How Leonard Leo Weaponized the Courts Against Democracy | The Nation
The Federalist Society, formed in 1982, was the perfect vehicle for forging a right-wing legal cadre and funneling it into the legal system.
Leonard Leo joined the Federalist Society in 1986, forming a chapter of the group at Cornell where he was studying law.
As he rose in the ranks, Leo was an important player in the political campaigns to win Senate approval for Supreme Court justices such as Clarence #Thomas, John #Roberts, and Samuel #Alito.
During the Bush administration, when the Department of Justice wanted to “launder and distribute” a white paper in support of a contentious nominee, they turned to Leo.
Viet Dinh, a Department of Justice official who was also a prominent member of the Federalist Society, e-mailed, ”Tell len leo [sic] I need this distributed asap.”
The Federalist Society was thus organically tied to the Republican Party:
When nominees ran into headwinds, Leo would lead the charge with media campaigns to rally support.
By 2016, the role of the Federalist Society as the essential gatekeeper of Republican judicial nominees was recognized by presidential candidate #Trump, who promised the right-wing base, “We’re going to have great judges, conservative, all picked by the Federalist Society.”
The network Leo brought together comprises three cords:
♦️the GOP (which needed conservative judges),
♦️the legal profession (where young lawyers were hungry for a pathway to judges),
♦️and plutocratic donors (eager for judges that supported plutocracy and right-wing politics).
💰Money was a crucial component of this network.
George Conway, a former Republican who had been active in the Federalist Society, told ProPublica,
“There was always a concern that Scalia or Thomas would say, ‘Fuck it,’ and quit the job and go make way more money at Jones Day [a big law firm] or somewhere else.
Part of what Leonard does is he tries to keep them happy so they stay on the job.”
This explains the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by right-wing judges as they vacation and cavort with robber barons such as Harlan #Crow and Paul #Singer.
The judges get to enjoy the lifestyle of the 1 percent despite earning a government salary.
While the Supreme Court is the big prize, the conservative legal movement that Leo forged worked to reshape lower courts as well as state courts, helping to promote not just right-wing judges but also district attorneys.
Sometimes the lobbying was demagogic. Politico reports,
Leo became interested in Wisconsin in 2008.
An incumbent state Supreme Court justice, Louis #Butler, had angered the state’s largest business group with his ruling in a lead paint case.
The ensuing ad campaign was contentious and expensive, featuring commercials showing Butler, who is Black, next to the picture of a sex offender who was also Black.
The #racist demagoguery of that judicial race is of a piece with the way Republican jurists have so often worked to curtail voting rights.
The whole claim that #originalism was meant to enhance democracy has been revealed as a fraud.
The same #antidemocratic tendency can be seen in the way the court is working to limit president Biden’s agenda, as in the recent decision in
👉Biden v. Nebraska overturning student debt relief—a measure that was in the Democratic Party platform when Biden won the election.
The goal was to create an ideologically committed faction that could dominate the courts and advance its agenda without democratic check.
