In one late June #HabeasCorpus ruling, …3 contentious #Scalia footnotes criticized Souter by name; 3 days later, in one of the term's leading cases, …Scalia in angry dissent dismissed #DavidSouter's majority opinion as "facile" & petulantly invoked Souter's name again & again in criticizing the outcome. Seemingly both provoked & bemused, Souter responded that "Justice Scalia's dissent is certainly the work of a gladiator, but he thrusts at lions of his own imagining."
Through his role in securing the nominations of Clarence #Thomas, John #Roberts, and Samuel #Alito to the Supreme Court,
#Leonard #Leo’s political cachet began to grow.
An avid networker, he cultivated friendships with other members of the court,
spending a weekend in Colorado hunting with Judge Antonin #Scalia
— himself a devout Catholic and, like the Corkerys, close to #Opus #Dei.
Surrounded by such religious zeal, it didn’t take long for their example to reawaken his own Catholic faith, and Leo soon began tapping his network of #darkmoney #backers to support religious causes.
He twice bailed out the #Becket #Fund, a nonprofit named after a twelfth-century English martyr, that officially worked to protect religious freedoms,
especially those that were important to conservative Catholics.
He reveled in his reputation as the financial savior of this important community.
Soon afterwards, President Bush picked Leo as his representative to the "United States Commission on International Religious Freedom,"
a federal agency set up to police religious freedom around the world.
Despite its lofty aims, the commission had a tiny budget and its commissioners were unpaid.
Within Washington circles, many saw it as nothing more than an office for amateurs who meddled in foreign policy.
Undeterred by the skeptics, Leo made the most of his time at the commission to push his own Catholic agenda
— traveling to places like Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, and Vietnam to investigate allegations of religious persecution.
His own faith seemed to grow during that time,
with Leo occasionally reprimanding his staff for putting him in a hotel too far from a church,
making it difficult for him to attend Mass.
Some colleagues began to note a particular bias in the way he carried out a role that conflicted with the commission’s stated aim of championing the freedom of all religions.
He became embroiled in a lawsuit after one former colleague accused him of ❌firing her because she was Muslim.
Several staff members resigned because of the controversy,
and Leo was fired not long after.
Despite the scandal, his time at the commission deepened Leo’s faith and helped him cultivate his image as a serious political figure.
By the time of the #Federalist #Society’s twenty-fifth anniversary dinner in November 2007,
his influence was clear.
Leo shared the stage with the president and three sitting Supreme Court Justices
— Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.
Chief Justice John Roberts sent a video message.
“Thanks in part to your efforts, a new generation of lawyers is rising,” President Bush told the assembled members.
At the time of this dinner, Leo was still recovering from the sudden death of his daughter Margaret just a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday
— an event that had a profound impact on him.
Margaret had been born with spina bifida and used a wheelchair.
Events around her death had reinforced Leo’s faith.
The previous summer, during a family vacation, Leo had promised Margaret that he would try to go to Mass more regularly.
Over the years, Margaret had developed an obsession with anything religious, and would nag her parents to take her to Mass.
She especially loved angels
— and priests, insisting on a hug every time she saw one.
The day after they returned from vacation, Leo got up early to go to Mass
— as promised — and looked in on Margaret.
As he was walking down the hall, she started gasping for breath and died shortly afterward.
“I will always think that she did her job,” he later said. “She did her job.”
#Leonard #Leo was born on Long Island in the mid-sixties.
When he was only a toddler, he lost his father — a pastry chef — to cancer.
At the age of five, his mother remarried, and the Leos moved to New Jersey, where he attended Monroe Township High School.
Leo was chosen as the “Most Likely to Succeed”
a distinction he shared with classmate #Sally #Schroeder, his future wife.
In the yearbook, the two were shown sitting next to each other, holding wads of cash and with dollar signs painted on their glasses.
He was so effective at raising money for his senior prom that his classmates nicknamed him the “Moneybags Kid.”
Throughout his life, he remained steeped in the deep Catholicism of his grandfather, who had emigrated to the United States from Italy as a teenager;
his grandparents attended Mass daily, and encouraged the young Leonard to follow their lead.
After high school, Leo went to Cornell University, studying under a group of conservative academics in the university’s department of government
and with the wider national backdrop of iconoclastic scholars led by Yale University’s #Robert #Bork and the University of Chicago’s #Antonin #Scalia, who were building the case for a novel legal doctrine known as #originalism.
He got a series of internships in Washington, D.C., during the final years of the Reagan administration,
then returned to Cornell to join the law school, where in 1989 he founded the local chapter of a student organization called the #Federalist #Society.
That group had been set up by three conservative-leaning students from Yale, Harvard, and Chicago seven years earlier as a way of challenging what they saw as the dominance of liberal ideology at the country’s law schools.
After graduating, Leo married Sally, who had been raised as a Protestant but who used to go to Catholic Mass five times every weekend because she played the organ.
She decided to convert not long before her marriage.
