The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives)

The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives)
Steven M. Teles | 2008-01-28 00:00:00 | Princeton University Press | 360 | Law

Starting in the 1970s, conservatives learned that electoral victory did not easily convert into a reversal of important liberal accomplishments, especially in the law. As a result, conservatives' mobilizing efforts increasingly turned to law schools, professional networks, public interest groups, and the judiciary--areas traditionally controlled by liberals. Drawing from internal documents, as well as interviews with key conservative figures, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement examines this sometimes fitful, and still only partially successful, conservative challenge to liberal domination of the law and American legal institutions.

Unlike accounts that depict the conservatives as fiendishly skilled, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement reveals the formidable challenges that conservatives faced in competing with legal liberalism. Steven Teles explores how conservative mobilization was shaped by the legal profession, the legacy of the liberal movement, and the difficulties in matching strategic opportunities with effective organizational responses. He explains how foundations and groups promoting conservative ideas built a network designed to dislodge legal liberalism from American elite institutions. And he portrays the reality, not of a grand strategy masterfully pursued, but of individuals and political entrepreneurs learning from trial and error.

Using previously unavailable materials from the Olin Foundation, Federalist Society, Center for Individual Rights, Institute for Justice, and Law and Economics Center, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement provides an unprecedented look at the inner life of the conservative movement. Lawyers, historians, sociologists, political scientists, and activists seeking to learn from the conservative experience in the law will find it compelling reading.

Reviews
The author, a public policy professor at Maryland, has written the definitive study of the rise of conservative lawyers and entities to a position of legal dominance over the last 30 years or so. He has pulled together into one explanatory structure a number of diverse agents, so that we can see how they all interacted and contributed to this result. The book certainly cleared up my understanding of this phenomenon, which is essential to grasping political developments in this country over the last quarter century. Published by Princeton, the book is one of Princeton's outstanding "Studies in American Politics."



The initial introductory chapter I did not find particularly helpful and can be bypassed. The book begins to hit its stride in the second chapter on the "liberal legal network." It is helpful to have handy a copy of Laura Kalman's perceptive "The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism" to fully ingest the author's analysis. Basically, the author suggests, a combination of liberal legal groups (e.g., NAACP LDF; ACLU), elite law schools and their liberal faculty, the American Bar Association, and especially the Ford Foundation during the 1960's formed a potent coalition pushing the incorporate of liberal ideas into the law. This is, of course, also the era of Warren Court activism. Particular important in this regard was the "Gideon" decision which in turn led to the development of the Legal Services Program which unleashed numerous law suits pushing liberal ends in public interest litigation. Much of this activity was encouraged by generous support from the Ford Foundation. This activity generated a conservative response via conservative public interest law firms such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Chamber of Commerce. However, because of being controlled by business interests, lacking academic support, and making tactical mistakes, the first generation of conservative public interest firms generally was not successful.



A highly favorable development was the introduction of "law and economics" into legal analysis, and the two chapters devoted to this topic are among the best in the book. Particularly important in this regard are, of course, Judge Posner, Henry Manne (who established various programs at several schools and remade George Mason Law School), and the Olin Foundation, which becomes sort of the conservative Ford Foundation. Probably the strongest chapter in the book is devoted to the Federalist Society, which skillfully lays out its history, goals, and methods. The author is insistent that "boundary maintenance" separates the FS from its members'political activity, but I found this argument less than convincting. The FS did provide a network of highly skilled lawyers and faculty who generated vital legal analysis to support the conservative legal movement. So, when the second waive of conservative public interest law firms arrives in the late 1980's ("Center for Individual Rights" and the "Institute for Justice"), it is successful given the lessons of the past, the presence of the Federalist Society, the academic foundation laid by the law and economics movement, and highly effective leadership.



This summary touches upon but a bit of the richness of this fine volume. The author had done a superior job of research, including extensive interviews. Forty-three pages of extensive notes are included, but not a bibliography. It would have been helpful if the author had explained a bit more in detail what comprised "law and economics" analysis, but that is my only real complaint. This is not a book just for conservatives, which I certainly am not, but for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of this most critical development in American politics.



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