#fedsoc

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Clarence Thomas and the generosity of a far-right dark-money billionaire

Clarence Thomas has set some important precedents in his career as a Supreme Court justice — for example, the elevation of the unrepentant rapist Brett Kavanaugh to the bench could never have occurred but for the trail blazed by Thomas as a sexually harassing, pubic-hair distributing creep boss:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/30-years-after-her-testimony-anita-hill-still-wants-something-from-joe-biden-514884

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

Today, Thomas continues to steer the court into new territory — for example, he’s interested in banning same-sex marriage again:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256

And of course, he’s set precedent by hearing cases related to the attempted overthrow of the US government, despite the role his wife played in the affair:

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/30/1089595933/legal-ethics-experts-agree-justice-thomas-must-recuse-in-insurrection-cases

Thomas is not alone in furthering the right’s mission to destroy the morale of constitutional law scholars by systematically delegitimizing the court and showing it to be a vehicle for partisan politics and dark money policy laundering, but he is certainly at the vanguard:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes

Today, Propublica published an expose on the vast fortune in secret gifts bestowed upon Thomas by the billionare GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, who is also one the most significant funders of political campaigns that put business before Thomas and the Supreme Court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow

The story, reported by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski is a masterwork of shoe-leather investigative journalism, drawing on aviation records, social media posts and other “open source” intelligence to expose the illegal, off-the-books “gifts” from a billionaire to an unaccountable Supreme Court justice with a lifetime appointment.

Here are a two of those gifts: a private jet/superyacht jaunt around Indonesia valued at $500,000; and a $500,000 gift to Ginni Thomas’s Tea Party group (which pays Ginni Thomas $120,000/year).

On top of that are gifts that are literally priceless: decades’ worth of summer vacations at Camp Topridge, Crow’s private estate, with its waterfall, great hall, private chefs, 25 fireplaces, thee boathouses, clay tennis court, batting range, 1950s-style soda fountain and full-scale reproduction of Hagrid’s hut.

Summer retreats to Topridge allow business leaders like Leonard Leo — the Federalist Society bankroller and mastermind who set Trump up to pack the Supreme Court — to coordinate in private with Thomas:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/29/betcha-cant-eat-just-one/#pwnage

They also allow top execs from PWC, Verizon and other corporations who may have business before the court to establish a warm, collegial relationship with a judge whose decisions can make billions for their employers. In its reporting, Propublica points out that Thomas got to hang out on Crow’s superyacht with Mark Paoletta, who was then general counsel for Trump’s OMB, and who has opposed any tightening of ethics rules for Supreme Court judges: “there is nothing wrong with ethics or recusals at the Supreme Court.”

Crow and Thomas also hobnob together at Crow’s Texas ranch, and at the Bohemian Grove, the Bay Area’s ultra-luxe retreat for rich creeps. Crow bought Thomas a private superyacht cruise through New Zealand, another through the Greek islands, and a river trip around Savannah, GA. He also traveled around the country on Crow’s private jet — even a short private jet trip is valued around $70,000.

Crow also makes many donations on Thomas’s behalf, from a $105,000 donation to Yale Law School for the “Justice Thomas Portrait Fund” to paying for a 7 foot tall, 1,800 lb bronze statue of the nun who taught Thomas in the eighth grade, which now stands in a New York Catholic cemetery.

This is without precedent. No Supreme Court justice in US history received comparable gifts during their tenure on the bench. Federal judges quoted in the story call it “incomprehensible,” noting that US judges bend over backwards not to owe anyone any favors, going so far as to book restaurant reservations without using their titles.

Virginia Canter, a former US government ethics lawyer of bipartisan experience said Thomas “seems to have completely disregarded his higher ethical obligations,” adding “it makes my heart sink.”

The Supreme Court’s own code of ethics prohibits justices from engaging in conduct that gives rise to the “appearance of impropriety,” but the code is “consultative,” and there are no penalties for violating it. But US judicial officers — including Thomas — are legally required to disclose things like private jet trips. Thomas did not. In general, justices must report any gift valued at more than $415, where a gift is “anything of value.” This includes instances in which a gift is given by a corporation whose owner is the true giver.

Crow is a Red Scare-haunted plutocrat who says his greatest fear is “Marxism.” He was a key donor to the anti-tax extremists at the Club For Growth, and has served on the board of the American Enterprise Institute — climate deniers who also claimed that smoking didn’t cause cancer — for 25 years.

