Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
Just goes to show that so Kenny things in life aren’t just happenstance. When you hear about scalia or Thomas or so on courting with billionaires.. These aren’t just individual cases that happen on their own. There is a system in place behind the scenes manipulating things and putting the pieces together.
Highlights
id610297348
Leonard Leo, a long-time majordomo of the Federalist Society who is also in charge of a $1.6 billion nonprofit called the Marble Freedom Trust, tasked with promoting conservative and libertarian values. The news organization ProPublica has in recent months specialized in keeping track of the legal network Leo has created over the last few decades, with special attention to his services as a matchmaker helping Supreme Court Justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito forge social ties with billionaires like Harlan Crow, Paul Singer, and Charles Koch.
id610297615
mainstream Republican jurists, once elevated to high positions, tended to go soft on social liberalism (even as they remained committed to a pro-big business agenda). By this analysis, typical GOP nominees were too much influenced by the ambient liberal culture of law school and the Washington elite.
id610297623
the goal became not just to nominate Republican judges but the right sort of Republican judges, indoctrinated at an early age in conservative principles and who, in later life, would have every incentive—both in terms of financial advancement and the comforts of belonging to a tightly knit and financially secure community—to stay loyal to the cause.
id610297641
the right “needed to cultivate nominees who would not only start out loyal to the cause but remain stalwart through all countervailing mainstream pressures. Leo and his allies concluded that they needed to identify candidates while they were young and nurture them throughout their careers. What they needed was a pipeline.” The Federalist Society, ProPublica adds, worked by “finding young, talented minds when they were still in law school, advancing their careers, supporting them after setbacks and insulating them from ideological drift.”
id610297675
“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.