New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin describes the Federalist Society as an enormously influential network of conservative lawyers. Its executive vice president, Leonard Leo, played a key role in the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and has quietly advised the Trump administration on other judicial nominations. Yet few people outside the legal profession know what the Federalist Society is. Amanda Hollis-Brusky is the author of “Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution.” I interviewed her over email about how the Federalist Society works, and what its role has been under the Trump administration.
Your book talks about the importance of the Federalist Society in explaining the resurgence of legal conservatism in recent decades. What is the Federalist Society, and why did conservative lawyers need something like it?
The Federalist Society is a conservative and libertarian legal network founded in 1982. It developed in response to a recognition by conservatives and libertarians that they could win election after election, but that they would not change law or politics until they could successfully capture the courts and other elite institutions. So the Federalist Society is part of an attempt to build an alternative legal elite; one capable of moving conservative and libertarian ideas into the mainstream. And it has worked. As evidenced by Trump’s repeated flaunting of his list of potential judges as “Federalist Society approved,” the society — now a vast network of tens of thousands of conservative and libertarian lawyers and judges — has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.
Your book argues that debates within the Federalist Society both help to develop conservative legal arguments and provide a legitimating audience for judges when they adopt conservative doctrines. How does this work?
The Federalist Society doesn’t exert its influence in ways that are familiar to observers of American politics. As a self-professed “society of ideas,” the Federalist Society exerts its influence more subtly — by training, credentialing and socializing right-of-center lawyers through its conferences, events and educational programming. It then activates its vast and powerful network to place the best and bona fide among its ranks into prominent positions in the government or on the federal judiciary. Because judges have lifetime appointments, the trick is to keep them “faithful” to their Federalist Society training once on the bench.
There are too many cautionary tales of good Republican judicial appointees drifting to the left once on the bench (Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, David Souter). The Federalist Society aims to counteract this liberal drift by responding vocally to decisions that seem out-of-step with Federalist Society principles. A great example of this is the backlash Chief Justice Roberts experienced in Federalist Society circles when he voted to uphold the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act — a piece of legislation Federalist Society members mobilized en masse against.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:05/17/2017