The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back from Liberals

by Michael Avery, Danielle McLaughlin

Overview

Over the last thirty years, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has grown from a small group of disaffected conservative law students into an organization with extraordinary influence over American law and politics. Although the organization is unknown to the average citizen, this group of intellectuals has managed to monopolize the selection of federal judges, take over the Department of Justice, and control legal policy in the White House.

Today the Society claims that 45,000 conservative lawyers and law students are involved in its activities. Four Supreme Court Justices—Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito—are current or former members. Every single federal judge appointed in the two Bush presidencies was either a Society member or approved by members. During the Bush years, young Federalist Society lawyers dominated the legal staffs of the Justice Department and other important government agencies.

The Society has lawyer chapters in every major city in the United States and student chapters in every accredited law school. Its membership includes economic conservatives, social conservatives, Christian conservatives, and libertarians, who differ with each other on significant issues, but who cooperate in advancing a broad conservative agenda.

How did this happen? How did this group of conservatives succeed in moving their theories into the mainstream of legal thought?

What is the range of positions of those associated with the Federalist Society in areas of legal and political controversy? The authors survey these stances in separate chapters on

• regulation of business and private property
• race and gender discrimination and affirmative action
• personal sexual autonomy, including abortion and gay rights
• American exceptionalism and international law

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826518774
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	784,938
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Danielle McLaughlin, currently an Associate in the Boston office of Nixon Peabody LLP, clerked for the Honorable William Young in the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts and served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of High Technology Law at Suffolk University Law School.

Michael Avery, Professor of Law at Suffolk University Law School where he teaches constitutional law and evidence, is a former president of the National Lawyers Guild. From 1970 to 1998, he was in private practice, specializing in plaintiffs' civil rights litigation and criminal defense.

Editorial Reviews

"...it's possible, given the volume of information in this book, to reconstruct a thesis about why the Federalist Society was so effective in changing the legal debate in America. [...] With striking clairvoyance, it outlined an incrementalist strategy for narrowing the right to reproductive choice and predicted, accurately, that the expansive jurisprudence of personal autonomy, recognized in cases like Roe v. Wade, might eventually lead to the judicial recognition of gay marriage."
—The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

This is the story of how a group founded by conservative law students at the University of Chicago grew into a powerful national movement that has decisively shifted American courts and politics to the right. Avery (law, Suffolk Univ., Boston) and McLaughlin, a partner in the Boston law firm Nixon Peabody, explore the history of the Federalist Society and its role in the modern conservative movement while explaining the guiding principles and goals of the group. The beginning of the book explores how the Federalist Society helped to shape the Reagan era and came to even greater prominence in the George W. Bush White House as its members took seats on the federal courts and positions in the Justice Department. Each of the next chapters discusses the society's approach to issues such as property rights, affirmative action, gender equality, gay rights, and the U.S. role in international affairs. VERDICT The authors write in plain language and explain the legal terms they use for a lay audience. However, the subject is complex and requires some explanation. Students and serious readers interested in the conservative movement will want to read; casual readers will want something else.—Becky Kennedy, Atlanta-Fulton P.L.

Library Journal

Read More