The June issue of Engage is available here, and you can watch the 2 hour Supreme Court review from July 1 here.  Podcasts discussing particular Scotus decisions are available here, including Nelson Lund on D.C. v. Heller, posted June 30.

If you missed the Society’s recent (March) student confab in Ann Arbor (theme: “The People and the Courts”), fear not!  You can now watch (or just listen) to the whole enchilada online, here.   The full agenda is below the fold: (more…)

Professor Zywicki has an interesting review of what appears to be a fascinating book.

Hey, sportsfans. I’ve been meaning to remind my lawyer and law-student readers that if you would like for me to come to your chapter and preach the Gospel of Originalism, please shoot me an email. I am already on the Federalist Society’s “approved” speaker’s list, so all you have to do is get the folks in D.C. to sign off on it.

I’ve already spoken to the student feddies at UVA, Notre Dame, Washington & Lee, South Carolina, Cumberland, Mississippi College, Georgia State, Mercer, as well as to the lawyer chapters in Montgomery, Alabama and Dallas, Texas. So, if you’re interested in my coming to your chapter, please let me know.

Oh, and if you are interested in reading some reviews of my past speaking gigs, you can do so below the fold. (more…)

For those of you who aren’t members of the Federalist Society, and therefore do not receive a complimentary subscription of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, you can view many of the issues online; including the most recent one, which includes a brilliant article penned by SA’s patron saint, Judge William H. Pryor Jr.

Have no fear. The fedester will be coming your way this Spring to give y’all some of that sweet Southern-fried originalism that your chapter craves so much.

Details to follow soon.

I’ve got some spots open on my dance card for the Spring semester; so, if you want the fedster to come speak to your chapter, shoot me an email.*

*While I am interested in speaking to any student chapter, I would really love to visit the following schools: Washington & Lee; Harvard; Yale; Chicago; University of Alabama; University of Georgia; University of Florida; Ole Miss; Emory; Georgia State; George Mason; Ave Maria; Vanderbilt; Memphis; and UVA.

SA blogger William J. Watkins Jr.’s book, “Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and their legacy,” is reviewed by Soraya Rudofsky in the latest installment of the Federalist Society’s most excellent publication, Engage.

C-SPAN has posted streaming videos from last week’s Federalist Society lawyers’ convention.  You can watch Justices Scalia and Alito by clicking here, then on ”America and the Courts” (on the left margin).  The Scalia-Alito program is, this morning, at the top of the list of “recent programs,” dated 11/18/2006.  Vice President Cheney’s remarks can be viewed by clicking here, then on ”Bush Administration” (on the left margin).  The VP is in the list of “recent programs,” dated 11/17/2006.   Several other speakers — including Sec. Chertoff and Gov. Barbour — can be reached by clicking here.

As usual, the Federalist Society put on a terrific CLE.  The speakers from both right and left always promise spirited debate.  One thing I could have done without was all the politicians.  Cheney, McCain, Barbour, and Arlen were just about more than I could take.  Word on the street was that at least 2 of them were not originally scheduled but wormed their way onto the docket. 

I actually enjoyed McCain’s speech.  He came out and admitted that the GOP lost the election because it had strayed from the principles of limited government.  It had, in his words, become just like the Democrats.  Haley Barbour made similar points.  McCain’s speech was refreshing, but that sensation wore off when one contemplates his voting record and realizes that he is as much to blame for the GOP era of big government as anyone else with a vote in Congress. 

Inviting all the pols does run the risk of the Federalist Society being seen as the legal arm of the GOP.  The Society, of course, is much more than that–as anyone who attended the myriad panel discussions can attest.  All in all–a good convention.

Courtesy of NYT, WaPo, and Powerline.

For those of you who attended the affair, how was McCain’s speech? Did he promise to appoint “strict constructionist” judges/justices? Did he promise to suppress even more political speech if elected president? In short, how well did he suck up to us?

