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My Law School Experiences with The Federalist Society [1]

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Date: 2023-06-26

First diary here, just wanted to share my experiences with members of my law school’s Federalist Society chapter for some possible perspective. I recognize that it may very well be that my experience was a fluke, but I somehow doubt it. For anonymity’s sake I am going to decline to say which law school I attended (and full disclosure, I’ve yet to pass the bar), except to say that it was the first public law school in a reliably blue state.

I moved to this other state not to attend law school but to help my aunt with her father who was in hospice at the time. The morning of my flight out there, he passed away, but I moved there anyway to help my aunt. As it happened, there was a law school in the state that the state had recently taken over and had become the state’s first public law school. I had dreamt of going to law school since completing my undergrad degree, but had all but given up on it by that time. On a whim I applied and got in and leapt at the opportunity.

There were few organized chapters of anything at the school when I started in the fall of 2013, though a couple of us discussed starting an National Lawyer’s Guild chapter to compete with the school’s nascent Federalist Society chapter, though, frankly, I’d become a bit disillusioned with the NLG by that time and was more keen on a American Constitution Society chapter. Regardless, the death of my fiancee prevented me from participating meaningfully in the formation of any organization. So I kind of coasted for a bit.

Once I (sort of) got back on track with my academics, the school’s Federalist Society chapter was flourishing. I was confounded, frankly, this being a school that loudly promoted the pursuit of justice in a deep blue state. I figured these were all just Liberty University rejects who had settled on a hated public school in a hated blue state just to get their foot in the door. It wasn’t long, though, before their bigotry was on display. As I mentioned above, people in this state were for more frank than I was used to, and while I’d initially lived in the state’s capital where things were bluer (though not spectacularly so) and didn’t notice as much, once I moved about an hour south, oh boy. People were loud and proud with their views, as deplorable as they might be. I was an indigent student, so I found myself on public transit all the time, and the things that people were comfortable saying to me, as a perceived (correctly) straight white dude, were astonishing.

As for my fellow students, well, in my year of Contracts, I sat in front of a few gentlemen who CONSTANTLY barked “f*ggot” throughout class, despite (because of?) the LGBT prof teaching the class. It got bad enough that I complained to a Dean and was told, “Sorry, it’s free speech, there’s nothing we can do.” In retrospect, I should have escalated up to someone higher than this particular Dean, but at the time I was enough of a pushover that I figured I’d hit the ceiling and that was that. It only got worse from there. An incoming 1L class proved nightmarish. The ranks of the Federalist Society swelled, and the use of racial and sexual epithets around campus exploded. I said nothing, to my shame, because the message I’d gotten from the administration was that they didn’t plan to do anything about it.

Among the things that I overheard Federalist Society members saying (possible trigger warning):

-Referring to Tamir Rice as a “niglet” who got what he deserved

-Calls for BLM protesters to be massacred by law enforcement or vigilantes

-Calling members of BLSA (Black Law Students Association) “affirmative action admittees”

-Regular use of the words “n*gger” and “f*ggot”

-Constant and earnest repetition of Pizzagate conspiracies

There are still more that I documented for my recollection, but that’s what I can think of off the top of my head.

I share this for a couple reasons. One, in case anyone thinks there’s anything legitimate about The Federalist Society, that they’re anything other than a cadre of racist, reactionary fuckwits determined on dragging America to Hell. Two, as a possible warning not to put too much faith in Millennials (I’m one myself, albeit a “geriatric” one as they’ve talking to calling folks in my age cohort) and Gen-Zers. There seems to be this notion floating about that upcoming generations are more progressive than previous ones. Frankly, I don’t see it. They seem to be their parents’ kids, and the apple doesn’t appear to have fallen far from the tree in my experience. Feel free to disagree on this point, please.

Anyway, there it is, for anyone interested in some up close experience with the Federalist Society as it’s currently constituted. It doesn’t even approximate a legitimate legal society. It’s a hate group, through and through.

Edit: Moving this down to the end here, since people are focusing more on my comparisons and critiques of California to this other state, which is NOT the point, though I am happy to discuss it:

I was born in CO, but lived briefly in CT before being moved to CA (every C state!) and growing up there, so I consider myself a Californian through and through. As a slight detour through this story, I want to talk about my impressions of the state where I went to law school compared to CA. People in California, I’ve realized after living elsewhere, are artificially friendly. Duh, other folks might be saying. It took my living elsewhere to realize it, but while folks in California might smile at you and act friendly towards you, they’re just as likely to be burying you behind your back. The state I moved to for law school, OTOH, people are quite frank and brusque. It was quite the culture shock, moving out there. It took me a while to realize, but the difference was that while people in California will smile and nod and you, people in this other state would tell you EXACTLY what they think of you at any given moment. Frankly, I thought they were pricks when I moved out there, but after about six months I noticed that while they may be forthright with how they feel, they don’t hold grudges like they do in CA. CA, in short, is fake. Again, duh, right? Still, my provincial ass never would have appreciated or acknowledged that fact if I hadn’t left for a time.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/26/2177759/-My-Law-School-Experiences-with-The-Federalist-Society

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