The Most Powerful Legal Organization in the Country

Supreme Court. You can get it on Pushkin's website, Pushkin dot FM, or on Audible or wherever you get your audiobooks. The Federalist Society was started thirty five years ago, roughly after a successful surprising conference of conservative law students at Yale University. I tell you all about it in the audiobook. To celebrate the audio books released today, I'm speaking to Eugene Meyer, the President and CEO of the Federalist Society.

Gene has been deeply involved the Federalist Society literally since it came into existence, as you will here in our conversation, and he is uniquely well placed to talk about the trajectory of the institution in the past and into the future. Gene thank you so much for joining me. I'm really grateful to you. I want to start by asking you

about your own experience with the Federalist Society. I know you've been working with the organization in one capacity or another, all the way up to president and CEO for thirty years or so. How did you get started with the Federalists? Well, it's really thirty five years, and it's you know, these young law students started this thing out a couple of

years old. During day. Asked me, gee, as we're leaving school, we want to have somebody running this full time, just out of college, you know, because we're going to be involved, but we've got our careers were starting. Do you have any ideas? And I said, I think you're making mistake. I think you want someone just a little bit more experienced. And they said, okay, that makes sense. Do you have

any ideas? I suggested someone to them, They interviewed him, they made him an offer, and they came back to me and said, well, it was a good idea, and we made the guy an offer, but he ended up turning us down for something else. Do you have any other ideas? At which point I became and only some of your listeners were kept this. But at this point I became Dick Cheney. That's exactly where I was going.

And you know, that's where I started. I was essentially the CEO from the beginning, because this is one person office. But I didn't know. I wasn't a lawyer. I didn't know a lot about law. I didn't know a political philosophy. I was very interested in things of that sort. And everything else kind of get picked up along the way. So you didn't you weren't apty so called conservative lawyers Woodstock the first Federalist Society convention in New Haven. How

did you happen to know these folks? Did you know them from conservative politics or from political philosophy? Couple them from college? I see? And where did you go to college with them? To Yale? And actually the very funny things I was at the first symposium. Ah, there you are, frankly more as a warm body friends with them. They needed, they wanted attendance. I went, but I went out of you know, I mean, I wasn't uninterested, but it wasn't something I would have gone doing the abstract And what

did you study it? Yeah? Did you study political philosophy? I had to some political philosophy, also some history. Tell me, with that arc of history and mind really having been there from the very very beginning, what does the Federalist society mean to you today? To take a brief detour to say, I definitely enjoyed very much listening to your book, and I do have a couple thoughts about it, but they'll come up in the course of our good I'm

looking forward to hearing them very much. So I think there are a lot of different ways to answer to that question, but one thing I think I would say is, I think one key part of the Federal side from the beginning has been a genuine belief that debate and

discussion lead ultimately to better public policy. That while they are all kinds of other ways people form their ideas, reason and serious discussion is really really helpful, both because you test your ideas against others and hopefully you learn from what they say and they learn from what you say.

This is sort of old standard cliche, but I think nonetheless true, and I think to me the Federal Site is about getting very important views about the law heard and a time when, in general, except for our activities,

many of those views have not been heard. I have to say what you're saying does resonate strongly for me that at every Federalist Society event that I've been to or participated in, and there have been scores and maybe more than a hundred over the course of my time as the lawyer in law professor, there is always an emphasis on multiple points of view being represented, and often I'm invited to speak, and you know that already is a sign of different points of view, because my view

is often, not always, but often are really divergent from those of Federal Society members. So what you say resonates. At the same time, you can easily imagine starting an organization that was kind of a club for the discussion of legal ideas, that didn't begin with certain propositions about the right way to interpret the law, the right way to interpret the Constitution, and that didn't describe itself as an organization that isn't only for conservatives and libertarians, but

that mentions conservatives and libertarians and itself description. So I think there might be some listeners who say, well, that's that's a great way to talk about one aspect of the Federal Society. But surely they would say it's slightly hiding the ball with respect to the conclusions that you and other Federal Society members hope people will reach when

they have her different points of view. That is, you want people to hear different points of view and then adopt something within the family of views that are popular within the organization. Would that be fair? It's a reasonably fair. I mean, I like to think we're prepared to change our views. What's the line when I get new facts that country to my views, I change them. What do you do, sir? What's the classic wine? Good? And Well, we're gonna come to that. We're gonna come to changing

views too. So that's great, Yeah, hopefully. But in general, Yeah, And one of the things I think would be true not only of us, but of almost any group is that the world doesn't operate completely in abstracts. One of the reasons you get motivated to have discussions is because you think your ideas are important and are good, and you do want to test them against others and in