Oh, and how was the SA shindig? I hope someone had a glass of Blanton’s in my honor. :) 

The Cumberland Federalist Society will host Alabama Solicitor General, Kevin C. Newsom, on Thursday, November 16 at 11:00 AM in the Trial Courtroom – Room 121 (Robinson Hall). General Newsom will provide an overview of the current U.S. Supreme Court term, followed by a question and answer period. Lunch will be provided.  For more info, email me at njhallford - at - gmail dot com.

I’ll be attending the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers’ Convention this week.  Any SA readers or bloggers in?  I’d like to organize another SA Happy Hour if anyone is interested.  Please suggest dates and times in the comments.  Wednesday night will be difficult for me.  I have depos in NY and will be arriving in DC late that evening. 

My friend Nels Peterson has co-authored a fantastic essay appearing on The Weekly Standard’s site. The essay looks at how the American Constitutional Society has mimicked the Federalist Society in many ways. Primarily, the ACS is launching its new, and official, journal called the Harvard Law & Policy Review. Sound familiar? In keeping with the gameplan, Nels and his co-author provide some “new” ideas for the ACS.

Other than ND getting drilled by Michigan, I had a wonderful time in South Bend this past weekend. I spoke to the ND feddies on Friday, and found them to be an engaging and thoughtful group of folks. I especially appreciate the gracious hospitality of Rob Driscoll and Jane Hertz (president and vice president respectively), who were kind enough to extend me an invitation to speak to their chapter. I also appreciate Monica Secord and Angela Pfister attending the event as well. It was nice to see Judge Manion’s chambers represented by such fine young (and brilliant) women.

Later that evening, my hosts for the weekend, Bill and Elizabeth Kirk, threw a fabulous dinner party that was enjoyed by all. The conversation was lively, and the food could not have been better. And while I enjoyed speaking with each of those in attendance, I must say that I especially had a blast hanging out with Professors Nicole Garnett (a former clerk to Justice Clarance Thomas) and Carter Sneed (who was fomerlly general counsel for President Bush’s Council on Bioethics). They are both brilliant and funny, which is a rare combination to say the least.

On Saturday, I was fortunate enough to tailgate with the fine folks from Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture, including its guest of honor, Michael Novak (whom I was lucky enough to speak with at length). Having read and admired Mr. Novak for years, I can only say that he is as engaging in person as he is on paper, which is a rare talent among scholars of his caliber. I also was able to chat with Professor Rick Garnett for a spell. Like his wife Nicole, Rick is wicked smart and a blast to hang out with, even if he did clerk for that liberal justice (i.e., Chief Justice Rehnquist). Finally, I also briefly chatted with Professor Amy Barrett (a former Scalia clerk), who struck me as a wondeful person and teacher.

In short, it was the kind of weekend that David Lat would have died for. :) 

Oh, and the game? Well, all I will say is this: No matter how bad it looked on t.v., it was much. much worse in person. ND got whipped. Plain and simple. I remarked to Miss Elizabeth at the game that I considered it a form of penance to stay at the stadium until the bitter end. :)  

to speak to the ND feddies.

Hope to see some of y’all there.

As you probably noticed last week here on SA, Steve Dillard spoke to the Cumberland Federalist chapter last Thursday.  He gave the crowd of around 50 students much to mull over in his survey of Supreme Court jurisprudence.  It was a great start to the year for the chapter, and I greatly appreciate Steve’s willingness to visit and spend time with us!

I’ve been out-of-pocket more than usual lately, and have a few other backdated posts to put up this morning.  See above.

I had a great time speaking to the Cumberland feddies yesterday. Nathan was an excellent host, and we had a great group of folks show up for the event. I especially want to thank four of my SA co-bloggers for attending the talk: Professor DeBow, Marc Ayers, Justin Jones, and Philip Swartzfager. I was also extremely flattered that Alice H. Martin, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama took time out of her busy schedule to come and hear my musings on the Suipreme Court. Finally, I was very impressed by the questions from the students during the Q&A session. Cumberland is blessed to have such a bright group of Federalists attending its law school.*

*I realize, of course, that not everyone who attended the event can properly be characterized as a “Federalist.” But after the event, we had an originalist ”altar call,” and many were converted to the one true constitutional faith. Publius, you should have been there.  

