What Is The Federalist Society And How Does It Affect Supreme Court Picks?
All Things Considered httpss://www.npr.org/2018/06/28/624416666/what-is-the-federalist-society-and-how-does-it-affect-supreme-court-picks Submitted by Bill Eisen
The Federalist Society is a hugely powerful, nationwide organization of conservative lawyers which will be instrumental in helping President Trump pick the next Supreme Court nominee. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Amanda Hollis-Brusky, author of Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution.
On Kavanaugh’s disclosure forms note his continued involvement with the far-right Federalist Society. In a Republican controlled Senate, judicial appointments to the federal courts must receive the endorsement of the Federalist Society (as if the federal courts weren’t conservative enough already)
2018 financial disclosures for supreme court nominees
httpss://www.opensecrets.org/trump/supreme-court-nominees
From Wikipedia, on the Federalist Society; they are apostles of “original intent” (the Constitution means only what it meant to the framers) and as the name implies, believers in “state’s rights” (the euphemism for racial segregation) and limited capacity of the central government to interfere with corporations or state governments. It is not a big fundraiser, and does not function as a PAC. It’s main role is to vet candidates for judgeships at the state and national level in order to recommend judges who will toe their pro-private enterprise, anti-regulatory, anti-labor line. Every republican president since Reagan has looked to them for prospective judges and Supreme Court Justices, most of whom (since Bork got rejected) have made it onto the Supreme Court and various lower level appeals courts.
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, most frequently called the Federalist Society, is an organization of conservatives and libertarians httpss://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States, seeking reform of the current American legal system in accordance with a textualist or originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
Founded in 1982, it is one of the nation’s most influential legal organizations. It plays a central role in networking and mentoring young conservative lawyers.
According to Amanda Hollis-Brusky, the author of Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution, the Federalist Society “has evolved into the de facto gatekeeper for right-of-center lawyers aspiring to government jobs and federal judgeships under Republican presidents.” httpss://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society#cite_note-farrell-6
The society is a membership organization that features a student division, lawyers division, and a faculty division. The society currently has chapters at more than 200 United States law schools and claims a membership exceeding 10,000 law students. The lawyers division comprises more than 60,000 practicing attorneys httpss://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawyer (organized as “lawyers chapters” and “practice groups” within the division) in eighty cities. httpss://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society#cite_note-background-2
Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, the society provides a forum for legal experts of opposing views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, law students, and academics.
The society began at Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School in 1982 as a student organization that challenged what its founding members perceived as the orthodox American liberal ideology found in most law schools. The society was started by a group of some of the most prominent conservatives in the country, including Attorney General Edwin Meese, Solicitor General and Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, Indiana congressman David M. McIntosh, Lee Liberman Otis, Energy Secretary and Michigan senator Spencer Abraham, and Steven Calabresi. Its membership has since included Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, John G. Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.[10] The society asserts that 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.”[1]
https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/kavanaugh-on-presidential-power-law-review-article-on-investigations-of-sitting-presidents/
Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh recommended that confirmation for judges for life be given an up or down vote in 180 days
