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SECTORSInternal LinksProfiles:
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CONSERVATIVE PHILANTHROPYLegal OrganizationsFrom a report by NCRPA total of $10.5 million (1992-1994) was awarded to finance the litigation and public education activities of a core group of pro-market law firms and other law-related institutions actively seeking to overturn affirmative action, environmental regulations, rent control laws, and other government programs or statutes deemed inconsistent with the principles of economic liberty, freedom of contract or association, and private property. In a report on the efforts of conservative donors to remake legal theory and practice in ways more congenial to corporate or commercial interests, the Alliance for Justice noted that such pro-market law firms "represent a redefinition of the term 'public interest organizations,' historically understood to mean those fighting to give a voice to indigents and other disenfranchised." Among litigation groups, the Institute for Justice (IJ) was the top grant recipient, receiving a combined total of $2.4 million in 22 separate grant awards over the 1992-1994 period. The Institute's brochure asserts that "All Americans suffer as the intrusive presence of government in economic and private affairs grows relentlessly... Through strategic litigation, training and outreach, the Institute secures greater protection for individual liberty, challenges the scope and ideology of the Regulatory Welfare State, and illustrates and extends the benefits of freedom to those whose full enjoyment of liberty is denied by government." The Institute reports that its litigation, training and outreach activities focus on four areas: private property rights, economic liberty, school choice, and the First Amendment. It sponsors seminars "to teach the philosophical foundation and tactical application" of the Institute's work, training law students, attorneys and policy activists "to use the unique tools of public interest litigation and advocacy." The Institute also maintains a talent bank to match lawyers with prospective cases, publishes a bi-monthly newsletter, Liberty and Law, and regularly conducts outreach to major media. As part of the right's sustained effort to reframe public understanding and debate regarding affirmative action, the Institute's litigation director, Clint Bolick, advanced the case in recent (1997) opinion editorial published in the New York Times that affirmative action is equivalent to the Supreme Court's Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholding the "separate but equal" doctrine legitimating racially discriminatory practices. Bolick, who also wrote The Affirmative Action Fraud, formerly worked under Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He earlier had made a name for himself through a Wall Street Journal opinion editorial in which he dubbed President Clinton's nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Lani Guinier, the "quota queen." The Institute for Justice's budget increased to over one million dollars just 11 months after it was founded in 1991. It has had an extraordinarily active history in the years since, filing its own lawsuits against government regulations, writing amicus briefs with such conservative scholars as Richard Epstein (on property rights) and Abigail Themstrom (on race-based redistricting), sponsoring law student conferences, hosting training seminars for policy activists, forming a Human Action Network of seminar alumni, appearing on ABC's public affairs program, 20/20, and defending school choice. Two other heavily funded grantees, the Center for Individual Rights and the Washington Legal Foundation, also have worked to reverse affirmative action programs of the federal government and higher education institutions. The Washington Legal Foundation has been active on the issue since at least 1985, when its director, Paul D. Kamenar, issued a report, Revising Executive Order 11246: Fulfilling the Promise of Affirmative Action, urging the Reagan Administration to eliminate federal requirements that contractors use affirmative action goals and timetables. The Center for Individual Rights has also been active in broader efforts to overturn affirmative action. It has defended Michael Levin, a philosophy professor at the City University of New York whose published work has promoted the idea that blacks, "on average," are less intelligent than whites. The Center has also litigated the Hopwood V. Texas case, which has been described as the "first full-blown constitutional challenge to racial preferences in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke." The foundations also heavily funded the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a growing network of law students, alumni and attorneys devoted to the spread of conservative legal principles. The Society, founded by two Yale law school students in the early 1980s, received $1.6 million in grants to support its efforts to transform the legal profession, which it sees as "currently dominated by a form of liberal orthodoxy [advocating] a centralized and uniform society." Toward that end, the Society coordinates the work of both a Student Division and Lawyers Division. According to the Federalist Society's 1995 annual report, the Student Division has over 4,900 law student members in more than 140 law schools across the country, up from 2,137 members in 1989. The Society also reported that its Lawyers Division expanded at a "record-setting pace" in 1995. It now has over 15,000 attorneys and legal professionals and more than 50 active chapters. These chapters held 167 events in 1995 and were active in assembling networks of lawyers and community activists to influence local, state and national policy makers. Chapter events included a four-part lecture series on shaping a civil rights agenda for the 21st century; invited speakers included Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute and Michael Greve of the Center for Individual Rights. The Federalist Society also activated a Pro Bono Resource Network of conservative attorneys who make themselves available to conservative nonprofit law firms. It publishes a quarterly, The Federalist, with a circulation of 57,000, and other legal monographs and reports. The Society also initiated, in 1992, a Continuing Legal Education program to "focus on vital areas where the practice of law and public policy intersect." The first workshop focused on "Takings and the Environment: The Constitutional Implications of Environmental Regulation." Its ninth Annual Lawyers Convention attracted more than 500 attorneys to discuss "Group Rights, Victim Status, and the Law," with such speakers as American Enterprise Fellow Dinesh D'Souza, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative Glenn Loury, former Attorney General (and current fellow at the Heritage Foundation) Edwin Meese, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
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OTHER LINKSGrants to top legal organizations
Institute for Justice
Center for Individual Rights
Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies
Washington Legal Foundation
Landmark Legal Foundation
Washington Post Judges' Free Trips Go UnreportedFederal judges took more than a dozen expense-paid trips to seminars put on by conservative groups but failed to disclose the resort trips on their annual financial reports, as required by federal ethics laws, documents and interviews show.
Search the database for grants that have the word "judge" in them -- efforts by the right to "educate" state & federal judges.
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