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Article: A hostile takeover: how the Federalist Society is capturing the federal courts. (Court Packing).
- Article from:
- The American Prospect
- Article date:
- March 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The American Prospect, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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If you want to understand the systematic nature of the right's takeover of American public life, consider the Federalist Society. During the first Bush presidency and less than a decade after its founding in 1982, the society had already gained control of the process of vetting federal judicial appointees. By 2001 the Federalists were so dominant that George W. Bush simply eliminated the longstanding role in the evaluation of prospective judges by the resolutely centrist American Bar Association (ABA), whose ratings had long kept extremists and incompetents off the bench. Today the Federalists have more influence in judicial-selection than the ABA ever had.
The ...