The effort has been a resounding success. With the help of Republicans in Congress, 85 extra federal judgeships were created under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; Bill Clinton got nine. Now, seven out of 12 circuit courts are anti-choice. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are Republican appointees--and it's been 11 years since a post has opened up, meaning another right-winger or two could be appointed sometime soon. During the elder Bush's tenure, one White House insider boasted that no one who wasn't a Federalist ever received a judicial appointment from the president.
One of George W. Bush's earliest moves in office was to consolidate the Federalist Society's power even further: He "simply eliminated the longstanding role in the evaluation of prospective judges by the resolutely centrist American Bar Association, whose ratings had long kept extremists and incompetents off the bench," wrote Martin Garbus in American Prospect. "Today the Federalists have more influence in judicial selection than the ABA ever had."
The society now counts Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and prominent members of the conservative American Enterprise Institute among its leadership. Ashcroft, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Solicitor General Theodore Olson and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez--charged with approving all judicial nominations before passing them onto Congress--are all members.
As one might expect, the Federalists have consistently acted in favor of property rights over rights of the individual, business deregulation, creationist teachings and much of the rest of the right-wing agenda. But one of the principal victims has been the democratic process itself: Remember, it was the Supreme Court that stopped a hand count of 175,000 uncounted (largely Democratic) ballots in Florida, which could have cost Bush the 2000 presidential election. Conservative jurists have interfered with redistricting efforts to reverse the deliberate segregation of black and Latino voters, and have erected barriers to the participation of third-party candidates in the electoral process.
Unless liberals miraculously spawn a radical turnaround in how federal judges--who enjoy lifetime terms--are appointed, one of Dubya's most longstanding legacies may very well be a hard-right judiciary that lasts for decades to come.
Sources: "A hostile takeover: How the Federalist Society is capturing the federal courts," Martin Garbus and "Courts vs. citizens," Jamin Raskin, both in The American Prospect, March 1, 2003.
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