general persuade others. But at the same time, be aware you might be persuaded if you don't start out with some kind of ideas about what you think the law should be or whatever. You probably wouldn't be motivated to really start something like this, although perhaps he would. But I'd say empirically, there'd be tremendous opening for an organization that was committed to debate and discussion of ideas, that was genuinely agnostic completely about what it believed. And I

don't know of any like that. Really, It's probably not a coincidence. I mean, even something like science, which is in theory just trying to find the truth. Most of the time people get involved in pursuing a scientific theory because they believe that theory is going to turn out to be correct. Sometimes they find is false and they

correct themselves. Gene, every organization just about that organizes people for action, at least in part deals with the question of how much of your time are you spending trying to convert the unconverted and how much of your time are you spending trying to build group agreement and solidarity among people who are rough like minded. And I think

the Federal Society does both of those things. How do you think about the balance between those two And the reason I ask you that is that many outside observers, myself included, think of the success of the Federal Society in transforming the Federal Judiciary as to a large extent, the product of the second, the group solidarity, rather than the first, where you go out and try to preach to the unconverted. Yeah, I mean, I suppose in any

organization there's some of both. I guess what I would say on that a little bit is that I think it's more in some ways even more complicent in what you're saying. But what may possible a lot of the sort of more practical results you're talking about is some degree of success in the form of having the ideas become a key part of the discussion. You would not have a lot of people who are basically philosophy is basically originalist on the bench if there weren't people who

had come to believe in that basic philosophy. That's certainly true. You need a number of people who hold that view. I mean, if you go to an American law school still to this day. I mean, one of the stated goals of the Federal Society from the beginning was to increase intellectual diversity within American law schools. I would say that's one of the only goals of the Federal society

that's had only really moderate success. I mean, there are, of course professors who are originalists and textualists at American law schools more than there were thirty five years ago,

but they're nothing like a majority. What you do have are a lot of really smart students graduating from those goals at the top of their classes, who then go on having been members of the Federal Society clerk for judges who are either loosely or less loosely affiliated with the Federalist Society, and end up clerking for the Supreme Court, and then a few years down the road end up

as judges and now as justices themselves. And I mean, the extraordinary thing, at least from my generation over the four years of the Trump administration via the Federal Society is just how many of the really smart, really elite Federal Society conservatives in my generational cohort ended up on the Federal bench and on the Supreme Court. I mean, that is extraordinarily striking, and that's got to be a product.

In part, you have to have them, but they also have to know each other and being solidarity with each other. I think one of the things is a lot of our events including our National Convention, but also including many many other events around the country help facilitate people getting to know each other. That is key in any endeavor. You know, if you have one really smart person working in isolation, they're very unlikely to be anywhere near at productors.

They will be if you have four or five of them in sort of in a group, working together and feeding off of each other. I want to ask about

the National Convention. One of the episodes in the podcast, which became a chapter in the book, focuses on the story of Randy Barnett, law professor at Georgetown, who came up with an idea for the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act in conversation with people in the hallway at the Mayflower Hotel at your big national Convention, and then worked with people affiliated with the organization to help make that idea broadly known, and

then ultimately five justices of the Supreme Court did adopt that idea in the Court's opinion. How does the National Convention function in relation to the overall project of the Federal Society. What does it feel like to you to go to it every year? Well, it is a function of bringing together a lot of people to share ideas and to get to know each other. And then there's no question that conversations in the hallway are a key

part of the convention. As one of the reasons why we're very sad about this last year we couldn't have it in person one. We still have the substance, but it's not the same. Yes, problem with zoom. There's no back channels on Zoom. Yeah, it's just the way it is for right now. I think it's an extremely important part of things. But I would also say that the vast majority of our activities are ones you do not read about, and the vast majority of our members have

never been to a convention. Most of our activities do not take place in Washington, d C. There are two hundred chapters students and one hundred lawyers chapters and practice groups that all run all kinds of kids. We have over a thousand meetings a year in law schools, and an awful lot of what happens it's really important and really valuable happens there. And Washington being Washington, Convention being there, there's always some degree of political overaly that's much much

less than in other places. When you think about the relationship between those gatherings, especially the law school gatherings, and then the moments when you have a conservative president and a Senate rijority of Republicans and raft of conservative judicial appointments, how do you think of the connection between those things. Because I'll tell you from the standpoint of students, both when I was a student and when I see my

own students, they see a close connection. They think, if I go to these events, I'll meet the right people. I'll know who the right judges are to clerk for if I then do really well in law school. It's not enough just to go. You also have to be smart.

