Reply to Lawyers: what do you think of Federalist Society today?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=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. [/quote]

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 [i]really[/i] 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 [i]ideas[/i]. 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 [b]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[/b]. 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.[/quote]

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???[/quote]

Um no, this description of conservative affirmative action for clerkships, government leadership roles, and ultimately judicial seats is 100% accurate. (NP and also a Chicago grad.)[/quote]

+1 I had a front row seat to see it in action for a while. Watched iffy folks get appointed to the bench and to leadership roles in the executive branch. Not pretty.  [/quote]

You act like that isn’t true on both sides.  Reality bites.  [/quote]

NP. We're talking about people who had been out of law school about 8 years, getting appointed as judges and agency general counsel. People who the ABA rated "unqualified" becoming federal judges. That actually is unprecedented. [/quote]

The ABA is not an objective source, its approval ratings are highly colored by its liberal political views.  The underqualified young judge thing is just the end state of the gaming of the life tenure system, increasingly practiced by all parties and driven by the incentives associated with a highly politicized judiciary.  (I’m sure we won’t agree on who started THAT lol) The Federalist Society is not a conspiracy, it’s a credible way for law students to signal Republican-aligned political views, and it’s a predictable and healthy response to the overwhelmingly left-wing perspective of the legal academy and the utter shamelessness of the ideological testing that goes on on the liberal side.  Scalia famously hired clerks with liberal views to reduce the risk of group think; not common for progressive judges as I understand it.[/quote]

Calling everything you dislike "liberal political views" is classic tactic, I guess, but a tired one. The ABA is a bastion of the status quo, prone to both-sidesim, and criticized for rating minority candidates lower. They are not leftists.

Reasonable people do not think a 30 year old with limited work experience is qualified to be a judge. You've explained why they were appointed so young, but that doesn’t make them qualified.

BTW, lawyers with no experience in practice shouldn't be law professors either, or agency SES. All these jobs require experience applying the law in the messy real world, and the humility and caution learned from there being consequences to your errors. [/quote]

DP. Your beef is with Trump not FedSoc for crying out loud. He’s the one picking the unqualified judges.[/quote]

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