NYU and Berkeley Report on Threats Against Federal Judges: Attacks Are Changing How the Job Gets Done

This report was jointly issued by the Rule of Law Lab and the Berkeley Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law. Release Date: August 31, 2026. It draws on thirty-four interviews with an equal number of federal judges appointed by presidents of both major political parties and research of publicly available materials.

Above the Law summarizes the finding: escalating threats, intimidation, harassment, and disinformation are straining the federal bench, and it’s starting to change how the job actually gets done. amNY reports the total number of threats tracked by the U.S. Marshals Service has surged in the years since 2022, when it counted 403 threats to judges. That number has spiked from 509 to 630. The year labels for the 509 and 630 counts are not in the fetched text.

The report’s central ask is that lawyers and bar associations, not the judges, who are constrained by their own ethics rules from mounting much of a defense, step up and publicly defend judicial independence. Above the Law notes the ask came even with 128 former judges, scholars, and prominent practitioners signing the complaint. Earlier threat-count entry: 2025-05-31–federal-judges-373-threats.