Lawyers: what do you think of Federalist Society today?

[Anonymous]

I graduated from Notre Dame Law School years ago. It was a great place then. It has since been taken over by the Federalist Society and it’s awful. It’s not the same school AT ALL. I’m embarrassed to be an alum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Edgelords is a good word for what I thought in school: people who were taking an unpopular position for the attention.

Now I think they actually want to destroy the country. Their obsession with undoing "the administrative state" will set us back decades, at best, in all kinds of science, safety, and public health fields, but they think they won't be the ones hurt.

I don’t understand their goal. Why?

They don't want to destroy the country. They want to make their corporate sponsors wealthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Edgelords is a good word for what I thought in school: people who were taking an unpopular position for the attention.

Now I think they actually want to destroy the country. Their obsession with undoing "the administrative state" will set us back decades, at best, in all kinds of science, safety, and public health fields, but they think they won't be the ones hurt.

I don’t understand their goal. Why?

They don't want to destroy the country. They want to make their corporate sponsors wealthy.

Destroying the country is a convenient byproduct.

[Anonymous]

I went to Chicago Law not too long ago. Fed Soc was prominent and well-funded. Events were packed because they brought in prominent speakers and served good (free) food. The network clearly served those who wanted a clerkship with a conservative judge quite well. Over half of the members were unremarkable: establishment Republicans, centrists to just right of center folks gunning for clerkships, even some “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” types. A vocal minority represented the far-right, and there were a handful of rather extreme Joshua Generation types in the membership.

I am not a litigator and candidly don’t have much of an interest in politics and the judiciary. Other than the known outliers whom I want nothing to do with (and they probably want nothing to do with me), I really don’t care or remember if the classmates I am still in contact with or encounter in practice had any connection to Fed Soc. I have conducted OCI interviews for and taken candidates from various schools to lunch and have yet to come across Fed Soc on a resume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I graduated from Notre Dame Law School years agoj. It was a great place then. It has since been taken over by the Federalist Society and it’s awful. It’s not the same school AT ALL. I’m embarrassed to be an alum.

Man I feel the same but opposite about my school. It used to be a true professional school. Now it seems to be all about woke politics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pass. I was never comfortable drinking their brand of tea. Even when I was more conservative in my politics as a law student, pre-Obama. They were all in on the torture memos back then.

Also never my cup of tea, but I was likely more conservative than you. Now, I think it's completely shameful that they are aligned with pretty far right politics and that they've packed the courts with nakedly political federal judges, some of whom clearly should not be on the bench. They've destroyed the reputation of the Supreme Court in a fairly permanent way.

In law school I aimed to do appellate law. I am thankful that I am not practicing today.

Agree. I know a few excellent conservative scholars who didn’t buy in, and would have made great judges some day—but they weren’t wanted, they were too independent.

You understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Edgelords is a good word for what I thought in school: people who were taking an unpopular position for the attention.

Now I think they actually want to destroy the country. Their obsession with undoing "the administrative state" will set us back decades, at best, in all kinds of science, safety, and public health fields, but they think they won't be the ones hurt.

I don’t understand their goal. Why?

They don't want to destroy the country. They want to make their corporate sponsors wealthy.

Agree with a small edit. Their goal is not necessarily to make corporate sponsors wealthy, their goal is to work for a corporate sponsor as an attorney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I graduated from Notre Dame Law School years agoj. It was a great place then. It has since been taken over by the Federalist Society and it’s awful. It’s not the same school AT ALL. I’m embarrassed to be an alum.

Man I feel the same but opposite about my school. It used to be a true professional school. Now it seems to be all about woke politics.

People moaning about FedSoc should take a long hard look at most of today's law schools and the instruction the students are getting and the activist behaviors. On the spectrum of things, FedSoc seems much more sane and normal than most of the left leaning law graduates these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was in law school I thought they were edgelords. After I graduated I thought they were mostly pretty normal, just a mainstream right-leaning org. But then Trump came along and I don't even know what they are about now.

I was in the Federalist society as a law student. I am deeply ashamed of it now. I thought they were just a student group for conservative leaning students. Now I think they are trying to overthrow the US government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I graduated from Notre Dame Law School years agoj. It was a great place then. It has since been taken over by the Federalist Society and it’s awful. It’s not the same school AT ALL. I’m embarrassed to be an alum.

Man I feel the same but opposite about my school. It used to be a true professional school. Now it seems to be all about woke politics.

People moaning about FedSoc should take a long hard look at most of today's law schools and the instruction the students are getting and the activist behaviors. On the spectrum of things, FedSoc seems much more sane and normal than most of the left leaning law graduates these days.

Yes because check out all the left leaning law graduates who’ve been indicted in the last 2 weeks for trying to overthrow the government 🙄

[Anonymous]

Every time I open the paper it seems like another of my alma mater’s Fed Soc profs is getting arrested or sued.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was in law school I thought they were edgelords. After I graduated I thought they were mostly pretty normal, just a mainstream right-leaning org. But then Trump came along and I don't even know what they are about now.

I was in the Federalist society as a law student. I am deeply ashamed of it now. I thought they were just a student group for conservative leaning students. Now I think they are trying to overthrow the US government.

I tend to agree—their legal philosophy is essentially one that would bring us back to the state of affairs before the civil war, and we’re surprised that we had an attempted coup? They’re dangerous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to Chicago Law not too long ago. Fed Soc was prominent and well-funded. Events were packed because they brought in prominent speakers and served good (free) food. The network clearly served those who wanted a clerkship with a conservative judge quite well. Over half of the members were unremarkable: establishment Republicans, centrists to just right of center folks gunning for clerkships, even some “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” types. A vocal minority represented the far-right, and there were a handful of rather extreme Joshua Generation types in the membership.

