The Federalist Society: judge-makers
This Politico article by Michael Kruse on the formation of the Federalist Society in 1982 is a curious piece. It conveys what I assume are the general facts—that a bunch of far-flung conservative law professors, judges, and law students met together at Yale in order to share ideas and try to get more conservatives into the legal and judicial fields—while at the same time subtly insinuating that such a meeting and such a plan was something vaguely underhanded and not altogether cricket.
It’s a long article, and only some way into the piece does it mention the reality that led to this meeting, which is that by 1982 liberals almost completely dominated the legal profession:
In the fall of 1980, Calabresi would recall in an interview with the ABA Journal, he was struck by what happened when the 88 members of his first-year class at Yale Law were asked whether they had voted for Reagan: Only two people raised their hands…
It had been this way for decades. “The law schools were exceedingly one-sided,” McConnell, the Stanford law professor, told me. Being a conservative then at a college or a law school, Scalia later said to biographer Joan Biskupic, made one feel “isolated, lonely … like a weirdo.”…
“It is an intellectual debate,” Bork said in his talk [at that initial meeting in 1982].
And at that point, it was one they were losing. “Conservatives have simply been outgunned at the federal level for half a century,” Scalia said.
“When liberals are in power,” he added, “they do not shrink from using the federal structure of what they consider to be sound governmental goals.”
The solution, according to Blackwell, the veteran organizer of young conservatives? “Study how to win,” he told the symposium audience.
In other words, the relentless liberal/left Gramscian march through the legal profession and the judiciary, that had taken hold during the administration of FDR fifty years earlier, had succeeded in completely dominating those fields, so much so that this 1982 get-together (of only about 200 people, and that included students) was one of the very few times a group of conservative law scholars had assembled in any significant numbers.
And what did they do? They decided to use a more practical approach than their previous “Sir Galahad theory: ‘I shall win because my heart is pure.’” They decided to organize their geographically-dispersed forces and focus on winning.
What a novelty for the right in the legal profession. Till then, the technique had been owned by the left.
However, the fact that they have succeeded to a certain degree in transforming the Supreme Court by getting many of their picks on it has been dependent on the election of GOP presidents to nominate them and also on a GOP Senate (or at least one with fairly moderate Democrats) to approve them. If that had not happened, the Federalist Society would have been spinning its wheels as far as SCOTUS justices and other federal judges are concerned.
The election and re-election of Barack Obama undermined whatever inroads the conservatives had made (the following was written shortly before the inauguration of President Trump):
Republicans cannot wait to begin dismantling President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, but there’s one thing they can’t undo, even with full control of Congress and the White House: his judicial legacy.
Obama will leave office with 329 of his judicial nominees confirmed to lifetime posts on federal courts. That includes two U.S. Supreme Court justices and four judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the two most powerful courts in the nation. Because of Obama, Democratic appointees now have a 7-4 advantage on the D.C. panel, and those judges will play a major role in deciding cases during the Trump administration related to environmental regulations, health care, national security, consumer protections and challenges to executive orders.
Obama also tilted the partisan makeup of circuit courts. Nine of the country’s 13 appeals courts now have majority Democratic appointees, compared with just one when he took office in 2009.
The Politico article states that Trump’s SCOTUS nominees were made on the recommendation of the Federalist Society. The author writes that Trump “subcontract[ed] this task to the Federalist Society, which had performed this duty for previous Republican presidents but never so explicitly.” Would the left have preferred Trump to have drawn the nominees’ names out of a hat? Winged it and found them on his own? Perhaps; then they could have criticized him all the more. Presidents ordinarily get advice from legal experts, and Trump did the same. The only reason it was more explicit in this case was that Trump made a point of publishing his picks before the election, in order to burnish his previously non-existent conservative credentials, and the MSM made a big deal of that process as well.
Kruse goes on to say that “the architects of the Federalist Society have attained a level of influence on the courts they never could have imagined, in a way they never could have envisioned.” Well, I doubt that they—or anyone else except Trump—envisioned Trump as the mechanism by which they would increase their influence, but they certainly did imagine that they could ultimately come back, at least to a certain extent, from the relative nadir of their influence at the time of their formation as a formal group.
How far does their influence extend? Further than liberals and the left would like it to, because liberals and the left seem to think that it is their own right to dominate the legal profession and judiciary almost entirely. Anything else is considered a usurpation. If my quite elite law school alma mater is any indication (I get regular mailings of their magazine which updates me on happenings there), the domination of the faculty and student body by liberals and the left is still nearly complete.
[NOTE: The comments to that Politico article are quite instructive. Just looking at some of the first few right now, I see these sorts of criticisms:
What did you expect from a bunch of ” self entitled kids” with no doubt fathers who were already right wing money grabbers…
The issue is that the GOP to stack the Supreme Court is allowing a tainted President to appoint a nominee who may not have the authority to do so.
