4 Small Rivers

Suppose that you’re a brilliant lawyer. What’s the most important credential to be taken seriously by the Bush administration and offered a judicial post? The answer is not a litmus test on, for example, Roe v. Wade. Nor is it approval by your peers, other attorneys, as being the best in your class. Nope: It’s paid-up membership in The Federalist Society. This is not a country club for Madison scholars; nor is it a think tank; nor yet again is it a debating society. It’s a right-wing legal force. Under Bush, TFS: a/ maintains the pool of judicial candidates for Bush; b/ does the official, government-approved vetting (no longer does the American Bar Association do that); c/ its members in Congress vote to confirm judicial appointees and d/ its members in the Administration carry out Bush’s legal goals.

TFS introduces itself thus: Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

The Society seeks both to promote an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities. This entails reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law. It also requires restoring the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, and law professors.

In working to achieve these goals, the Society has created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community.

Let’s deal with the introduction first; more later. “The legal profession is dominated by a … ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.” Funny, I missed that. Where is it? The Supreme Court is dominated by Republicans (7 out of 9). Congress is dominated by Republicans, and has been for quite a while, so it can’t be the laws they’re passing. There are prominent lawyers who argue for individuals’ rights, but where are the powerful lawyers (not in France, now) who argue for a ‘centralized and uniform society’? TFS doesn’t identify any. Indeed, TFS cites plaudits from the heads of such no-name legal backwater schools as Stanford, Harvard, NYU, Northwestern, … on its own website (http://www.fed-soc.org/whatpeoplearesaying.htm ). Yet, this is the central tenet at the outset of TFS’s self-description.

Now, on its own, this is no matter. It’s like the nonsense of Lush Rimbaugh’s ranting about the power of the liberal media: he is (or was, until he tried puncturing his own balloon) one of the most powerful voices in all of media, not liberal. Hmmm.

But, whereas, at its heart, Lush Rimbaugh’s show is pure entertainment, albeit a hate-mongering form of entertainment, we’re supposed to be able to take TFS seriously. To see what they really think, shall we dispense with the artifice of linguistic niceties? Let’s rephrase the first sentence of TFS’s self-description: “The fundamental legal ideology in the U.S. is a socialist view of centralized government and uniform populace.” There, doesn’t that feel better? At least it’s more clearly nonsensical. Brought to you by the nice folks in Washington, where up is down, and peace is war.