I am not a litigator and candidly don’t have much of an interest in politics and the judiciary. Other than the known outliers whom I want nothing to do with (and they probably want nothing to do with me), I really don’t care or remember if the classmates I am still in contact with or encounter in practice had any connection to Fed Soc. I have conducted OCI interviews for and taken candidates from various schools to lunch and have yet to come across Fed Soc on a resume.

I went to Chicago Law 20 years ago, and Fed Soc was also prominent and well-funded. Events were well-attended by students and faculty from across the spectrum. Even we moderates wanted to hear John Yoo try to defend torture or Kenneth Starr still complain about the Clintons or a very young pre-senate Ted Cruz give a talk in which he was the most nauseatingly smarmy lawyer I've ever seen (true to this day) or, more frequently, the likes of Easterbrook and Posner debate about whatever.

My attitude and feeling about the people who were super involved in Fed Soc has evolved. In law school, it seemed like they were really passionate about "small 'c' conservatism," judges who "called balls and strikes," pride in the supremacy of the American rule of law, and opposition to judicial activism. I wasn't a very political person so it just seemed to me that they were really focused on ideas. I was friends with a lot of them. And I'd talk to people who were way to my left--especially from other schools where there wasn't as much cross-pollination of the political spectrum--and defend how they weren't bad people, they just really believed in certain principles.

Then after law school I watched as mediocre Fed Soc leaders got amazing clerkships and plum jobs (at least, what seemed to me as a young lawyer to be plum jobs), thanks to conservative affirmative action. Which was and is a very, very real phenomenon. The Fed Soc people I knew from Chicago didn't even deny it, they proudly admitted it, because they thought they were fighting back against the monolith of liberalism. And I was sort of jealous of that.

And finally now, I realize that the talk about big ideas and conservative principles was essentially all a lie, just a cover for naked lust for power and political control, and a long attempt to shape the one arguably non-political branch of the federal government into their own image. At best, the "grand principles" people were useful idiots, giving cover to the most craven parts of their movement, and at worst they were lying from the get-go. I'm embarrassed to have been as Fed Soc-adjacent as I was, even though not a member, and it definitely does not have the same meaning to me that it once did when I see it on a resume.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Chicago Law not too long ago. Fed Soc was prominent and well-funded. Events were packed because they brought in prominent speakers and served good (free) food. The network clearly served those who wanted a clerkship with a conservative judge quite well. Over half of the members were unremarkable: establishment Republicans, centrists to just right of center folks gunning for clerkships, even some “fiscally conservative but socially liberal” types. A vocal minority represented the far-right, and there were a handful of rather extreme Joshua Generation types in the membership.

I am not a litigator and candidly don’t have much of an interest in politics and the judiciary. Other than the known outliers whom I want nothing to do with (and they probably want nothing to do with me), I really don’t care or remember if the classmates I am still in contact with or encounter in practice had any connection to Fed Soc. I have conducted OCI interviews for and taken candidates from various schools to lunch and have yet to come across Fed Soc on a resume.

I went to Chicago Law 20 years ago, and Fed Soc was also prominent and well-funded. Events were well-attended by students and faculty from across the spectrum. Even we moderates wanted to hear John Yoo try to defend torture or Kenneth Starr still complain about the Clintons or a very young pre-senate Ted Cruz give a talk in which he was the most nauseatingly smarmy lawyer I've ever seen (true to this day) or, more frequently, the likes of Easterbrook and Posner debate about whatever.

My attitude and feeling about the people who were super involved in Fed Soc has evolved. In law school, it seemed like they were really passionate about "small 'c' conservatism," judges who "called balls and strikes," pride in the supremacy of the American rule of law, and opposition to judicial activism. I wasn't a very political person so it just seemed to me that they were really focused on ideas. I was friends with a lot of them. And I'd talk to people who were way to my left--especially from other schools where there wasn't as much cross-pollination of the political spectrum--and defend how they weren't bad people, they just really believed in certain principles.

Then after law school I watched as mediocre Fed Soc leaders got amazing clerkships and plum jobs (at least, what seemed to me as a young lawyer to be plum jobs), thanks to conservative affirmative action. Which was and is a very, very real phenomenon. The Fed Soc people I knew from Chicago didn't even deny it, they proudly admitted it, because they thought they were fighting back against the monolith of liberalism. And I was sort of jealous of that.

And finally now, I realize that the talk about big ideas and conservative principles was essentially all a lie, just a cover for naked lust for power and political control, and a long attempt to shape the one arguably non-political branch of the federal government into their own image. At best, the "grand principles" people were useful idiots, giving cover to the most craven parts of their movement, and at worst they were lying from the get-go. I'm embarrassed to have been as Fed Soc-adjacent as I was, even though not a member, and it definitely does not have the same meaning to me that it once did when I see it on a resume.

This is such a dumb take. The only kind of hiring preference FedSoc got is for right-leaning politically charged orgs and posts that liberals wouldn’t want anyway. How that you are suggesting that an unfair preference is beyond me. You don’t think the ACLU likes to hire people with clubs thats signal progressive commitments???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was in law school I thought they were edgelords. After I graduated I thought they were mostly pretty normal, just a mainstream right-leaning org. But then Trump came along and I don't even know what they are about now.

I was in the Federalist society as a law student. I am deeply ashamed of it now. I thought they were just a student group for conservative leaning students. Now I think they are trying to overthrow the US government.

So guilt by association is okay in this context? Where else are you okay with that?