, providing real-time updates on the status of these cases.
That said, lawyers cannot fight alone. They need resources, public support, and the backing of civil society. Impact litigation that reaches federal appeals courts and the Supreme Court can cost millions, and legal organizations depend on sustained funding. When Charter 77 documented human rights abuses, Western supporters provided crucial financial backing. Americans with resources to spare must participate in preserving U.S. democracy.
In addition, protesters and activists play a vital role in making the legal fights visible. Their public demonstrations do more than express dissent; they create political pressure that makes legal victories sustainable. When courts issue injunctions blocking government action, protests ensure those victories matter. Czechoslovakia’s dissidents understood this: they broadcast their legal arguments through underground publications and Western radio to ensure the public knew what the government was doing.
Also, writers, academics, and journalists must document and explain. Just as Charter 77 published about 600 documents detailing human rights violations, Americans must maintain detailed records of how our institutions are being tested. Political commentary, investigative journalism, academic analysis, and even social media threads that explain legal developments in accessible terms serve a crucial democratic function. They translate courtroom battles into public understanding, creating informed citizens who can hold leaders accountable.
Finally, citizens must treat legal norms as civic obligations. Charter 77 emphasized that responsibility for preserving civil rights rests not only with the state but also with individuals: “Each and every one of us has a share of responsibility for the general situation ...” Americans must reject rhetoric that delegitimizes courts when they rule unfavorably. The irony is painful: the Supreme Court itself has contributed to erosion of public confidence through ethics scandals and controversial departures from precedent, some that have turbocharged abuse and corruption by this White House. Yet the answer cannot be wholesale rejection of judicial independence. Lower federal courts continue to serve as vital checks on executive overreach, and preserving their authority remains essential at the same time that we grapple with Supreme Court dysfunction. We must demand that elected officials respect legal process even when it constrains their goals. And we must only vote for candidates with a commitment to the rule of law.
The challenges to America’s democratic norms are obvious and growing. The question is whether we will actively defend the legal infrastructure that protects us from sliding toward authoritarianism. Will we preserve the institutions that allow peaceful resistance and orderly transitions of power? Or will we allow them to erode through neglect and complacency?
Czechoslovakia’s path required courage: Charter 77 signatories faced harassment, imprisonment, and exile. But that path also called for something more mundane: the preservation of legal forms, the maintenance of professional standards, the insistence that law matters even when power seems to render it irrelevant. Charter 77’s approach—demanding that the government follow its own laws—provided the framework that made peaceful transition possible.
Romania’s collapse teaches us what happens when that framework dies. Ceaușescu destroyed the legal profession’s independence, subordinated courts entirely to political power, and eliminated any room for legal challenge. This total destruction was possible because Romania lacked what Czechoslovakia possessed: an established legal system forged during 20 years of parliamentary democracy. Without entrenched institutions or professional norms to overcome, Ceaușescu could build a legal apparatus designed from the ground up to serve the regime. When his regime fell, there was no mechanism for peaceful accountability; all that remained was a show trial and firing squad. He destroyed the rule of law and victimized millions during his reign, leaving the country without the institutional capacity for justice—requiring a revolution to get justice.
The anniversary of Charter 77 is now commemorated as a triumph of peaceful resistance. In Romania, the events of December 1989 remain controversial and painful, their violence a reminder of how dearly countries pay when legal institutions collapse entirely.
America still has largely functional courts, independent lawyers, and legal norms that constrain power. We have not yet reached the point at which—as in Ceaușescu’s Romania—the entire legal infrastructure exists only to serve the powerful. But these institutions are under sustained attack, and preserving them requires more than passive hope. It demands active engagement: lawyers willing to take hard cases, funders willing to sustain long legal battles, protesters willing to make judicial victories politically salient, writers willing to explain complex legal issues to broad audiences, and citizens willing to defend legal norms, perhaps especially when politically inconvenient.
The lesson from the fall of communism is clear: the rule of law is not self-sustaining. It survives only when people fight for it—in courtrooms and streets, through funding and writing, via protest and ballot box. As constitutional scholar Ilya Somin has documented in The UnPopulist, successful movements defending constitutional rights have historically combined litigation with political mobilization, each reinforcing the other. Legal victories draw public attention to injustices while popular support emboldens courts to check abuses of power. Charter 77 showed what is possible when legal resistance finds support. Romania’s revolution showed what happens when it doesn’t.
Martina Navratilova is right to call our fellow Americans to action before it’s too late.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Very interesting comparison.
Does anyone cry for Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu today? Would anyone cry for Trump or Putin if they shared the same fate?