Conservative Lawyers Group Pops Champagne With Cautious Optimism
(Bloomberg) -- As hundreds of lawyers and judges filed into a meeting room in the Washington Hilton midday Friday, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne was placed on the stage.
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A panel discussion on administrative law doesn’t typically feature glasses of bubbly. But 2024 was no ordinary year for members of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers group that held its annual convention just a week after President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans secured the electoral trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress.
Cheers went up as Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger popped the bottle to celebrate a run of recent US Supreme Court decisions that delivered blows to the power of federal agencies, a long-sought goal of the conservative legal movement. Prominent on his list was a blockbuster ruling in June that threw out a decades-old legal doctrine known as Chevron deference which empowered regulators to interpret unclear laws.
Those high court victories, followed by the election results, lent a celebratory mood to this year’s gathering. Law firm partners, nonprofit advocates, judges, government lawyers and law students were all smiles as they hugged, hobnobbed and networked in between panels.
Judge Andrew Oldham — who was appointed by Trump to a federal appeals court — kicked off the convention Thursday with a joking nod to recent events and his own ethical constraints on talking politics. Oldham is widely expected to be on the White House shortlist if a US Supreme Court seat opens in the next four years.
“Oh my gosh, how excited are we about last week’s blowout victory,” he said, rubbing his hands together as the crowd clapped and whooped. “By which I obviously mean the University of Texas Longhorns beating Florida.”
Cautious advice
But there were notes of caution as veterans of Trump’s first term and Republican advocates predicted an onslaught of legal challenges to the incoming administration’s anticipated rollback of environmental protections, diversity measures and other Joe Biden-era regulations.
This year’s conference also featured reminders of the chaos of Trump’s first term. Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein — a target of Trump’s ire for his handling of the first special counsel probe — was spotted. He told Bloomberg News he wasn’t planning a return to government, but was encouraging other lawyers to consider it, citing his own “rewarding” career.
And there was some residual airing of grievances amid the celebration of the Republican sweep. A conservative federal appeals court judge at one point pulled out a folder of printed articles, court briefs and social media posts written by the law professor sitting next to her as she denounced the “relentless attacks” on the judiciary.
But overall, this year’s attendees and speakers expressed optimism, tempered only by the memory of court losses during Trump’s first term that they’re hoping to avoid.
‘By the Book’
Discussions focused on practical approaches to make the most of the next four years, or at least the next two years when Republicans could be sure they control the House and Senate.
Robert Luther, who worked on judicial nominations during Trump’s first term, urged the administration to take an “aggressive” approach to filling federal district court seats, since there will likely be fewer appeals court slots. Luther, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, recommended closer vetting of each nominee’s “worldview and judicial philosophy” to make sure it aligns with Trump’s.
Republican state government lawyers warned that the Trump administration should avoid procedural shortcuts to carry out its policy agenda that might offer opponents easier wins in court — “turn square corners,” as T. Elliot Gaiser, Ohio’s solicitor general, put it.
“If you want to undo something that a previous administration has done, you have to be by the book,” Gaiser said.
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