By Michael
In the media firestorm over allegations of alcohol fueled sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh during his Senate confirmation hearing as a nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, the historic nature of his nomination was lost.
Kavanaugh (And the other potential nominees on Trump’s list.) was spawned by the Federalist Society (FedSoc), which he joined in 1988. Former Justice Scalia was a member of FedSoc, as were Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices Gorsuch, Thomas and Alito. Knowing that FedSoc carries a partisan taint, members typically resign as they ascend the judicial ladder, and that has been the case with all current SCOTUS Justices.
FedSoc was founded in 1982 by conservative law students at Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago to combat “liberal bias” in law schools nationwide. Founding board members included Nixon’s former Attorney General Edwin Meese and disgraced former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.
Today, with nearly 70,000 members and more than $18 million in funding from sources such as Google, Chevron, the Koch brothers, the Richard Mellon Scaife foundation and the Mercer family foundation, FedSoc is the primary source of Republican judicial nominees who believe in “textualist” or “originalist” constitutional doctrines associated with “judicial restraint.”
These constitutional doctrines are especially congenial to corporations because they rest on a laissez-faire belief that government should not interfere in the market. For example, FedSoc played a key role in articulating and promulgating the legal rationale for the Citizens United ruling.
The Federalist Society is significant not just in it’s own right, but more importantly because it is part of a well funded national network of “conservative” think tanks that have been idea factories for the political right in the US for more than 40 years. Cumulatively, this network generates twice as much annual revenue as “liberal” think tanks, and they are united by core ideas that have produced radical long term clarity of purpose and vision.
The Heritage Foundation has $91 million in annual revenue. The American Enterprise Institute $85 million. The Hoover Institution more than $70 million, while the CATO Institute operates with a $73 million endowment. There are dozens more.
Their liberal counterparts pale in comparison. George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, the liberal bogeyman of the right, operates with a budget of less than $20 million annually. The Center for American Progress has a budget of $45 million; Center for Economic and Policy Research, $2.1 million; Economic Policy Institute, $5 million.
Whether or not one agrees with the philosophical consensus emanating from conservative think tanks, the ideational imbalance versus the institutional left is lethal for democracy. Neither a Democratic nor Republican sweep in the mid-term elections will erase this ideas deficit or end the fatal cancer of political absolutism poisoning the US political system. We need fresh thinking!
I started Reimagining Politics as a direct response to this problem. The civic initiatives I am working with worldwide have citizen origins independent of political parties and are turning innovative new political ideas into reality.
I know that voters are focused on the mid-term elections. But we cannot neglect the need for deep, long-term structural alternatives. Reimagining Politics is the only initiative acting as a global, street smart political ideas lab providing unique opportunities for donors and other supporters to work directly with the world’s leading civic innovators.
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LINKS
https://fedsoc.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Think_tanks
https://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_conservative,_neoconservative_and_libertarian_think_tanks