From 2017: With the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo has reared a generation of originalist élites.
“It’s a network, not a hierarchy, with Leonard Leo at the center,” Steven Teles, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement,” said. “The formal activities of the society are important—the chapter meetings at law schools, the national conferences in Washington—but the most important thing they do is give conservatives a chance to meet one another and check one another out. All that activity lets people bubble up.
The compact illustrates the strength and the potential of the society’s network: the society can exercise enormous influence without playing a direct role. The nature of the legal claims against the health-care law also reflected precisely the kind of “structural” arguments that Leo puts at the heart of his legal philosophy. In the first case, National Federation of Independent Business v.
Gonzales was never nominated to the Supreme Court; in 2005, Bush chose Harriet Miers, Gonzales’s successor as White House counsel, and another Texan, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Like Gonzales, Miers had a nonexistent profile in Federalist Society circles. “By the time of the Miers nomination, the Federalist Society had created a signalling mechanism within the conservative movement,” Hollis-Brusky said.
The question, then, became on what basis Leo should select the candidates. What was Trump looking for in his nominees? Throughout the campaign, Trump had said that he would appoint pro-life Justices to the Supreme Court. But Leo told me that his conversations with Trump focussed elsewhere. “The President was very clear about what he wanted,” Leo said.
The winnowing process began the week after Trump’s unexpected victory. “The questions in our interviews were very different from the questions from the senators at the confirmation hearing,” Leo said. “They’re always trying to get at the results a judge is going to reach, and I pay more attention to their methodology, approach, and understanding of a well-defined judicial role.”
Like the Federalists, A.C.S. has chapters in law schools and holds a big annual meeting in Washington at which favored judges speak. Just as the Federalists often invite a liberal to fill out their panel discussions, A.C.S. events sometimes feature conservatives. But the budget of the Federalist Society is about twenty million dollars; A.C.S.’s is about six million. That difference doesn’t just reflect the greater abundance of deep pockets on the right.
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