Crow is a proud dark-money source, too, whose $10m in acknowledged donations to Republican causes and candidates are only the tip of the iceberg, next to the dark money he has provided to groups he declines to name, telling the New York Times, “I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”

Crow claims that the vast sums he’s lavished on Thomas — who, again, presides over the test cases that Crow is helping to put before him — are just “hospitality.” Crow called the private retreats with business leaders and top government officials “gatherings of friends,” and added that he was “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas” while at his private estates or on his superyacht or private plane.

For his part, Thomas publicly maintains that he hates luxury. In a Crow-financed documentary about Thomas’s life, Thomas tells the camera, “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”

Judges often have to make determinations about conflicts of interest, and lawyers have an entire practice devoted to preventing conflicts from arising. I doubt whether Thomas himself would consent to have a dispute of his own tried in front of a judge who had received millions in gifts from his opponent.

The Supreme Court’s power comes from its legitimacy. The project of delegitimizing the court started with the right, and Democrats have been loathe to participate in any activity that would worsen the court’s reputation. As a result, the business lobby and authoritarian politicians have had free rein to turn the court into a weapon for attacking American workers, American women, and LGBTQ people.

It doesn’t have to be this way. When the Supreme Court blocked all of FDR’s New Deal policies — which were wildly popular — FDR responded by proposing age limits for Supreme Court judges. When the Supremes refused to contemplate this, FDR asked Congress for a law allowing him to appoint one new Supreme Court judge for every judge who should retire but wouldn’t.

As the vote on this bill grew nearer, the Supremes reversed themselves, voting to uphold the policies they’d struck down in their previous session. They knew that their legitimacy was all they had, and when a brave president stood up to their bullying, they caved.

https://theconversation.com/packing-the-court-amid-national-crises-lincoln-and-his-republicans-remade-the-supreme-court-to-fit-their-agenda-147139

The Supreme Court has moved America further away from the ideals of pluralistic democracy than we can even fathom, and they’re just getting started. They are taking a wrecking ball to the lives of anyone who isn’t a wealthy conservative, and they’re doing it while accepting a fortune in bribes from American oligarchs.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

Image: Mr. Kjetil Ree (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Supreme_Court.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: An altered image of Clarence Thomas, standing in gilded judicial robes on the steps of the Supreme Court. Looming over the court is a line-drawing of a business-man with a dollar-sign-emblazoned money-bag for a head.]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Golden Rule (them what has the gold makes the rules)

For many Constitutional law scholars, last years' Dobbs decision on abortion rights at the Supreme Court came as a dismaying shock, because it showed conclusively that conlaw wasn't a realm of ideologically consistent intellectual foment, but rather, a matter of politics.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes

Writing for Credit Slips, the finance law scholar Adam Levitin admits to feeling a bit of schadenfreude in that moment. The "blue collar" law scholars in "grubby" banking and money fields have always treated the conlaw set as "slightly clueless toffs":

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2023/03/the-death-of-dodd-frank-banking-laws-dobbs-moment.html

As a field, conlaw fiercely resists the idea that their field is "largely a battle of normative opinions, without any quasi-objective touchstone or clearly right or wrong answers." Finance law, by contrast, firmly roots its understanding of outcomes in expediency and politics as much as the text of the law.

And of course, every conlaw scholar must know that - at certain points - the Supremes' most consequential decisions were political, overturning jurisprudence based on shifting cultural attitudes.

Think of Abraham Lincoln, whose anti-slavery laws were repeatedly struck down by the SCOTUS of the day. Lincoln's predecessors had filled the court with pro-slavery southerners who remained on the bench long after their home states had seceded from the Union:

https://theconversation.com/packing-the-court-amid-national-crises-lincoln-and-his-republicans-remade-the-supreme-court-to-fit-their-agenda-147139

That court ruled in Dred Scott that Black people were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit":

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/dred-scott-v-sandford/

Small wonder that the Supreme Court was considered "the last stronghold of Southern power." The court consistently ruled against Lincoln and Lincoln simply ignored their rulings:

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/lincoln-and-taneys-great-writ-showdown

Eventually, Lincoln hit on a very honorable solution to an illegitimate court that frustrated the political will of democratically accountable lawmakers: pack the court. He reorganized the Federal Circuits to purge federal judges who supported the Confederacy.

