Nicholas Wallace, recent Stanford Law graduate, condemns The Federalist Society in Slate via a satiric flier celebrating their role in the January 6th insurrection:
My flyer itself emphasized the events immediately preceding the Jan. 6 attack: Hawley famously raised his fist in support of the mob that stormed the Capitol, while Paxton (along with John Eastman, who was at the time the head of a Federalist Society practice group) spoke with President Donald Trump at the now-infamous “Save America Rally.” But the Federalist Society’s connections to the insurrection stretch well beyond the day of the attack. Consider the October 2020 speaking tour of Hans von Spakovsky. Von Spakovsky was a member of the Trump administration’s “voter fraud” panel, from which he controversially suggested excluding Democrats and “mainstream” Republicans. For more than two decades, von Spakovsky has been at the forefront of the right wing’s “voter-suppression effort in disguise,” pushing unfounded claims of voter fraud as a justification for restrictions on the franchise. And in the month before the 2020 election he participated in at least nine Federalist Society events, delivering talks with names like “Consequences of Mail-In Ballots” and “Election Fraud 2020: Fact or Fiction?” At one of his talks, von Spakovsky warned: “If it’s a close election, we may have a lot of chaos in a lot of different places, and a lot of litigation contesting the outcome.” …
This farcical streak of court losses for Federalist Society officers did not deter other Federalist Society members from continuing to spread election misinformation. In late December, Hawley promised to object to the election results during the Electoral College certification process on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz, another member of the senate’s unofficial Federalist Society Caucus, followed suit.
All of which is to say that while “The Originalist Case for Inciting Insurrection” was indeed supposed to be funny, the Federalist Society’s connections to the attack on the Capitol are no joke. The collective efforts of the Federalist Society’s membership provided a veneer of legal legitimacy to the falsehoods that fueled the insurrectionist mob. Meanwhile, the Federalist Society itself has resolutely refused to disavow those members who played a role in inciting the insurrection.
So I’m a little puzzled by their behavior. Assuming they really are professional lawyers and not just autocratic wannabes, The Federalist Society is in a lose-lose situation.
If the Democrats continue in power, the role of the Society, supposing it continues to fail to condemn the insurrection and its Society-based progenitors, its reputation will become severely tainted. It’s even possible that those SCOTUS Justices who are members of the Society will resign their memberships.
And if the Republicans come into power again? They are tied to Trump through actions, aka the insurrection, and service, which would be the lists of judicial nominees they provided to the Trump Administration. And, if we do transition to an autocracy, this is the same as transitioning from the Rule of Law to the Rule of Man, as philosophers of government will put it.
That is, the position of lawyer will lose its utility and prestige.
Worse yet, in autocracies loyalty rarely runs in both directions, and Trump is no exception. The moment he or his heirs find the Society to be useless or worse, it’ll be consigned to the dustbin of history, both institutionally and for most of the individual members.
Disaster for all.
