Talk:Federalist Society

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[edit] misplaced comments

This reads like an ad for the Federalist Society, with the POV that its right-wing views are only right and proper.

"Its publications have printed articles criticizing teaching evolution" The issue before last of the Federalist's Harvard Journal has a very pro-evolution article. I have been a member for years and have never read anything that was anti-evolution. I have removed the remark and expect to see evidence for this bizarre claim.

[edit] If you say so...

If you say so, but it was written by a Libertarian who is a member of the Federalist Society and does not hold any right-wing views -- i.e., me. To wit, I am a strong advocate of legalizing drugs, a view championed by many libertarian members of the Federalist Society, and opposed by an equal number of conservative members. In any event, the Federalist Society is most certainly a bastion for conservatives, and unabashedly so, just as the ACLU is a bastion for liberals, and this article should reflect this bias, which (in my opinion) it does. To that end, I would most certainly welcome any and all critics to modify this article to include any and all criticism of the Federalist Society and/or conservatives in general. The Society's members are quite accustomed to being demonized. -- NetEsq 22:27 Nov 23, 2002 (UTC)

Interesting. Can you work some of that into the article?
The Society's precarious balance of libertarian and conservative viewpoints is hard to capture in the context of an encyclopedia article. Indeed, few outsiders are even aware that such a diversity of viewpoints exists. As such, I did my best to present a concise summary of the who, what, when, where, and why of the Federalist Society (as one would see it from the outside) in the hopes that the Society's ubiquitous critics would emerge from the woodwork and express their own opposing viewpoints. -- NetEsq 23:22 Nov 23, 2002 (UTC)

Hello, I recently read that Bush has been using the Federalist Society to review and approve judges rather than the American Bar Association, as was the practice before this administration. Is this true and, if so, what does this mean? I would love to see this mentioned in the article.

The Bush Administration announced in March 2001 that it would no longer provide the ABA with a list of prospective judicial nominees, but the ABA has never had any official role in the evaluation of prospective federal judges, much less the Federalist Society. Even so, the Federalist Society has long been known among legal professionals to be a career vehicle for law enforcement officers, criminal prosecutors, and conservative judges. // NetEsq 04:17, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Some comments on your page: I think there could be a clearer first sentence simply defining what the Federalist Society is/does, rather than its history, which could go in the second sentence. I have read the entry and am confused about whether it's a non-profit organization, a thinktank, a membership organization, or a system of ideas taken up by member groups at law schools. Also, is James Madison the father of the constitution or the father of the Bill of Rights? If either one is true, then he should be listed in the entry List of people known as the father or mother of something, where he is listed as father of the Constitution. Also, this has nothing to do with your article, but since Madison did an about-face in later life and abandoned the Federalists for the Democratic-Republicans, why would he be the poster boy for the Federalist Society? And, if he was involved with the writing of the Bill of Rights, and advocated an even wider list of protected rights, why would the Federalist Society champion him and oppose the ACLU? Bruxism 17:37, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Let's be honest

The Federalist Society takes the name oddly and to level-headed thinkers it seems very tongue in cheek. The ideology that comprises the group is nothing like that of the original federalists. In fact, many federalists are big states-rights idealogues (e.g. Anton Scalia) and would never have held much esteem with the ideas of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

Further, the Federalist Society has done its very best (and admittedly a very good job) of setting the stage for not only judicial apppointments, but employment at large firms and recognition at the state and local level. They even have permiated every facet of law school life at the expense of the ideas in the Bill of Rights--personal liberties and freedoms. It is odd to me that so many libertarians support them, when in fact, they are only for certain individual rights (namely white, heterosexual, upper-middle class male rights).

-- Could you elaborate on what grounds these statements rest?

[edit] Background

Under the "Background" heading in the article, federalism is defined as "the concept that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be." I don't think that is an accurate definition of federalism, which really has more to do with the relationship between levels of government.

[edit] "Presidential appointee" quote

The current text of the article quotes Sidney Blumenthal's Guardian Unlimited article, "All the president's men":

According to one source, "There is simply not a single presidential appointee in a position of legal responsibility who is not a card-carrying member."[1]

I have to wonder if this is even the least bit accurate. If the U.S. president appoints all Federal justices, including all Supreme Court justices, does this mean that all Federal justices and all nine current members of the Supreme Court are members? Or are the non-members not considered to be "in a position of legal responsibility"? If Blumenthal was referring specifically to the current president's appointees, as the tone of the article may suggest, the inaccurate blanket implication should be corrected in our article. Does anyone have some clarifying information on this? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 06:37, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I think it's pretty obvious that Blumenthal is refering to current appointees. Blumental is well-known, and the Guardian a world-newspaper, so I'm sure this quote is totally relevant & should be added again to the entry. Stop bickering over POV, any way, liberals who are reading this page will read it from their POV, and the same goes for conservatives - whatever the page itself says. Wikipedia is not a place to convince people, but just to display various opinions and facts. People don't change ideas so easily! So, the best action is simply to put the maximum info possible, of course with quotes and references, using a quiet factual language. But a factual language also means that various interpretations are to be taken into account, as they are no pure facts, only interpretations, and interpretations are always efficient; hence, they're factual... Tazmaniacs 18:45, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top 20

The opening paragraph mentions the "top-20-ranked law schools", but by whom are they ranked?