He also filled SCOTUS vacancies with loyalists. Even so, that didn't get him a majority - but he didn't need a majority - the political support and momentum of the anti-slavery movement flipped those recalcitrant judges. The law didn't change, but once those judges saw that they were standing athwart a vast social upheaval, those judges' formerly iron certainties about the law crumbled.

That wasn't the only time the Supremes discovered heretofore unsuspected flexibilities in their granite certainty about the Constitution. Under FDR, a pro-oligarch Supreme Court consistently struck down the wildly popular New Deal policies that won him a landslide electoral victory.

These decisions were widely denounced by legal scholars - and the public. As the court annihilated worker protections and programs to rebuild the shattered economy, FDR used the bully pulpit to call the court a "no-man's-land where no Government— State or Federal—can function":

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-franklin-roosevelt-clashed-with-the-supreme-court-and-lost-78497994/

FDR proposed age limits on judges - which was just a roundabout way of forcing the retirement of the long-serving judges who'd been appointed by the Gilded Age plutocrats whose greed had precipitated the Great Depression. Forcing retirements on the "nine old men" would open up seats for FDR to fill.

When the Supremes refused to countenance such a matter, FDR went to Congress and demanded the authority to appoint a new, younger judge for every over-70 judge who wouldn't retire (contrary to popular mythology, there is no law that sets the number of Supreme Court justices at nine and the number has fluctuated widely through the history of the US).

For the next 168 days, the only newsworthy subject was the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. It filled every newspaper, barroom and workplace conversation. The GOP was demolished in the 1936 election, which were seen as a referendum on the Supreme Court's legitimacy - a referendum that SCOTUS decisively lost.

Soon, it was clear that FDR had the majority he needed to let him appoint new judges. And then...The court found religion. They upheld a minimum wage law that was substantively identical to other laws they'd struck down just a little while before.

They upheld NLRB rulings that were basically indistinguishable from others they'd invalidated. They reversed themselves on interstate commerce and opened the door to regulating coal mines. Then they came for sweatshop garment factories. The political will to pack the court weakened - but FDR still got his court, without having to pack it. The law was subservient to politics.

In the decades since, we've allowed the myth of ivory-tower conlaw to grow unchallenged, maintaining the pretense - so beloved of the Federalist Society - that the law is a "textual" matter. The sleight of hand is obvious: every oppressor wants to claim that they're "normal" while their opponents are "political." Paying women less then men, or Black people less than white people, is "the market"; while demands for pay equity are "political."

Jurisprudence reflects politics and can only ever reflect politics. The law must deal in ideas like "fairness" and "reasonableness," and these concepts change and change again. Judges' authority only comes secondarily from their bailiffs and "peace officers" - a judge's true authority comes from their perceived legitimacy.

Judges and enforcers know this, even when they don't admit it, which is why they spend so much effort on set-dressing - robes and gavels and somber paneling and formal language. Deep down, they're theater kids with pretensions.

That's what makes the decision to bail out Silicon Valley Bank so distressing for finance law scholars like Levitin: they understand their law to be grounded in prudence and the SVB bailout is so reckless. That's why Levitin calls the SVB bailout "banking law's Dobbs moment."

SVB is a bank that increased its executive compensation in lockstep with the recklessness of their management, doubling CEO Greg Becker's bonuses as he decreased the bank's reliability:

https://www.ft.com/content/02ff2860-2d5b-4e21-96af-cef596bff58e

Becker liquidated his stock just before his bank collapsed, cashing out twice on that recklessness:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/svb-execs-sold-millions-company-stock-lead-collapse/story?id=97937058

All of SVB's execs got bonuses just hours before the bank failed:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/silicon-valley-bank-employees-received-bonuses-hours-before-takeover.html

That's what makes the bailout so dismaying. It involves an exotic (to put it mildly; "absurd" also springs to mind) interpretation of the FDIC's statutory authority and the contours of the Dodd-Frank Act, passed after the Great Financial Crisis to ensure that the public would never reward reckless banks for failure.

As Levitin writes, "I really don't know how one can teach prudential banking regulation after SVB. How can you teach the students the formal rules—supervision, exposure and concentration limits, prompt corrective action, deposit insurance caps—when you know that the rules aren't followed?"

In other words, as with Dobbs, we have enforcers and judges behaving as though they are certain that they can maintain legitimacy in the face of widespread dismay at their actions. The politics revealed by these choices are the politics of impunity, a bedrock belief that we don't matter anymore and we can all just go fuck ourselves.