An organization whose explicit goal is to politicize the federal judiciary should be considered subversive. Membership in the Federalist Society should disqualify would-be nominees to the bench.
what happened? a few rich little pricks living off mommy and daddys $ decided to never help anyone again but themselves.
So, basically, let’s make sure only the rights and whims of the white and wealthy are counted in 2018 by enshrining as perfect a document created when only the white and wealthy counted. That about it?
A group of Selfish sexist Rich or wannabe Racist AynRand Libertarians who Sold their Souls for money to Tea Bag MILLIONAIRE Fascist Republicans !!! Scumbag Dumbo TRUMPO is GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY LOCK THEM ALL UP !!! Scumbag Dumbo TRUMPO is a LYING Sexist BIRTHER Racist piece of Trash & a Tax CHEATING Wife CHEAT Business CHEATER Draft Dodger Chicken-Hawk COWARD !! LOCK HIM UP & his Band of BreitFART Fascist Republicans !!! REMEMBER this scumbag Dumbo TRUMPO opened CONCENTRATION CAMPS for Children !!!…
Etc., etc., etc..]
Interesting to see that the intellectual immaturity of the far left is equal that of the far right.
Interesting to see that the intellectual immaturity of the far left is equal that of the far right.
What’s the ‘far right’. Roy?
While we’re at it, that’s not the ‘far left’ you’re reading there. That’s how street-level Democrats think and talk.
“However, the fact that they have succeeded to a certain degree in transforming the Supreme Court by getting many of their picks on it has been dependent on the election of GOP presidents to nominate them and also on a GOP Senate (or at least one with fairly moderate Democrats) to approve them. If that had not happened, the Federalist Society would have been spinning its wheels as far as SCOTUS justices and other federal judges are concerned.” – Neo
Well, “Chance favors the prepared,” after all.
Or, “God helps them as helps themselves.”
I’m sure there is a Fable somewhere on point. 😉
Nice fisking of the Politico article. It’s so typical of the slipped-in-slant that is almost unnoticeable unless one is looking for it. Of course, the right does the same thing (it’s impossible to eradicate baked-in-bias).
However, please give us a trigger warning if you are going to link to HuffPo!
I prefer to starve them of clicks.
“The election and re-election of Barack Obama undermined whatever inroads the conservatives had made (the following was written shortly before the inauguration of President Trump):”
Although I would like to institute a retirement age for judges, Supremes included, I think it is overall an advantage to have a long-phase cycle in one branch of the government, so long as the other two can alternate between parties more frequently. It smooths out ideological passions (or should).
The problem, as noted by the Federalist organizers, occurs when the elites that feed the branches (and the bureaucracy) are so seriously out of balance.
The hard left has taken over the democrat party during the last 20 plus years.They do not seek common cause, they seek a totalitarian rule, with real concentration camps, unlike the imaginary camps of the brain fevered twatters of the LIVs. Right now we are in a state where politics is war. The LIVs of the left better hope it doesn`t progress beyond the realm of the ballot box. The masters of the left must be stupid to believe they will be immune of the consequences of what they seem more than willing to provoke.
My, these are some folks that are not well and that should seek professional help.
You went to school with some scary people.
since none care for the actual facts from history, no need for me to comment…
A fitting post for your return from the home of black shirts and Gramsci. When the dominant media singles out a target for disdain, you can bet the target must be extremely effective in gaining ground for conservative principles.
Kruse is a good writer. I’ve read a number of his pieces over the years. He tries hard, but his leftist beliefs intrude when he can’t help it. Some months back, he did a piece where he went to Pa to learn why traditionally Democrat areas went from strongly supporting Obama to voting heavily for Trump. It was obvious throughout the piece that he genuinely wanted to understand. But he just couldn’t help arguing with the people he interviewed.
steve walsh:
The folks you cite are NOT sick nor are they mentally ill. We have a moral duty to care for those amongst us that are sick, but these people are EVIL. Our only duty in the face of Evil is total resistance.
I am very thankful the Federalist Society was born when it was, just in the nick of time. Otherwise we’d be in gulags by now, thanks to the ever-tender mercies of Barack Hussein and Eric the Red Holder.
Cicero: you make a fair point, but I would argue evil versus illness is a motivation argument. It doesn’t matter to me which is the source, that they are wrong is enough, and I agree they must be resisted.
steve:
Illness is to be treated. Evil is to be resisted and quashed because it is not treatable. One cannot undo, cure or reverse evil.
I feel I must distinguish between the two.
Our adversaries are evil. It is more than a motivational distinction.
Was McCain suffering from political illness or was he evil? Illness of a selfish form, I suggest. Ask the same about Andrew Cuomo or Bernie Sanders or Bill De Blasio or ol’ Nancy Pelosi or Hillary or Pocohontas Warren, especially in terms of their impulses about us, the hoi polloi: they are all evil, though sometimes beguiling–e.g. Sanders. Evil is good at beguiling! Especially when dealing with fools.