fedsoc
this is a tag
main lost?
see also FEDSOC 2
kpfa 6/17/15 10 am
byAmanda Hollis-Brusky, professor of political science atPomona College
“A Vast Right-Wing conspiracy!” “The Conservative Cabal Transforming America!” “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Federalist Society?”
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies has been no stranger to accusations of this kind over the years. Those on the left and the right universally acknowledge that the Federalist Society is an organization of significant consequence. But very few understand how this self-professed “society of ideas” with none of the traditional signs of political power is exerting its influence on law and the legal culture. Drawing on a trove of archival, ethnographic and original interview data, *Ideas with Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution* addresses this question head on.
The Federalist Society – a network of more than 40,000 conservative and libertarian lawyers, academics, judges, policymakers, and journalists dedicated to reshaping the law – grew out of the frustrations of a small group of right-of-center law students who felt isolated in their left-of-center law schools in the 1980s. Inspired by the ideas and tenets of the Reagan Revolution raging outside the walls of their elite law schools, these first Federalist Society members were recruited to work as Special Assistants in the Reagan Justice Department where they heard two oft-repeated phrases: “ideas have consequences,” and “policy is people.” These two phrases would become the two main pillars of the Federalist Society as we know it today – as an organization that intellectually trains and socializes its members, exposing them to a distinctly conservative and libertarian way of thinking about the law and also encourages and facilitates opportunities for its members to put these ideas and principles into practice as lawyers, judges, etc. It is a simple formula, but one that has served them remarkably well over the past thirty years: ideas + people = policy consequences.
*Ideas with Consequences* provides an in-depth examination of the ideas and the people of the Federalist Society network and shows how, together, they have helped shape some of the most important decisions of the conservative counterrevolution. It shows how Federalist Society network members served as a vital and valuable source of ideas or “intellectual capital” for Supreme Court decisionmakers looking to support their revolutionary reinterpretations of the constitution in the areas of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms, the First Amendment and campaign finance, the federal commerce power, and state sovereignty. It also shows how the Federalist Society network helped to create a climate conducive to constitutional counterrevolution: by training, credentialing, and helping to get the right kinds of Justices on the Supreme Court; by acting as a vocal and attentive “judicial audience” to keep those Justices from drifting to the ideological center or left; and by legitimating Originalism as a valid mode of constitutional interpretation, both in the legal academy and in the broader political culture.
While *Ideas with Consequences* answers the question of what the Federalist Society does and how it exerts its influence, it does not conclusively answer the question of what the Federalist Society is. Is it simply a more formalized version of the informal elite networks that have always operated within the legal community, or is it truly innovative and different? I suggest that the Federalist Society’s innovation – the act of formalizing and institutionalizing these once informal networks – has been a game-changer within the legal community.The best evidence of this, of course, was the founding in 2001 of the organization that hosts this blog – The American Constitution Society (ACS). The very existence of ACS is evidence that those on the left believe that the informal networks and processes that successfully helped support and implement the liberal legal agenda for half a century are now insufficient counterweights to the more formalized and organized Federalist Society network.
So, if the Federalist Society model and the rise of its progressive counterpart does represent a new model of identifying, training, promoting and disciplining lawyers on both the right and the left from professional cradle (law school) to professional grave (retirement), then what consequences might this have for the legal profession specifically and for the politicization of law, more generally? By governing the ideological socialization of young law professionals and plugging them into a political network that creates professional incentives for students and lawyers aspiring to top clerkships, positions in the national bureaucracy, and federal judgeships, some fear that these legal-hybrid organizations have further blurred the crucial divide, however tenuous, between law and politics and contributed negatively to the polarization of the law.
Others say these Societies are an improvement on the old model of networking within the legal profession based on school credentials or family ties. As George Washington University Law Professor Orin Kerr has said, “Now the networking is more open.” These normative questions will be important for scholars, students, and practitioners of American politics and law to engage with as we seek to understand and evaluate the mechanisms, old and new, by which ideas can and do have consequences.
6/15 uk guardian (beware malish ware)
The secretive funders behind America’s conservative movement directed around $125m (£82m) over three years to groups spreading disinformation about climate science and committed to wrecking Barack Obama’s climate change plan, according to an analysis of tax records.
The amount is close to half of the anonymous funding disbursed to rightwing groups, underlining the importance of the climate issue to US conservatives
The anonymous cash flow came from two secretive organisations – the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – that have been called the “Dark Money ATM” of the conservative movement.
The funds, which when channelled through the two organisations cannot be traced to individual donors, helped build a network of thinktanks and activist groups. These worked to defeat climate bills in Congress and are mobilising against Environmental Protection Agency rules to reduce carbon pollution from power plants which are due to be finalised this summer. In many cases, the anonymous cash makes up the vast majority of funding received by beneficiaries – more than comes openly from the fossil fuel industry.
“The conservative thinktanks are really the spearhead of the conservative assault on climate change,” said Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who studies environmental politics. “They write books, put out briefings and open editorials, bring in contrarian scientists ... They are an immense megaphone that amplifies very, very minority voices.”