That's why SVB's apologists are so unhinged. When they argue that we had to bail out SVB because otherwise depositors would pile into Jpmorgan and other already Too Big to Fail/Too Big to Jail banks, they excluded the possibility that we'd create public banks that would break free of this seeming necessity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

When they argue that giving $2B to SVB's investors (because they were also depositors in the bank they crashed) that it's not "bailing out investors," they're ignoring the possibility that if we're gonna make up new interpretations of Dodd-Frank, we could simply tack on a "no, fuck those guys, they get nothing" rider:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/18/2-billion-here-2-billion-there/#socialism-for-the-rich

When they argue that they just want to save "small businesses" and "startups," they ignore the possibility that if we're going to find political will to save a bank whose balance-sheet was 90+% billionaire VC money, we might also find political will to impose conditions on the bail-ees. Like, if we're gonna save those depositors in the name of "saving jobs" we could make them sign legally binding pledges never to lay off another worker within 10 years of a stock buyback or dividend:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/tech-workers/#sharpen-your-blades-boys

The fact that none of this is on the table tells us a lot about how elites view their position in society. Specifically, it tells us that they think that the majority of us should get nothing but scraps from their tables.

They haven't made a secret of this. 40 years ago, the antitrust bar underwent a hostile takeover by billionaires' lickspittles from the Chicago School of Economics, who explicitly argued that monopolies were good and demanded that judges ignore 75 years of jurisprudence and use antitrust law to defend monopolies:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

The Chicago School's paymasters funded lavish junkets - the Manne Seminars - where 40% of the federal judiciary attended luxury re-education camps to teach them to love monopolies:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

Today, those judges and the lawyers who appear before them argue that any "textual" interpretation of antitrust law - say, an interpretation that acts against monopolies - is laughable, ahistorical nonsense that "flies in the face of precedent." And yeah, it does:

https://publicknowledge.org/no-pain-no-gain-ftc-loses-bid-to-block-facebooks-acquisition-of-within/

It flies in the face of the illegitimate, corporate-purchased precedent that turned America into an oligarch's playground. It very strictly adheres to the new precedent that politics will (someday) force upon the law.

We see this in play with the copyright case against the Internet Archive, which a lower court badly fumbled yesterday, ruling against the right of libraries to scan their print holdings and lend them out because there is a "licensed" ebooks from publishers - ebooks that cost many multiples of the print editions and self-destruct after just a few lend-outs:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

The politics here are obvious. As Brewster Kahle put it, this decision conceives of libraries as "customer service departments for corporate database products." The truth is that libraries are ancient, bedrock institutions. Libraries are older than copyright. They're older than printing. Than paper. Than commerce.

The realpolitik of this decision - and the publishing strategists at the Big Five publishers who support it - is that the party is over for us plebs, the age of public goods is behind us, and we should go back belowstairs and get used to tugging our forelocks again:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

The law is political. The fight over these decisions to create socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor is a political fight. Yes, we can and should call on Congress to amend the statutes to clarify them, in small words that even Supreme Court judges and Chicago-poisoned economists can understand. But that in itself won't make change - what will make change is the same thing that has always made change: politics.

[Image ID: A kraken strangling a coin-operated judge automata whose robes of office bear text reading 'to obtain a verdict/put a penny in the slot' and 'with costs.' He bears two signs reading 'VERDICT.']

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

[correctsuccess]

Government Intervention in the Economy During a Financial Crisis [No. 86] When is it a good suggestion for the federal government to intervene, or withhold intervention, in an financial disaster? Professor Julia Mahoney explains that it's essential for the federal government to uphold clear and common authorized guidelines and to make sure sufficient liquidity for the market to perform. Nonetheless, if the federal government begins inventing new guidelines or circumve... #fedsoc #business_loans #conservative #correct_news #correctsuccess #credit #credit_cards #crisis #economics #economy #fed_soc #federalism #federalist_society #finance #financial #financial_health #financial_management #financial_success #government #how_to_get_out_of_debit #how_to_repair_credit #insurance #intervention #investment #law #libertarian #loans #money #taxes

[mlawipse]

Exposed: FedSoc at Center of 85 “Shell” Student Orgs

George Town, GRAND CAYMAN – In a shocking development this week, Ipse Dixit has come to learn that Michigan Law’s chapter of the Federalist Society (FedSoc) is at the center of a series of “shell” student organizations designed and operated with the sole purpose of obtaining additional LSSS student funding.