I’ll be speaking to the Cumberland Law feddies tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. If you are interested in attending, you can get the necessary contact information here. 

Thanks to my buddy David Lat for the promo.

We’re looking forward to hosting Steve in a couple of weeks.  His speech at Cumberland is at 11:00, rather than 12:00.  I’m sure there will be more “reminders” in the coming weeks.

For those of y’all living in Birmingham and South Bend, I’ll be heading your way next month.

I’ll be speaking to the Cumberland-Law-School Feddies on September 7th, and the Fightin’-Irish Feddies on September 15, 2006 (both are scheduled to begin at noon, I believe). If you live in or nearby either of these cities, and are interested in attending one of these events, you can contact:

Nathan Hallford at njhallford@gmail.com (Cumberland contact)

or

Jane Hertz at jhertz@nd.edu (Notre Dame)

I’ll be preachin’ the originalist gospel, and seeking to convert as many penumbra lovers as possible over to the side of the angels. The title of the speech is “The Most Dangerous Branch,” which you can preview here. There will obviously be some minor changes/updates to this version of the speech, but I think you’ll get the overall flavor of what my talks are generally like.

I hope to see (and meet) as many SA readers as possible at these events.

Oh, and I’ll be more than happy to autograph any and all SDIFS! t-shirts and bumper stickers brought to the events.

If you are an officer of the feddie-student chapter at your law school, and would like for the fedster to come speak to it, just shoot me an email.

Here’s the abstract for “Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization,” a recent paper by Anthony Paik (Iowa, Sociology), Ann Southworth (Case Western, Law), and John Heinz (Northwestern, Law):

Lawyers for conservative and libertarian causes are active in organizing and mobilizing interest groups within the conservative coalition, and networks of relationships among those lawyers help to maintain and shape the coalition. Using data gathered in interviews with 72 such lawyers, the article analyzes characteristics of the lawyers and the structure of their networks. The findings suggest that the networks are divided into segments or blocks that are identified with particular constituencies, but that a distinct set of actors with an extensive range of relationships serves to bridge the constituencies. Measures of centrality and brokerage confirm the structural importance of these actors in the network, and a search of references in news media confirms their prominence or prestige. This “core” set of actors occupies the “structural hole” in the network that separates the business constituency from religious conservatives. Libertarians, located near the core of the network, also occupy an intermediate position. Causal analysis of the formation of ties within the network suggests that the Federalist Society has played an important role in bringing the lawyers together.

O.k., sportsfans, I am out of here. The Dillard Family is heading back to Jackson, Mississippi for the fedster’s ten-year-law-school reunion at MC. I am looking forward to catching up with some folks.

Oh, and if you actually live in or near Jackson, please try and attend my speech to MC’s Federalist Society chapter on Friday at 12:00 p.m. The topic will be: “The Most Dangerous Branch.” And no, Publius, I am not talking about the Executive Branch.

I may check in from the road. But then again, I may not.

Y’all be good, and play nice whilst I am away. Grover, I am looking in your direction.

The issue of replacing partisan judicial elections with some other kind of selection mechanism has come around again in Alabama. I’m to be on a panel next week for the Federalist Society of Birmingham, debating the point.

The last time I looked at this issue was in 2001. Here’s my request: If anyone out there in the vast SA reading audience can steer me to studies of this topic published since 2001, I’d really appreciate it. I have already tracked down the articles by Andrew Hanssen, Alexander Tabarrok & Eric Helland, and Melinda Gann Hall. If you know of others — particularly empirical studies — please let me know by email at medebow at samford dot edu.

Many thanks.

An open invitation for those SA readers in the B’ham area.
Mr. Nikolas T. Nikas, Esq., President and General Counsel of the Bioethics Defense Fund will deliver his speech entitled, “What Every Law Student Needs to Know About Human Cloning and Embryonic Stem-Cell Research” to the Cumberland Federalist Society on Tuesday, Feb. 7th from 4:00-5:00 in room 121. Click here for more about Mr. Nikas.

If interested in attending, shoot me an email.