Organisations funded through the secretive donors operations are also working to roll back measures promoting wind and solar power and block planning for future sea-level rise in state capitals.
To trace how the money was spent, the Guardian obtained annual tax filings made to the US Internal Revenue Service by the Donor’s Trust and Donor’s Capital Fund and cross-checked grantees with organisations associated with the climate change counter-movement.
In 2011, 42% of funding, or $35.7m, went to groups promoting climate denial and opposed to environmental regulations, according to the tax filings.
In the last presidential elections in 2012, when Obama fended off a challenge from Mitt Romney, that figure jumped to 51% of the funds directed through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – a total of just over $49m.
...?
2013, the last year for which tax records are available, 46% of anonymous funding to conservative groups through the two Donors channels, or just over $41 million was spent that way.
Robert Brulle, a professor at Drexel University who first exposed the conservative network of think tanks and activist groups of the climate change counter-movement, said those funds helped hone opposition to regulations.
“It is a well-oiled, complicated, cultural and political machine of the right wing of the conservative movement,” he said.
In 2013, the two organisations took in just over $152m, distributing $90m to a constellation of groups. However, the ultimate sources of those funds were untraceable, an important consideration for companies or individuals wanting to avoid bad publicity for rejecting the scientific consensus on climate change.
“All these corporations that were getting bad press realised they can still fund conservative thinktanks,” Dunlap said. “Exxon or BP can still fund one of these things while doing all these great things on climate change to reduce emissions etc.”
Whitney Ball, the chief executive of Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, said the funds were set up to “promote liberty and help like-minded donors preserve their charitable intent”. She said that grants were made at the request of account holders, not the Donors Trust or Donors Capital Fund. “Our role is to ensure that recommended grants are to IRS-approved public charities, and we require that the charities do not rely on significant amounts of revenue from government sources,” she said.
Almost all of the thinktanks and activist groups on the Donors rolls work on a broad range of topics – and in most cases there was no way of tracking what portion of funding went to climate change related work.
But all of the groups have a record of rejecting climate science and fighting environmental regulations.
“You don’t have to be an outright science denier to try to prevent action on climate change,” Brulle said.
“You’ve got gradation – it’s not real; it’s real but we are not sure how much humans are contributing to it; I am not a scientist. There are all sorts of strategies.”
Funds sent through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund were allocated to 92 organisations that deny climate change or oppose environmental regulations – but only 24 organisations got donations of $1m or more over the past three years.
By far, the biggest overall beneficiary was the Franklin Centre for Government and Public Integrity, which received $22m over the three years. According to its website, the centre “trains and supports journalists working to detect and expose corruption and incompetence in government at the state and local levels”. It runs a network of online conservative websites in state capitals which are generally hostile to clean energy and pro-coal.
In 2011, the anonymous funding through Donors Trust amounted to 95% of Franklin’s budget, according to an investigation by the Centre for Public integrity.
Erik Telford, the president, denied that there was a conflict between the Franklin Centre’s watchdog mission, and its failure to disclose the ultimate source of its funds.
“As is the case with almost any news outlet in America, we have an editorial perspective, with a mission to expose government misdeeds, advance liberty, and look out for the taxpayers’ interest,” he said. “We welcome the support of citizens who believe in our mission, and afford them the right to privacy as established in the supreme court’s 1958 NAACP v Alabama decision.”
The Federalist Society, a networking group for conservative lawyers and justices which calls on states to reject the EPA authority to regulate carbon pollution, received $8.7m over the past three years.
pix: A member of the Boilermakers local 154 Pittsburgh holds a sign at a rally to support American energy and jobs in the coal and related industries at Highmark Stadium in downtown Pittsburgh, Wednesday, July 30, 2014. The rally is being held the day before the Environmental Protection Agency conducts public hearings on its new emissions regulations for existing coal fired power plants. Facebook Twitter Pinterest]
Another top recipient, the State Policy Network, a network of ultra-conservative thinktanks, received a total of $8.2m over the last three years.
Thinktanks allied with the State Policy Network have worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council, a pro-business lobby, which has sought legislation to penalise homeowners who install solar panels.
The Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank whose climate expert opposes cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, took in $7.9m over three years. The Heartland Institute, which sent a delegation to Rome in April to try to upstage meetings between the Pope and the United Nations chief Ban Ki Moon on climate change, received $3.8m.
Another big beneficiary of the anonymous funds, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has received $4.3m over three years, claims on its website that climate change is its biggest programme.
“CEI questions global warming alarmism,” the website reads. Last year, CEI sued the White House over a video linking the chill Arctic blasts of the polar vortex to climate change. The CEI has also tried – unsuccessfully – to sue climate scientists.
The thinktank would not respond to requests for comment.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, whose communications director is Marc Morano, took $3.7m from donors in 2012 – its most ever. A year later, however, the organisation received $325,000.
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