For conservative lawyers, a time to celebrate

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - As the Federalist Society held its annual convention in Washington's Mayflower Hotel this week, judicial nominees — failed and successful, past, present and future — mingled and celebrated.

Federal judges increasingly run Americans’ daily lives on matters from property to prayer, and it’s from the ranks of these Federalist Society members milling around the capital that America’s rulers will come in the years ahead, at least while a conservative president is in the White House.

The group’s board went to the White House Thursday morning to meet with President Bush, who has tapped high-profile members of the Federalist Society for the bench, the most prominent being Samuel Alito, whose nomination to the Supreme Court seems headed for confirmation early in the New Year.

The withdrawal of White House counsel Harriet Miers and her replacement by Alito was a thrill and a relief for Federalist members.

“It wasn’t so much that Miers didn’t meet a litmus test for any particular issue. It was hard to surmise what her views were on any issue," said Carter Snead, a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. "The problem was she didn’t come from the pool of stellar judicial nominees that people in the forefront of the conservative legal movement think of as the models for federal judges,”

Bush appointees gather in D.C.
Alito wasn’t in attendance, but other Bush appointees to the bench were easy to spot at the Mayflower: Calmly checking his Blackberry was U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Bill Pryor, from the Eleventh Circuit in Alabama; while hustling to get his breakfast Thursday was Tenth Circuit judge Michael McConnell from Utah, often mentioned as a potential Supreme Court short-list candidate.

Both men survived tough Senate confirmation battles to win seats on the appellate bench; a Democratic filibuster blocked Pryor’s nomination for two years.

“Life before nomination was very pleasant, life after confirmation is very pleasant, life during nomination is not so pleasant,” said McConnell, as he scurried away.

Later, in his address, McConnell got in a thinly veiled slam at Justice Anthony Kennedy, for citing in his 2004 Lawrence v Texas sodomy decision the court’s 1992 phrase about liberty being “the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

McConnell said when defining liberty judges must look to rights “firmly established by long-standing custom and practice…. One finds such rights… not deep within ourselves or within the mysteries of the universe.”

Pryor, more of an easy-going politician than McConnell, seemed glad to talk to a reporter: “I’m happy to be back in the nation’s capital, I am,” he insisted. “I don’t have any regrets or ill feelings at all…. I can assure you that whatever was said up here during the confirmation process did not cause me any grief among friends and people I see in my home state.”

Pryor loves coming to the Federalists’ annual gatherings. “You’ve got the best experts in the field from diverse viewpoints on the panels to debate the issues. The most challenging thing about being at one of these events is it’s almost physically impossible to be at every one you want to hear.”

Also scheduled to speak at the Federalist Society meeting was Robert Bork, who evokes a sadder memory for conservatives. Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by President Reagan was defeated by the Senate in 1987.

Another flamboyant Society member at this week’s gathering who was proposed to the bench by President Reagan, but was foiled by American Bar Association opposition, was Lino Graglia, a law professor from University of Texas.

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