The fraud was deep and far-reaching, according to the tell-all report—dubbed “The Federalist Papers”—obtained exclusively by the id investigative reporting team. The report includes a list of the 85 sham student organizations that have laundered money into their conservative legal parent group.

“I should have known. We all should have known,” said LSSS budgetary chair Lee Washburn of Aurora, IL. “When they have non-pizza lunches—sure, great—but every week? It shouldn’t be possible.”

Washburn cited several red flags in the funding process, confirmed by the Papers.

“Money for Cottage Inn goes in, Zingerman’s comes out. It didn’t make any sense—not to mention, we’ve got all these student groups that we don’t even know what they do. Like the Frank Murphy Society, what even is that?”

Per the Papers, some organizations were, often unwittingly, contributing SOAS funding to FedSoc. Included among the 85 shell orgs were such groups as Christian Legal Society, On the Board, Asia Law Society, 1L Oral Advocacy Competition, the Michigan Technology Law Review, and numerous derivative organizations such as the “Society of Federalists” and “Federalist Society 2.” (“That should have been a tipoff,” Washburn notes.)

Intra-organizational emails contained within the Papers display an organization hellbent on obtaining funding in excess of $2,000 to counteract the “liberal bias” of such organizations as the American Constitution Society, the ACLU, and the Human Rights Advocates. Whereas a typical organization receives somewhere between $500 and $2,000 from LSSS, after accounting for the funding of each shell organization, FedSoc comes in with a whopping $98,450.

“How are we supposed to ‘expand debate’ without paying Primus his $200 appearance fees?” wrote one board member. “Do they expect us to find someone to legitimize our bad faith speakers while smugly smirking in the background for free??”

Students were reportedly pleased that the fraud was exposed, but sad to miss out on the otherwise popular “2nd Amendment & Liberty Free Exercise Carnival” held yearly on the quad. Others were concerned that FedSoc would no longer be able to bring in speakers willing to play the national anthem on an electric guitar in front of a waving flag .gif.

The Federalist Society, for its part, denies any wrongdoing.

“No no no. You’re getting this all wrong. Our funding comes from our wealthy benefactors and national parent organization, which has successfully placed 5 of 9 Supreme Court justices in a barely concealed jurisprudential coup that will define the country for a century to come,” board member Kristy Brewer wrote Ipse Dixit in response to a request for comment. “So it’s actually all on the up-and-up.”

Support Ipse Dixit: visit our shop to help fund a new site, and like us on Facebook and Instagram.

[mlawipse]

FedSoc LawBreaks to Stop Migrant Caravan

Brownsville, TX — Michigan's newest LawBreaks trip is perhaps its most exciting, and dangerous.

"We're going to stop the criminal, Soros-Marxist migrant caravan from invading our country," explained Federalist Society (FedSoc) co-chair, William Whaley (2L), of the group's newest planned offering for students.

LawBreaks is a Michigan Law program that has provided pro bono work opportunities for students during Spring Break since 2011. Typically, these program focus on important social issues and advancing the goal of legal justice in locations such as Detroit and New Orleans, to more far-flung areas like Belize and Navajo Nation.

"Most LawBreaks focus on helping disadvantaged groups. But we at FedSoc asked, what if that weren't the case," Whaley told Ipse Dixit while describing the planned, four-day trip to the border town of Brownsville, Texas—with a much-hyped two-day stopover in nearby South Padre Island to visit the Schlitterbahn Water Park, a novelty park “known for its ‘transportainment’ lazy river network.”

"Our members have been disenfranchised by the [LawBreaks] program's focus on such things at LGBT rights advocacy, housing justice, or…asylum law," he continued, with a shudder.

Members of FedSoc report frequently feeling deprived of the opportunities to visit these exciting sites, secluded instead to hum-drum, all-inclusive hotels, resorts, and tropical clubs during the same time. Several more praised the opportunity to "defend the nation's borders against this existential threat" of a few thousand Central Americans refugees potentially planning to seek asylum from gang warfare in their native lands. It is yet unknown when, if ever, this group will reach the United States.

"Is it dangerous? Yes, extremely. Am I worried about my safety? I'm terrified. I'm pissing my pants at the idea of these poor brown people trying to get into our country," said Frank Kimzey, 1L FedSoc member and noted waterpark enthusiast. "But is that going to keep me from enforcing the laws, as LawBreaks should be about? No. "

Asylum-seekers have rights under both international and U.S. law to request asylum through proper channels at the border.