The couple moved back to Washington, where Leo clerked for a judge on the court of appeals and became close with another appellate judge who had recently been appointed to the D.C. circuit
— a man from Georgia called #Clarence #Thomas,
who had toyed with becoming a Catholic priest.
Despite being ten years older and from much more humble origins,
Thomas shared Leo’s conservative outlook, and the two soon developed a deep friendship that would endure for many years.
During this period, Leo was asked by the Federalist Society to become its first employee
— although he delayed his start date so that he could help his good friend Thomas through his contentious confirmation process for the Supreme Court.
Despite accusations of sexual harassment hanging over him, Thomas won Senate confirmation by a slim margin.
It would be the first in a series of fights in which Leo would have to put aside the teachings of his Christian faith as he focused on the greater goal of pushing through a conservative revolution of the courts and of society at large.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/opus-dei-leonard-leo-supreme-court-moneybags-kid-1235115538/
In 2021 & 2022, #AileenCannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its #law school for #Scalia thanks to $30M in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker #LeonardLeo helped organize.
Federal Judge #Aileen M. #Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July,
⚠️failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.
Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University.
At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges.
Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”
⭐️A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.
It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.
❌In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for #Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker #Leonard #Leo helped organize.
https://www.propublica.org/article/judge-aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case-travel-disclosures
when you engage the #GOP in good faith, they whine you can't have a new #scotus justice in a presidential #election year
#centrist #democrats folded, milquetoast, weak, and we got #gorsuch instead of #garland replacing #scalia
scalia died feb '16, gorsuch confirmed apr '17
then they hammer through a new supreme court justice with an election 2 months out, #barrett replacing #ginsburg
ginsburg died sep '20, barrett confirmed oct '20
the GOP only deserves ash. fuck them forever
Leonard Leo typically operates in the background and goes to considerable lengths to cover his philanthropic tracks.
Each year, his groups send millions through #DonorsTrust,
which markets itself as a “principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors”
and a means to anonymously fund “sensitive or controversial issues.”
Deep-pocketed benefactors like Leo can tell DonorsTrust where they want their money to ultimately go.
Its board of directors will “always respect grant requests that fall within the DonorsTrust mission and purpose,” per its website.
DonorsTrust declined to discuss the specifics of any contributions identified by The Intercept.
“We do not release to the general public either the names of our accountholders nor specific grants that they may have recommended,” said Lawson #Bader, its president and CEO.
Bader noted that some of the contributions listed on DonorsTrust’s tax filings may have originated from multiple donors.
But Leo’s funding vehicles
— especially the #Marble #Freedom #Trust and the #85Fund,
which he rebranded in 2020 and likely bankrolls via yet another donor-advised fund
— are among the biggest contributors to DonorsTrust.
In 2022, the 85 Fund sent $92 million through DonorsTrust,
more than a quarter of all contributions to DonorsTrust that year.
Marble Freedom Trust has distributed more than $41 million via DonorsTrust, according to a filing for its 2020 fiscal year.
The Rule of Law Trust, also run by Leo, gave $5.8 million via DonorsTrust in 2020.
Beside Leo’s groups, other top contributors to DonorsTrust include #Rebekah #Mercer of Cambridge Analytica and Parler fame,
whose Mercer Family Foundation gave $31 million in 2022.
Mercer and other top contributors to DonorsTrust did not respond to The Intercept’s questions for this article.
Whether from Leo or other sources, conservative money has been already flowing to law schools via DonorsTrust for years, mostly to premiere programs.
Since 2019, #Yale Law School has received $250,000 per year for the “Diversity in Democracy Professorship Fund”;
Yale declined to explain the purpose of this fund or say whether these contributions came from Leo.
New York University Law School received $350,000 in 2021 and $300,000 in 2022 for a libertarian research institute.
#NYU also declined to provide additional details about the source of these contributions.
And since 2020, #Stanford’s student chapter of the Federalist Society received $25,000 per year.
Stanford referred questions to the Federalist Society and DonorsTrust.
There were also millions sent to George Mason University’s #Scalia Law School,
which Leo helped make one of the gravitational centers for conservative legal academia.
Since 2017, Scalia Law School received at least $4 million each year via DonorsTrust,
much of it earmarked for its Law & Economics Center, which puts on often lavish doctrinal bootcamps for judges, one of which was held in Leo’s literal backyard.
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/29/leonard-leo-donor-law-schools/
How ‘History and Tradition’ Rulings Are Changing American Law - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/magazine/history-tradition-law-conservative-judges.html
Changes in the prevailing sound of Kpop girl groups help me understand US conservative constitutional and statutory interpretation. So a couple of years ago I would go onto YouTube and hear tropical house and girl crush shouting; these days, it's the Y2K sound.
Similarly, conservatives used to wax eloquent about "originalism" and "textualism"; now it's "history and tradition".*
In both domains, any search for an overarching explanatory principle beyond group interest is futile.
*No, Antonin Scalia is not turning in his grave, because he too was devoid of principle or decency.
#USPolitics #Jurisprudence #USJudiciary #Conservatism #Scalia
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