Patterico's Pontifications

7/25/2005

Roberts: A Federalist Society “Fixture” After All?

Filed under: Dog Trainer,Judiciary — Patterico @ 7:17 am



Maybe the L.A. Times doesn’t need to correct its statement that John Roberts was a “fixture” in the Federalist Society after all?? (This is tongue-in-cheek — but read on . . .)

The Washington Post reports today:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly said that he has no memory of belonging to the Federalist Society, but his name appears in the influential, conservative legal organization’s 1997-1998 leadership directory.

Further down in the article, we see that there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Roberts’s claim not to be a member may still be accurate:

Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard A. Leo said that either he or another official of the organization recruited Roberts for the committee. Roberts’s task was to serve “as a point of contact within the firm to let people know what is going on” with the organization. “It doesn’t meet, it doesn’t do a whole lot. The only thing we expect of them is to make sure people in the firm know about us,” Leo said.

Membership in the sense of paying dues was not required as a condition of inclusion in a listing of the society’s leadership, Leo said. He declined to say whether Roberts had ever paid dues, citing a policy of keeping membership information confidential.

Beyond the question of whether he paid dues is the question of whether he really spent time with Federalist Society members:

“What matters is whether he hung out with them and not whether he signed the form or wrote the dues check,” said David Garrow, a law professor at Emory University. “What’s important is the intellectual immersion.”

As to this question, a previous Washington Post story indicated that he didn’t really “hang out with them much.”

Upon reflection, some Federalist Society members conceded that they had never actually seen Roberts at meet-and-greets such as the society’s annual black-tie dinner.

“That’s a good question, let me think. Now that you mention it — no,” was former Bush Justice Department official Viet Dinh’s response when asked if he had ever spotted Roberts at any Federalist events.

Ultimately, I predict that this will prove to be a big to-do over nothing. There is nothing wrong with being a Federalist Society member. I’m a member myself. And at this point, we can’t say that Roberts’s denial of membership is not credible. But it certainly would have been better if he had remembered to inform the White House of this listing in the leadership directory. [UPDATE: Dafydd ab Hugh, in the comments, makes the point that Roberts could have been a contact for his firm without even realizing that doing so made him a member of the steering committee. Today’s WaPo article has evidence to support that theory; another steering committee member quoted in the article was unaware of his status as such until informed of it by the reporter.]

I still don’t think Roberts was a “fixture” in the Federalist Society. But this muddies the waters enough that the L.A. Times will no doubt use it as an excuse not to correct their editorial saying he was.

12 Responses to “Roberts: A Federalist Society “Fixture” After All?”

  1. Patterico:

    But it certainly would have been better if he had remembered to inform the White House of this listing in the leadership directory.

    Can you say for sure whether he even knew?

    From what I glean from Leonard Leo’s quotation above, it appears that Roberts was asked to “make sure people in [Hogan & Hartson] know about [the Federalist Society].” My impression is that Hogan & Hartson is one of the largest and most influential law firms in D.C., and it makes perfect sense for the Society to want to recruit there.

    So likely what they asked Roberts to do is simply to allow their literature to be available to attorneys at the firm, to maintain contact numbers in case some employee was interested and wanted to find out more, and so forth.

    I don’t know how huge law firms work, but in the Navy, there was always some officer tasked with maintaining relationships between the ship and various organizations: veterans groups, religious groups, social and service organizations, and so forth. It was just a chore, like maintaining the coffee mess. Big corporations do exactly the same; Ashton-Tate had an organization “contact guy” when I worked there.

    If Roberts were the organization contact guy at H&H, then he would have maintained information on several groups; when the Federalist Society called the firm to ask if they could leave membership literature there, they would have been directed to Roberts, and he would have said sure, just send him the literature. He would look it over to make sure it wouldn’t cause a problem for the firm (that it wasn’t illegal, racist, Communist or somesuch) and then put it out wherever the firm normally kept such stuff — perhaps in the firm’s law library, or in the break room, or wherever.