Yesterday, I received the latest edition of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and was delighted to see that sometime-SA blogger Adam White has an article entitled “Toward the Framers’ Understanding of ‘Advice and Consent’:  A Historical and Textual Inquiry.”  I’ve yet to read the entire article but it looks excellent.  Given the individuals listed as providing helpful comments, I’m sure there’s no way it’s not excellent.

In case you were wondering, there are some dems who actually believe in telling the truth about Judge Alito–his former clerks:

“He is meticulous in the way he goes about deciding cases. He’s meticulous in the way he goes about finding what the law is. I can’t think of better qualities for anyone to serve as a judge on the Supreme Court.”

“I am a Democrat who always voted Democrat, except when I vote for a Green candidate . . . but Judge Alito was not interested in the ideology of his clerks. He didn’t decide cases based on ideology.”

“After a year of working closely with the Judge on cases concerning a wide variety of legal issues, I left New Jersey not knowing Judge Alito’s personal beliefs on any of them.”

“He’s a man of great decency, integrity and character. I believe very strongly he deserves to be confirmed as the next associate justice.”

“I learned in my year with Judge Alito that his approach to judging is not about personal ideology or ambition, but about hard work and devotion to law and justice.”

As someone who actually served as a federal appellate law clerk, I can tell y’all that if Judge Alito’s judicial philosophy was premised on his political ideology, his former clerks would have noticed. Indeed, if that was the case, why would he hire liberal clerks? I am not suggesting that a conservative judge should hire judicially liberal clerks, mind you. Those slots are precious few, and we desperately need them to go to members of the Federalist Society, so that our grand conspiracy to completely take over the federal judiciary will prove successful. Nevertheless, when a conservative judge has a practice of hiring liberal law clerks, I think this strongly suggests that he is not approaching the cases before him with a political agenda in mind.

Update: Here’s a great comment to my crosspost over at Confirm Them from one of Judge (soon to be “Justice”) Alito’s former clerks (and yes, I’ve confirmed this):

Judge Alito does not always have a liberal clerk. He often did, but not always. Sometimes he had more than one. (In the early ’90s, he had three clerks, all of whom were liberal.)

He picks his clerks with total indifference to ideology. He looks for personal qualities, including academic qualifications, integrity, and someone he would find interesting to work with. I can tell you, ideology doesn’t matter at all to him.

And the year I clerked for him, two of the four of us were liberal. And I’m one of the ones quoted in the article. Unlike Scalia, who deliberately hires one “counter-clerk�? Judge Alito doesn’t really care what the makeup of his chambers is, as long as it’s cordial.

This, to me, is the mark of why liberals like me support him. He is fair and openminded in all respects.

O.k., sportsfans, how would you describe UPI’s “summary” of the Federalist Society’s rebuttal to ABC’s hit piece of Justice Scalia?

Stephen Spruiell has the scoop:

The article quotes two legal ethics experts: NYU professor Stephen Gillers and Doug Kendall, director of Community Rights Counsel. They both criticize Scalia’s decision to accept a trip funded by the Federalist Society, which Ross describes as a “conservative activist group.” Ross doesn’t do his readers the favor, however, of informing them that Gillers has criticized Scalia before in the left-wing magazine The Nation, and that the Community Rights Counsel is a left-wing public interest law firm that receives major funding from George Soros. Neither is impartial toward either Scalia or the Federalist Society, but that is how each is presented.

You can access Professor Gillers’s NYU profile here.

Tom Goldstein of SCOTUS Blog: “This story strikes me as bordering on character assassination.”

Professor Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy: “Scalia missed Chief Justice Roberts’ swearing-in ceremony because he was giving a series of lectures on constitutional interpretation in Colorado — and he even had the nerve to exercise during his trip!!!”

Ed Whelan of NRO’s Bench Memos: “Just wondering: Has Stephen Gillers, the “recognized scholar on legal ethics�? cited by ABC, ever reached an ethics opinion that didn’t favor liberals or disfavor conservatives? I’m sure that the answer must be yes, but I suspect that I’m not the only one who discerns a general pattern.”

(more to come)