-- U.S. News is inarguably the definitive source for American law school rankings. You can safely assume that that was what the opening paragraph was referring to, unless it stated otherwise.

[edit] John Roberts

The Supreme Court nominee is not a member, at least according to this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002431.html

Correction: The white house has disavowed his membership, he's kept mum, but other members of the Society have criticised this apparent demonization of the Society and the subsequent percieved blemish of the nominee's record.

He's a "prominent member" of the FedSoc.

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?tag=Supreme%20Court

And they are nothing like the innocuous name implies.

http://www.institutefordemocracy.org/index.html

[edit] Hey, how about everyone shuts up?

The article suffers from obvious partisan bickering and it really confuses any reader actually seeking to inform themselves of what the Society stands for and what sort of activities it puts on. Particularly troubling is the selection of the most hot button issues - ones that aren't libertarian but instead are nakedly "right-wing" (anti-evolution teaching, etc.) followed by a one-sentence that these are not endorsed by the society itself. A cursory read might glance right over this explnation...also what's with the back-and-forth over the ABA? This article isn't about the ABA and its not really about some left-wing group's charge that the Fed Soc. is engaging in some back-scenes lobbying to push conservative judges. That whole section should be taken out.

In short, I would ask authors of this article, particularly those with an obvious bone to pick with the Feddies, not to conflate the views of Federalist Society members with the goals of the organization itself or its leadership. Thanks for reading.

  • Sure, Federalist/Federalism historically referred to the founding fathers, who dismantled the Articles of Confederation in favor of a national Constitution. However, our Constitution is a Republic or federation of States. The contemporary liberal is typically in favor of a more "national" approach to governance than the contemporary conservative or libertarian who typically favors a federation of semi-independent States. Hence, the "Federalist" moniker belongs not to nationalists but to supports of a true Republic. --Davidp 14:02, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
    • That statement is grossly inaccurate. The founding fathers wanted to make a STRONGER national government than the one available under the Articles of Confederation (there were multiple debates about just how much stronger it needed to be, but everyone agreed that a weak national government was inadequate). Moreover, Alexander Hamilton, who wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers (after which the society is named) was as big a nationalist as you can get. 149.101.1.116 19:58, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV by omission

this article is "POV by omission"; it has whitewashed out a discussion of the controversy generated by the organization. there is no "controversy" section at all, which is customary for controversial topics.

Benwing 20:13, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] PFAW POV

A series of glosses and conclusions were included with links to the People For the American Way. These aren't quotations or citations to statements of the Federalist Society. If a section on "opposition" wants to be created, then perhaps the PFAW links are appropriate there. Otherwise, they're conclusory allegations that aren't facts about the history of the organization. Simply stating that the Federalist Society helps Bush and the Right isn't a fact; it's POV meant to drive attention-grabbing. Zz414 15:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Strongly Agree/Strongly Support.--Black Flag 16:27, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Founders?

Who were the founders of the Federalist Society? According to this New York Times article, Prof Stephen Calabresi of Northwestern was one of them ... can anyone find info on who the others are, so it can be included in the article? MOXFYRE (contrib) 17:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

According to a Weekly Standard article about Fred Thompson, David McIntosh was one of the founders. Sbowers3 18:24, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] references should be references, no?

I am a relatively new user of Wikipedia so forgive me if I am wrong about a style issue, but shouldn't references be references, i.e. have <ref> and </ref> tags? Then they would show up in the references/footnotes section with some details about the reference. Most of the references seem to be inline links to outside web pages. Sbowers3 18:40, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Individual Chapter links

The problem with listing links to the webpages of individual chapters is that there are 180 student chapters alone, not to mention lawyer chapters. You can't possibly list links for every one that has a webpage, as it would make the links section insufferably long. So then you're left with deciding which chapters get a link and which don't--an unresolvable issue. The best solution is to have no links at all. Most (i.e., the best) fraternity, club, organization, etc. pages don't have links to individual chapters for precisely this reason. --Velvet elvis81 18:09, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay. Perhaps the main Federalist Society site has a list of individual chapters, and we could link to that list? MOXFYRE (contrib) 18:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Monica Goodling

Monica Goodling stated she is a member.