    The Federalist Society would of course list in their directory the contact guy for any prestigious company, law firm, or politician’s office who had agreed to have such. But if Roberts were not a member, he wouldn’t even see the directory, so would have no idea his name was listed there.

    In the SFWA directory, we list the literary agents of our members, and there is even a listing of our members sorted by agent; but many agents are not members of SFWA themselves, and they likely have no idea they’re listed in the SFWA directory.

    So before jumping on Roberts, let’s first find out whether he was even aware he was in the Federalist Society directory as the Hogan & Hartson contact guy.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (f8a7be)

  2. “So before jumping on Roberts, let’s first find out whether he was even aware he was in the Federalist Society directory as the Hogan & Hartson contact guy.”

    According to the Post, he’s listed as a member of the Washington chapter’s steering committee.

    actus (cd484e)

  3. Right. Meaning he was the Hogan & Hartson contact guy; nothing more.

    I think Dafydd has a point.

    Patterico (3606ad)

  4. “Meaning he was the Hogan & Hartson contact guy; nothing more.”

    To me “steering” involves more than being a contact guy. So does being in a “leadership” directory. But I don’t know much about the Federalist society. So he’s not a member, he just recruits members and promotes the ideas to his employees.

    actus (a5f574)

  5. Actus:

    So he’s not a member, he just recruits members and promotes the ideas to his employees.

    Or just makes the literature available — along with literature from other organzations — in case some employee should mosey along and ask for it.

    Actus, can you take off your Liberal hat for just a moment and act like a human being? We don’t know whether Judge Roberts had any connection at all beyond the superficial with the Federalist Society; and the Federalist Society is not the CPUSA in any event. Can’t we all just sit still for a few days until we actually find out whether Roberts is, heaven forbid, a member of a legal legal society?

    Then, if our worst fears are realized, if it turns out he’s a member, we can bar him from the bench, fire him, arrest him, tar him, feather him, ride him out of town on a rail, draw and quarter him, sentence him to the salt mines, and make him eat soap. Lifebuoy soap.

    Yeesh.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (f8a7be)

  6. Is he now, or has he ever been, a member of the Boy Scouts of America?

    Dwilkers (a1687a)

  7. “We don’t know whether Judge Roberts had any connection at all beyond the superficial with the Federalist Society”

    We know he’s in a “leadership directory” and is a member of a “steering committee.” And also he doesn’t remember paying dues.

    Its really no big deal, other than the fact that people have been going around demanding corrections when he’s described as connected. As if its some big red badge to connect people to such an upstanding organization.

    We have former ACLU members and staff on the court, who IIRC, stood by and defended the briefs they filed for the ACLU. We’ll see if we get the same from this appointee.

    actus (a5f574)

  8. We know he’s in a “leadership directory” and is a member of a “steering committee.” And also he doesn’t remember paying dues.

    From what I saw in the article, those are the same, and both mean that he was the contact guy at Hogan & Hartson, nothing more. If you saw something different in the article, quote it. I’m not reading it again to confirm my memory.

    Its really no big deal, other than the fact that people have been going around demanding corrections when he’s described as connected.

    No: when he is described as a “member” and a “fixture.” Both of which still appear to be false.

    As if its some big red badge to connect people to such an upstanding organization.

    No: as if it’s inaccurate.

    Patterico (756436)

  9. “From what I saw in the article, those are the same, and both mean that he was the contact guy at Hogan & Hartson, nothing more.”

    I’m just unfamiliar with fed. soc. puffery to know that leadership means “just contact guy.”

    “No: when he is described as a “member” and a “fixture.” Both of which still appear to be false.”

    It depends on the meaning of member, say, like being a member of a steering committee.

    actus (cd484e)

  10. I’m just unfamiliar with fed. soc. puffery to know that leadership means “just contact guy.”

    On one hand we have Actus, who is unfamiliar with their terms and procedures. On the other hand, we have a guy quoted in the article who is familiar with them. Unless Actus has a specific reason to question the guy who is familiar with the procedures, it seems to me that Actus would best serve his reputation by piping down.

