The battle for control of the American judiciary is being waged by Federalists in the White House who represent a radical rightwing agenda

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,463144,00.html It does indeed sound like the "vast rightwing conspiracy" Hillary Clinton complained about at the height of the Monica Lewinsky affair, except that the Federalists are not a secret society. They meet openly and even have a website.
But members played a leading role both in President Clinton's impeachment and in the Florida legal offensive which brought George Bush to power. A leading light is the supreme court judge who did most to steer the decision in Bush's favour. As a group they are poised to transform the American legal system.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy plans to unleash a legal counter-revolution which will turn back the clock on affirmative action, environmental standards and other forms of government regulation. Founded in 1982, the group set as its goals the ideological conquest of the nation's law schools. Two decades on, it has achieved an extraordinary degree of success. The Federalists' law school chapters now offer graduates a faster route to the top, through clerkships in high-profile chambers and a powerful career network, than the mainstream professional body, the American Bar Association (ABA).

They scored their greatest triumph last week when President Bush stripped the ABA of its role as a vetting agency in the appointment of federal judges. The ABA had first been assigned the task by President Eisenhower as a means of setting minimum professional standards for the judiciary around the country. But in the eyes of the Federalists the ABA has merely been enforcing a status quo built around the New Deal and civil rights legislation introduced by Democrat administrations.

The Federalists have now taken the ABA's place in all but name. In President Bush's first week, a task force was set up in the White House to rush through nominations for the 100 (out of a total of 862) federal judgeships in appeals and circuit courts. The courts settle great debates (Roe v Wade over abortion, Brown v the Board of Education over desegregation, not to mention Bush v Gore over the presidential election). So it is hard to exaggerate the importance of these judicial appointments. Almost every member of the White House vetting panel is a Federalist.

Many are veterans of earlier campaigns, such as Brett Kavanaugh, the young lawyer who served as chief investigator for Kenneth Starr, President Clinton's inquisitor and nemesis and another key member of the Federalist Society. Mr Starr in turn got the job of independent counsel from David Sentelle, a conservative circuit judge and early Federalist member. The lawyers acting for Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against the president and for Linda Tripp, who handed over secret tapes of Monica Lewinsky, were both Federalists.

Other members of the White House legal team played prominent roles in the battle of Florida last autumn, when Bush lawyers succeeded in halting a manual recount of the vote and drove the dispute to the supreme court, which famously handed victory to George Bush.

The Bush cause was argued by Ted Olson, the head of the Washington chapter of the Federalist Society, who is now solicitor general. It was supported most fiercely on the supreme court by Antonin Scalia, one of the moving spirits behind the formation of the Federalists and a regular attraction at the society's seminars and retreats for ambitious lawyers.

The Federalists represent one of two radical rightwing agendas (the other is Christian ultra-conservatism) which hitchhiked on the Bush campaign, and now influence policy out of all proportion to their support among the public at large.

The society draws inspiration from a libertarian interpretation of the writings of James Madison, the founding father, who occasionally ful minated against the power of central government. The Federalists today see the evil hand of centralism in any form of federal regulation, whether it be affirmative action for minorities, rules against sexual harassment, or environmental emissions standards. They believe the legal profession is dominated by a form of "orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralised and uniform society".

During the first 100 days of the Bush administration, the influence of Federalist ideology has been apparent in the rapid dismantling of workplace safety standards, the decision not to impose carbon dioxide emission standards and the plans to open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The fact that the energy and interior secretaries, Spencer Abraham and Gale Norton, are both senior Federalists no doubt played a role. James Bopp, another Florida veteran, is leading the legal fight against campaign finance reform.

The battle for control of the judiciary is not over entirely. The Federalists in the White House have been working through the night for the past few weeks in a frantic effort to find 100 ideologically acceptable judges before a senator (probably the 98-year-old Strom Thurmond) dies and robs the Republicans of their one-seat majority.

Even before that, congressional approval of Federalist nominations are not a foregone conclusion. Moderate Republicans shrink from the society's ideological purity. But to the extent that the Federalists succeed, the US will become a very different country.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), March 29, 2001

Answers

Pretty much what this article describes is an organization of practising corporate lawyers who pool their expertise to form legal rationales to justify government actions that benfit corporations. In and of itself that is no frightful thing.

But basically you now have a government that is highly sympathetic to corporations. Already we have seen the Bush admninistration fill its high positions of power with corporate lawyers who are on temporary leave. Those lawyers eagerly adopt the legal rationales handed to it by these practising corporate lawyers. These rationales then become the government's official positions.

Further, the administration appoints federal judges. I don't doubt they will be drawn from this same pool, just as Scalia and Thomas were. So, the administration will then end up channeling the corporate lawyers' case through the auspices of the executive branch to a bunch of idealogically sympathetic judges who spend their off time hobnobbing with corporate lawyers at gatherings of the Federalist Society.

Just to be on the safe side, though, the corporations do everything they can to buy Congress (both sides of the aisle), too.

And they say machine politics are a dead letter. We are sewed up, hog-tied and shrink wrapped. No wonder most people have given up believing they can influence a damn thing in Washington.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 29, 2001.

Okay, I’ll play.

Do I want my government to support the very corporations that give working folks an opportunity to earn a living and elevate their position in society?

Or, should my government take more and more of my income and give it away to welfare cheats and the free handout programs?

No brainer.

-- Hard (working@freedom.lover), March 29, 2001.

Hard, that's what fancy intellectual types call a "false dichotomy". Plain ordinary working people would say, "are those my only two choices?" And of course, the answer is "no".

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 29, 2001.

Okay Little Nipper, I’ll bite.

Splain these other choices that you refer to.

-- Hard (working@freedom.lover), March 29, 2001.

Hard, You are not legally liable to give the government any part of your earnings, because there is no constitutional provision for it.

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), March 29, 2001.

"Splain these other choices that you refer to."

How's about, just for starters, the government takes less of your income and charges fair market value for corporate use of public assets, such as mineral rights on public lands, use of the public airwaves, and starts selling commercial licenses for use of government-sponsored research?

How about the government takes less of your income and restores the same distribution of the tax burden between individuals and corporations as existed under the Eisenhower administration?

Not that these are your only choices, either.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 29, 2001.

I guess I see corporations in a slightly different light from Hard. They lay off thousands while their upper managers continue to receive $millions in compensation per year. They use predatory pricing to destroy their smaller competitors, who had been providing their own employees with a living while providing consumers with an alternative to the corporate giants. They use their clout to evade liability and responsibility wherever possible.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), March 29, 2001.

Its called Capitalism. Alternatives are available at select sites throughout the world.

-- Hard (working@freedom.lover), March 29, 2001.

Hard, I am disappointed in you. You wrote a reply to David L., but you totally ignored my reply to you.

You said you were game to play and would bite. As far as I know, "chicken" is neither a kind of game bird, nor a kind of fish.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), March 29, 2001.