Then I'll have a good shot by putting Federal Society on my resume of signaling to the judge where I am on the political spectrum, getting a clerkshire for those judges, and then entering the kind of core group of highly credentialed, highly smart, elite young lawyers, and then ending up as one of those judges someday. So I think that's how it looks to a great extent from the student's perspective.

How does it look from the organization's perspective. I'm trying to think how to answer that, you know, reasonably accurately,

because it is certainly something which happens in some cases. Look, I think the other the one component there in terms of federal site types that you didn't mention is a pretty deep interest in public policy and you know, a belief in a general set of ideas, which as you know, they're why difference within the federal society, but a belief in a general set of ideas that cause you to be motivated more in that way less in some other ways.

I mean, the wisecrack we've encountered from time to time when we've talked about they're not being as many federal sidey types teaching law schools that should be, is well, you know, these conservatives just more interested in earning money. I just don't think impurely that's quite right. I mean, there's an interest in earning money as people are across the board, but I think there's a lot where that's

not there. Yeah, they're also fewer. I mean, just to be very clear about it, When I have a brilliant young law student in a class and I don't know what the students politics are, and the student comes to me to get to know me, or to become a

research system, or to discuss something in class. As I get to know the person over time, I always I never asked directly, but I always think, in the back of my mind, Gee, I wonder if this person's politics are roughly speaking, liberal, in which case they're in the majority and they could still get a great clerkship. But

it's not going to be simple. There's a ton of competition, and if they're a very brilliant student and are pretty conservative, I actually rest easy because I know that this person is going to get a great clerkship. Just as a statistical matter, there are not as many at elite law schools students in total, and certainly as therefore as a percentage of the total number of the really top students. There are fewer conservatives, They are fewer Federal Society members.

Then there are kind of mainstream liberals, and so you know, part of the reason that there are fewer law professors is not just what people choose to do, but just

the raw numbers are smaller. There's probably some of that, and there's also been some change over time, because there was quite a period of time time where I think in the early days of the Federal Society, Federal side tape students had a tough time getting good clerkships, you know, for some of the same reasons you're saying they're doing very well right now. Right there were fewer conservative judges

and now there are lots of conservative judges. Yeah, so yeah, that swings back and and there of course many many judges don't pay any attention to political philosophy and hiring in many others pace some it's a real range. Yeah, but yes, we'll be right back. Let's talk about differences of opinion, which you mentioned gene as among Federalists. And I know many people told us in the course of the research for the podcasts in the book that some

of these disagreements where they are from the beginning. But broadly speaking, it seems to me that most members of the Federal Society or are close affiliates, share the commitments

that Justice Scalia. The late Scalia had two three core ideas originalism in interpreting the constitution, textualism in interpreting statutes, and judicial restraint as a kind of overarching guideline for judges avoiding reaching out to strike down statutes when it can be avoided and trying to do as little as possible as judges unless the law or the constitution squarely

mandates that they do otherwise. Do you think that those three principles remain the overall or overarching core of the judicial philosophy that is roughly associated with the federal society in the broadest sense. That's a reasonable statement. I would say the judicial restraint part is the dices of the three. There's been a split all along on that. Libertarians been much more dubious about it, and the term remains a dicey term. What is a judge supposed to do? If

the judge thinks something's unconstitutional. The last ten things that have come before all he thinks are unconstitutional, it is supposed to say, after it's overturn five of them, the next five, I need to be more restrained, you know. I mean, that's sort of one of the questions that can come up for a judge. So I think that's less crystal clear, although it's definitely a factor that would

be considered. I think the originalism is not universal. An element of it is in our statement of purpose, but it's certainly not universal and not universal amongst our members. But it is. It is widely believed and probably textuals in the same basic thing is true. But once again, there degrees of both. And there's also lots of battles within originalism, as you know, and as it becomes very clear in some of the court cases that come up.

Look for example at Bostock. Well, let's talk about Bostock. That's a perfect example. That's the case decided by the Supreme Court in the summer of twenty twenty about the meaning of Title seven, the antidiscrimination provision of the Civil Rights Act that says there may be no workplace discrimination

because of sex. And in that case, a six to three majority of the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and then the other at the time four liberals on the Court, held that the words because

of sex incorporate discrimination against gay and trans people. And on the other side, the three dissenters were very, very pointed in saying that they thought that this decision was a betrayal of Justice Scalia's principles of following the text of the statute. And for his part, Justice Corsuch in his opinion, said pretty clearly, I'm just following the text at the statute. I'm just reading the words. So that was an example of a deep disagreement among conservatives. What's