When asked what laws, then, this group might break that necessitate a LawBreaks trip to the border or legal aid in any form, Kimzey had no answer. He and FedSoc will be joined by 15,000 U.S. armed forces.

Other students were critical of the mission and focus, framing it as obtuse if-not-outright-hypocritical, given an ostensible organizational focus on following the laws as written. The trip was additionally cited as wasteful, given the uncertainty of both caravan travel and outcome at this point.

"I mean, who knows. Could this whole migrant caravan thing blow over as a painfully overt, racist scare-tactic cynically intended to drum up Republican support ahead of a pivotal midterm election? Maybe. Maybe we'll just stay at Schlitterbahn all four days," Whaley argued in response to the criticism.

"Schlitterbahn. Woo!"

LawBreaks application is live now. Sign up by November 11th.

——

Support Ipse Dixit: like us on Facebook and Instagram.

[mlawipse]

FedSoc Narrows Down List of Suspects

Ann Arbor, MI — Tragedy struck this weekend on the Michigan Law campus, as the bulletin/event board for the school's branch of the Federalist Society was vandalized with anti-Kavanaugh speech. As the group—commonly known by the shorthand "FedSoc"—and the law school community as a whole begin to heal after this hateful act, the group is looking at narrowing down its list of potential suspects.

"Honestly, it could be anybody. FedSoc has no shortage of critics on campus, and the vandalization happened after Friday's well-attended Kavanaugh nomination panel. Sure, the kids in the group haven't done anything wrong—indeed, their efforts to organize events seem like a genuine effort to open debate on campus," said American Constitution Society (ACS) member Robert Eanes (2L), whose organization roundly condemned the actions during Saturday's ACS symposium.

"But they're complicit in an organization that is propping up a seriously tainted, unqualified candidate to the Supreme Court just to advance an ideology that's growing inequality and accelerating the destruction of the planet to the benefit of the privileged," he continued. "Who's happy about that?"

FedSoc members, however, are more confident that they'll be able to single out the person responsible.

"Whoever did this has made a powerful enemy," FedSoc board member Margaret Brannen (2L) told Ipse Dixit. "Therefore, they must be powerful. And who are the most powerful people? Corporations."

Rumor has it that, following April 2017's vandalization of the Black Law Students Association bulletin board, the school had installed a camera along the corridor that may be able to shortly identify the culprit. But FedSoc has already taken the steps to narrow down which corporate persons could have written the hateful message.

"Mr. Peanut, Monopoly Man [Ed. note: Rich Uncle Moneybags], these are long-time friends of FedSoc," said an anonymous 1L member familiar with the discussions. "But Chester Cheetah has always been a radical thorn in our side, as has that damnable money-saving gecko."

FedSoc has reportedly already provided the administration with a shortlist of suspects to choose from. Nevertheless, commentators suspect they'll have some trouble finding and prosecuting whichever corporation committed the heinous defamation.

"Corporations have long evaded criminal culpability, ironically with the help of FedSoc," Daniel Camp (3L) of MDefenders noted. "So even if they find the one responsible, it'll be an uphill battle."

At press time, FedSoc members were anticipating a resolution by the end of the week: "Sure, there's due process and everything, but c'mon. We're pretty sure they're guilty."

FedSoc's next event is an Antitrust Federalism lunch talk in LSSH 0225 at 11:50AM this upcoming Tuesday, October 2nd. Followed shortly thereafter by The Once and Future Privileges and Immunities Clause in LSSH 1225 at 11:50AM on Thursday, October 4.

——

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[getreassigneddotcom]

The Role of Economic Liberty in the United States

The Role of Economic Liberty in the United States

The Federalist Society hosted a lunch and discussion on the role of Economic Liberty in the United States on Tuesday, March 28, 2017.

Today, many job-seeking Americans and companies face significant government barriers that restrict their full participation in the economy. These barriers, often in the form of restrictive regulatory…

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[thcscout]

Medical Marijuana and Money Laundering

Medical Marijuana and Money Laundering

Medical marijuana may be legal in many states, but federally, it is still illegal. This means that banks run the risk of being charged with money laundering or other crimes for working with what the federal government considers an illicit activity. This creates a precarious situation where billions of dollars of state-licensed marijuana profits are handled almost exclusively in cash. What are the…

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