[edit] Your opinion sought: Shannen Coffin

A few days ago I added the scarcely earth-shattering but factually correct and referenced: "General counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, Shannen W Coffin, wrote a publication for the Society in June 2004". I'd have been delighted if someone moved it, rewrote it or added to it. It was, however, reverted (a measure normally reserved for vandalism) and I would welcome a second opinion.

I come to this with no political axe to grind, but it appears there is some controversy about whether membership of the Society is linked to high office in the Bush administration. I don't know about that and it is important that all writers adhere to NPOV. Readers, however, can come to their own POV by referencing facts: facts such as the one that I added. It also appears that a membership list is hard to find, making it difficult to end the controversy. What we can give is a list of those writing the Society's publications. None of them mean much to me, but quick research at www.fed-soc.org/publications/id.167/default.asp reveals the names of several authors. Surely armed with this list, readers can decide whether this is evidence for or against links between the Society and the Administration. I won't vouch for completeness or a lack of repetition, but here are the names I found:

Michael S. Greve, Rick Esenberg, William E. Thro, Charles J. Russo, Meredith B. Parenti, Susanna Dokupil, Virginia S. Albrecht, Deidre G. Duncan, M. Reed Hopper, Damien Schiff, Jeffrey H. Wood, Robert J. Gaglione, Ronald A. Cass, Austin Bramwell, Vincent Vitkowsky, Thomas C. Marks, Jr., Pamela Buha, Shawn Mitchell, Marc James Ayers, Robert Barker, Holly A. Pierson, W. Ryan Teague, David K. DeWolf, Andrew C. Cook, Seth L. Cooper, Hans A. von Spakovsky, John K. Bush, Paul E. Salamanca, David B. Rivkin, Jr., Lee A. Casey, Mark W. DeLaquil, Daniel Troy, William Consovoy, Wendy Keefer, Thomas McCarthy, Seth Wood, Allison R. Hayward, Michael Newton, Lee Goodman]], John Eastman, Shannen W. Coffin, David M. McIntosh (co-founder), Julian Gehman, Stuart Buck, James C. Ho, Brett H. McGurk, Tara Ross, Kannon Shanmugam, Brian J. Murray, David S. Petron.

(It's possible that some of the wikilinks in this list may be to namesakes. And of course this would need editing, checking and putting into context before going onto the main page.) Wavehunter 02:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Reversions are an entirely appropriate way to edit. See WP:BRD. If you want to demonstrate links between the administration and the Federalist Society (which no one denies exists, since most conservative lawyers who would be interested in serving in the Bush administration are members of the Federalist Society, as that is often the only conservative organization at law schools), then it's easy enough to find a source that say they exist. Search law.com for "Federalist Society" or "Leonard Leo." The fact that Engage accepted for publication an article doesn't demonstrate anything other than that Coffin wrote an article, though. See also WP:SYN. The Coffin discussion was reverted because this isn't an article about Coffin, and the fact that he wrote an article is hardly more notable than the fact that Daniel Troy (who also served in the Bush administration) or James Ho (who also served in the Bush administration) wrote an article. THF 02:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
And you've linked to the wrong John Eastman. Feel free to create a dab page. THF 02:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to THF for correcting the link to John Eastman. And I accept the point that Coffin's contribution is not necessarily any more notable than that of others. I would also leave it up to readers to surmise whether Coffin is a member of the Society. I also note that WP:BRD is an essay whereas Help:Reverting is a guideline which states that "generally there are misconceptions that problematic sections of an article or recent changes are the reasons for reverting or deletion. If they contain valid information, these texts should simply be edited and improved accordingly. Reverting is not a decision which should be taken lightly." Since it was THF who carried out the revert, opinions of others would be gratefully received.

Also, if THF or anyone else can provide citations, perhaps a paragraph along these lines would be appropriate...

  • "While not necessarily members, several figures with roles in the Bush administration have written for Federalist Society publications, notably Daniel Troy, James Ho and Shannen W. Coffin. Other of the Society's writers have no known links."

Or, perhaps even less controversially...

  • "While not necessarily members, several figures in the public eye have written for Federalist Society publications, such as Shawn Mitchell (a Republican member of the Colorado state senate), Hans A. von Spakovsky (a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission) and Shannen W. Coffin (general counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney)."

