Federalist Society Conference Next Week Will Be Online, Free of Charge

The Federalist Society's yearly National Lawyers Convention will be all online this year, and will be entirely free (except there'll be a modest fee for lawyers who want Continuing Legal Education credit). You can register here, see the overview agenda here, and see the details on the panels and the panelists here. (I'll blog briefly about a few particular panels in coming days.) Speakers will include Justice Samuel Alito, the retired D.C. Circuit Judge Janice Rogers Brown, and Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia.

As is the norm for Federalist Society conferences, the panels include many liberals and other non-Federalists, including:

• Prof. Cornel West (Harvard, Princeton emeritus).
• Prof. Randall Kennedy (Harvard).
• Prof. Nadine Strossen, former President of the ACLU.
• Elizabeth Wydra, President of the Constitutional Accountability Center.
• Prof. Genevieve Lakier (Chicago).
• Prof. Ash Bhagwat (Davis).
• Scott Fulton, President, Environmental Law Institute, and former EPA General Counsel under President Obama,
• and many more.

The panel topics include:

• Religious Liberty and the New Court
• EPA Turns 50: A Debate on Environmental Progress and Regulatory Overreach
• Prosecutorial Discretion, Partisanship, and the Rule of Law
• Regulatory Practice and Oversight in 2021 and Beyond
• Rule of Law, or Just Making it Up? First Amendment Tiered Scrutiny
• Freedom of Association in the Legal Profession
• Regulating Social Media
• Are MDL [Multi-District Litigation] Judges Too Powerful?
• The Law, China, and the Possible New Cold War
• Agency Leaders on Labor Policy
• Intellectual Property Rights and the Rule of Law
• Modern Quandaries of Law Enforcement
• The Future of the Second Amendment's Right to Keep and Bear Arms:  From the Supreme Court to Social Unrest in the Streets
• Agency Leaders on Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and the Evolution of a Central Bank Digital Currency
• Emergency Powers and the Rule of Law

Comments

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"Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia"

What an interesting hybrid!

[DaivdBehar]

I do not distinguish between conservative and left wing lawyers. They are all rent seekers, and members of the same criminal cult enterprise, with supernatural beliefs.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

Kavanaugh wanted to be on the Supreme Court for one reason—get access to Renquist’s quaalude stash!

[Aktenberg78]

That's also true of the banksters. Even the "Republican" ones are liberals who want low taxes and free money for Wall Street.

[Snorkle]

Oh good, maybe Leo^2 will preview the next batch of dittohead clones headed for the courts.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

"preview the next batch of dittohead clones headed for the courts."

When . . . in 12 or 16 years?

[Ben_]

Unless someone in the internet supply chain decides you shouldn't have a platform and censors the conference.

[Aktenberg78]

Which is why Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and the rest need to be regulated as common carriers.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Quit whining, clingers.

Or keep whining . . . it will remind your betters of how disaffected and defeated right-wingers are in modern America.

[Aktenberg78]

Fuck off, slaver.

[Krayt]

There's an ad on TV that I think is voter intimidation. It starts by pointing out that you voted is public record, and your neighbors and friends can see it. It then beefs off about other stuff of the joys of voting, referring back from time to time how these peo0le can check on your vote, never explicitely saying it's just whether you voted or not, intimating they can find out how as well. Wink wink.

[Sam Gompers]

Religious Liberty and the New Court - i hope Eugene attends this. He needs a refresher. He seems to think creating custom designed cakes aren't a form of artistic expression. Or he does think so and doesn't care about compelled artistic expression of its to spare the feelings of some gay.

Prosecutorial Discretion, Partisanship, and the Rule of Law - if this isn't about what they did to Trump and didn't do to the coup plotters, they should disband this society.

Freedom of Association in the Legal Profession - the anti-racism ethics rules are just delicious.

Regulating Social Media - I wonder of they are going to get canceled

[Krayt]

Regulating Social Media

"You'd better censor harrassment or we will hurt you. Please start with the harrassing posts of our political opponents."

Please jail these politicians.

[Longtobefree]

So did I read that right?
It is free unless you want credit for looking in?
THEN you have to pay?
Who gets the booty, and why is it "better" if you pay?
(better meaning worthy of credit if paid, not worthy of credit if you watch the same thing for free?)

[Eugene Volokh]

Well, if you don't want to pay, just watch it without getting the CLE credit. And if you do want the CLE credit, pay a modest amount for it (just as one has to pay for many CLE programs). I don't really see your basis for complaining.

[KenveeB]

It's not an uncommon practice. Think of it as auditing a class versus taking the class for credit. You have to pay if you want credit.

[Aktenberg78]

I had the privilege of seeing Janice Rogers Brown speak at a FedSoc event when I was in law school, and she's one of the best speakers I've ever seen.

Remember, the Democrats tried to block her. They started it, not the Republicans with Garland.

[Sebastian Cremmington]

We didn’t start the fire!

[Longtobefree]

But you yelled about it in the theater!

[anorlunda]

Thanks for the info about the free event. I love listening to Fedsoc discussions. I always learn something.

I'm baffled at how widespread the notion is that The Federalist Society is a bastion of far right politics, and that the ABA is objective and neutral. Talk about misinformation, those perceptions are as far from the truth as you can get.

[bernard11]

I’m baffled at how widespread the notion is that The Federalist Society is a bastion of far right politics,

Really?

I mean, I'm sure the seminars are interesting, and they seem to have representative panels, though Alito, Brown, and Scalia as speakers looks more than a little one-sided to me.

But when it comes to its role in selecting judges, which is after all how it affects the country, it's hard for me to see how anyone can claim it's not a far-right organization.

[ReaderY]

For the same reason the other side can’t call the Democratic Party a far-left organization, or Nancy Polosi or RBG extremists.

Once an ideology gets enough adherents to be a substantial minority if not occassionally a majority, you have to accept the de facto reality that it is a mainstream ideology, not a fringe one. The adjective “far” simply loses meaning. If it means anything, it is only as a descriptive term. The description has to be accurate.

The reality is that a majority of the judges on the current Supreme Court were vetted by the Federalist Society. That evidences enough support and influence to make them a mainstream right-wing organization.

There are in fact organizations in this country that are far to the right of the Federalist Society.

While Democrats use Bork as an example of the kind of person who is totally unacceptable, the reality is that he lost only because Democrats controlled the Senate. had the Republicans controlled the Senate, Bork would have been confirmed.

Key Supreme Court decisions have been going 5-4 for decades. The view of 4 out of 9 is not a fringe view. If it becomes 5 out of 9, that does not mean the fringe has taken over. It means the established minority view has become the majority.

[EscherEnigma]

Cool story, but I think I'll pass. Those folks think I should still be a criminal in Texas and Utah, and I think they're scum, and anyone who validates them is scum too.

[QuantumBoxCat]

From the Federalist Society "About us" page:

Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.

From Euguene:

As is the norm for Federalist Society conferences, the panels include many liberals and other non-Federalists, including:

That's really an open and thoughtful club you have there.....