    A friendly suggestion which I expect he’ll ignore.

    Patterico (756436)

  11. Actus:

    I’m not a member of the Federalist Society — though now that it’s been brought to my attention, I expect I’ll be joining; thankfully, they do accept non-lawyers! — but I am a long-term member of another professional society, even a “leader” in the sense of having held several elective offices and appointed positions, and familiar with the “puffery” through having published two of this organization’s directories. This organization has been around a damn sight longer than the Federalist Society, as we were founded in 1965; and no, I wasn’t a five-year-old charter member!

    I am telling you, Actus, that in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, we have directory listings for some people (agents, mostly) who are not members… but who represent members, hence are included in the directory pages that list authors by their agents (so you can look up and see who is a client of, e.g., Ashley Grayson or Richard Curtis).

    We list other “members” which are, in fact, the estates of members who have died (too many of those recently, alas); I doubt the administrators of those estates have a clue that they — the estates themselves, I mean — are listed in our directory as “members.” As are our “institutional members,” which may include well-known F&SF bookstores, publishers, convention committees, clubs, and so forth. They’re also listed in the ordinary membership section (with a code indicating institutional membership, as the estate members have their own code).

    We have contact persons listed on the inside front cover; these are people who as designated contactees for various functions (overseas issues, the various regions, our lawyer, and so forth). Some of these people are dues-paying members; others are not. There is absolutely no requirement in our bylaws, for example, that the SFWA attorney has to be a member of SFWA; I don’t even know if our current attorney is or is not… he would have to qualify like everyone else (by professionally publishing science fiction or fantasy stories or novels), so I suspect he is not.

    Finally, we have in the past offered honorary life membership in SFWA to various souls who write SF/F but who likely cannot join in the usual way (because they lived behind the Iron Curtain, back when there was an Iron Curtain, for example). Typically, such persons treat that high honor with all the pomp and circumstance it deserves: that is, they completely ignore our letter informing them of such recognition.

    Such folks sometimes appear in our directory as members — as we consider them to be such — but if you rummaged around, found one, and asked him whether he was a member of SFWA, he would very likely have no clue and might think SFWA was some sort of American supermarket chain.

    Is any of this sinking in, Actus? It’s entirely possible that Roberts has had contact with the Federalist Society, acted as the de jure contact guy for them, even showed up at an occasional meeting as a speaker, be listed in the directory as part of the “leadership” or “steering” committees (depending on the structure, the “steering” committee might do no actual steering at all) — and yet still not be an actual dues-paying member, not take the organization all that seriously, and legitimately not even be able to remember if he paid his $50 one year, just to get a discount on a couple of debates he wanted to attend.

    (I once paid $50 to join some web-based education society I’d never heard of… in order to get an $80 discount on an online class I wanted to take. I literally can’t even remember the name of the organization; I set up a filter to send all of their many e-mails straight into my Trash folder.)

    I vaguely remember that I was briefly a member of P.E.N, some ultra-elite organization of “poets, essayists, and novelists” (hence the acronym); but I don’t remember exactly how I came to be such a member, if indeed I even knew at the time. I remember getting a couple of their directories listing me as a member; but when they wanted actual money from me, I tossed the request. After a while, I stopped getting the directories, so I conclude I am no longer a member.

    This is real life, Actus; and this is the way it often works. If Roberts was really, really busy as a partner in one of the largest law firms in D.C., he honest-to-goodness might not have given the Federalist Society much thought.

    And what is this all in service of proving anyway? Are you desperately searching for evidence that John Roberts might, perhaps, be a conservative? For heaven’s sake, man, isn’t that already well known?

    Double yeesh. This isn’t an argument anymore, if it ever was. This is just Actus being querulous again.

    Dafydd

    Dafydd (f8a7be)


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