I really don't want to demonstrate that there are links between the FedSoc and the Bush Administration, or the reverse. Like you all, I want to contribute to an encyclopaedia.Wavehunter 03:19, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Virtually every major conservative or libertarian legal figure has spoken or written for the Federalist Society. I can't even think of an exception. It's a mystery to me why that one issue of one publication means so much to you; there are years worth of them, and Engage comes out multiple times a year, and that's only one of the Fed Soc's publications.
Reversion wasn't taken lightly. The edit you made contradicted several guidelines, as listed by my edit summary. Reversion was appropriate. That's how Wikipedia works, and you can't take it personally. WP:NOT#INFO and WP:NOT#DIR are two other guidelines you may wish to consider. THF 03:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again to THF for his opinion. (I do not take it personally.) I've put forward some ideas for improving (rather than deleting) my original contribution and I look forward to reading others' opinions on this.Wavehunter 04:15, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, due to the lack of feedback and with no comments for or against my suggested improvement, I'm going to be bold and add my less controversial suggestion as above. In my opinion it would be a shame if it was reverted as it would suggest that there are certain facts in the public domain that should be hidden from Wikipedia readers. Hopefully it will instead be edited, added to or improved in some way. The three individuals I mention as 'in the public eye' have Wikipedia pages so this adds to the linkedness of the encyclopaedia. There may well be other contributors more famous or more notable and I would be delighted if those in the know were to alter this list as appropriate.

In being bold I've cleaned up the whole section. On careful reading the section on conservative member turned out to be a right mess! It still lacks citations but previously mentioned the Solicitor General but not his name (Paul Clement) - is he a member? It also mentioned the Dean of Pepperdine and Kenneth Starr separately when they appear to be the same person. And there was mention of an unnamed DC Circuit Judge.

That's it. Adios. Wavehunter 20:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned above, nearly every major conservative legal figure (and many non-major ones) has either spoken to or written for the Federalist Society. Mentioning three people at random adds absolutely zero to the article. I've edited it. --Velvet elvis81 06:10, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Point?

The Membership paragraph under Aims and Membership is a rather clumsy "guilt by association" tack. If the Federalist Society itself did not do this, it does not belong in an article about the Federalist Society. To say that "Federalist Society members helped..." without citing WHO or HOW is just not useful information.

[edit] this needs cleanup

[2] Weighted Companion Cube (are you still there?/don't throw me in the fire) 15:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep. PFAW are political activists, and completely un-Reliable Sources here. Jack Huberman's book is supposed to be funny and polemical, and is definitely not Reliable.
I've had a go at fixing some of the problems, but don't have time to do a proper job. For one thing, the discussion of whether John Roberts is a member is too long. Indeed, why do we have such a long list of alleged members? Given that some people participate in Society activities without actually joining it, I'm worried that we're wrong about many of these people. For example, the Kenneth Starr article is in Category:Federalist Society members but does not mention the Society.
There are some wild conspiracy theories about the Society out there; have proponents of those theories been editing the article?
This article needs a lot of work (and I'm not volunteering, sorry). CWC 14:50, 8 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] What it is

The Federalist Society is neither conservative nor libertarian, they are neocons:

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=9231 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8558 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8329 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8395 http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=12039 http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=11800 http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3261 http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3961

--195.0.220.117 (talk) 11:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notable members

Is it possible to find an alternative source for the membership section besides People For the American Way, a clearly biased source? I am not specifically disputing the inclusion of any of the named members, but there should be a more reliable source than a liberal/progressive political advocacy 501(c) group (which are "operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare, or local associations of employees")Biccat (talk) 20:38, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Membership lists

Listing individual members of the Federalist Society is like listing individual members of the ABA or the District of Columbia Bar or the American Medical Association or the Democratic Party. Every attorney of a certain age who isn't left of center is going to be a member of the Federalist Society, because it's about the only such organization for conservative or libertarian lawyers.[3] Gabriel Duvall (talk) 10:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Whew! No more WP:BLP or WP:NOR concerns now! By the way, I give all apologies for trying to contribute to an "unencyclopedic" list. I first became familiar with the FS from Jack Huberman's 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America book, which another editor recently claims isn't a reliable source. But of course, we can list the head members of the FS, including Antonin Scalia (who's something like the original faculty advisory right?) I also said that original research was a concern because Wikipedia would be at risk of slandering certain people through "guilt-by-association" (as seen from [coughcoughcough] Conservapedia's infamous "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia" list) --Andrewlp1991 (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Huberman isn't encyclopedic. There are numerous scholarly books and law review articles about the history of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society website lists its most prominent members, who serve on various committees. If you are interested in improving the article, I suggest you go to those. When you persist in relying upon unreliable sources such as left-wing blogs, Lyndon Larouche, and Jack Huberman, it suggests unfairly you have an agenda other than improving the encyclopedia. Gabriel Duvall (talk) 12:05, 13 May 2008 (UTC)