your sense of how that? What are the reverberations of Bostock right now, not just in the Federal Society's circles, but more broadly and conservative legal thought. Well, I'm going to take it more broader than just Bostock. I think you're going to se that are coming up periodically, and I think you're going to see differences amongst originals periodically. I mean, the two strongest originals on the court, Thomas

and Scalia, definitely different on occasion rare occasion. I mean I teach the handful of cases where they where they disagreed in writing. Well, yeah, they're interesting, but I'm just saying even those two different, and you're going to see

that from time to time. But one of the things I'm actually going to jump here to what I was getting to in your clean Things in your book, which I did enjoy lots of, but the sort of theme you have about well, the federal sites done these various things, but right now it's heading into this period of a lot of tension and possibly breaking up to some degree. And there are two themes that seem to me to

be being developed. One is the theme that the Federal Society has, and this is touched on a little bit in your thing that maybe it's gotten more interested in results than an idea is or something like that seemed to be a partial theme. Well, I don't think that that of the organization generally. I just think that that could be one of the lines that is posed in

a situation like the Bostock case. So clearly, Justice Corsuch, I don't know what his private views are, but consistent with the rest of his jurisprudence, which is very conservative, this was a shocking outcome, and Justice Scrsuch didn't care about that. He wasn't being result It seems to me very problem. He's not being results oriented in holding in favor effectively of gay and trans people. That seems like

I'm going to follow textism wherever it leads me. But then on the other hand, you have voices, and I think of Senator Josh Holly, who gave a very pointed speech on the floor of the Senate in response to the decision, saying and I'm paraphrasing him, but we have the exact quote in the book. He said, if this is where legal conservatism is going, legals conservatism is dead as we know it, because this is an outrageous outcome.

Senator Holly speech was pointedly about results. Yeah, and I guess one of the things that struck me a little bit is there's simultaneously a little bit of a question about being results of reated and a little bit of the question about, well, there's this divide in terms of some of the Federal Society people or linked the Federals site seem to different greatly from some other ones, and those two are are sort of in conflict. And essentially, I would say the second point tells the lie of

the first one. That is the fact of the matter is that the type of disagreements not necessarily boss Stock particularly, I always hesitate to focus on one case because cases are facts specific for the specific case, and they may not be a much more general trend. But the differences on specific cases you reflect exactly what the organization has emphasized over time, which is being serious about it is discussing them, debating them. We know we won't always agree

or do we aspire to what we's agree. We do aspire to generate serious conversation and generate it. You know, understanding that the American Constitution and the principles enshrined did it are the best way us human beings have yet devised for governing a country. And what keep that strong by vigorous discussion and debate about it, but still paying attention to what the text actually says. And if the text is really a problem, if it's really wrong and

you've got a consensus that's wrong, you amend it. And every time somebody says, well, gee, you can't amend this, it's usually because the country is pretty split. You know, if you have a situation where everybody really thinks something drawing, if one of them if some horror you know, if Brown versus Board or I shouldn't stay this on tape because mis quoted. But if Brown versus Board were seven how a reversed by the court, it would be passed

into law instantly, and now passed into laws. But probably there'll be a constitutional amendment instant. Yeah. But most of the things everybody agrees on, and you know, the Constitution is not going to be able. Yeah, I hear you, and I hope you're right that we as a country would be moral enough to reenact the idea that separate is inherently is inherently unequal if it ever were to

come to that. You know, Heaven forbid, but I want to I want to focus on, though, what you were just saying, which I think is really interesting and important, and it's this, you know, your statement of purpose makes it really clear that the purpose of the judiciary, it's province and duty is to say what the law is and not what it should be. And that proposition assumes that we can say what the law is and distinguish

that from what the law should be. I mean, it's a kind of commitment not just to doing it right, but to it being possible to do it right. If you didn't think it were possible to do it right, you'd be a bunch of liberal relativists like the people I hang out with. Right, So you can't hold that for You have to think it is possible to do it right. And then you get a case and again we could use Bostock just as an example, but you get a case where the text is hard to interpret.

It says because of sex and on the one hand, you have some conservative justices, and I would say the justice course such as not just any old conservative, but making a bid to inherit Justice Scalia's role as leading intellectual conservative on the Court. I don't know whether he'll succeed, but he's definitely trying, saying, I read these words to mean that a protection that was undreamt of by the

drafters of this law in nineteen sixty four. They were not thinking of gay rights, and they certainly were not thinking of trans people's rights is nevertheless entailed by these words. And then you have other conservatives, like Justice Alito, saying, oh, you must be kidding me. It can't be that the meaning of the words what the law is, rather than what the law should be, is entailed in this case by something that was unimagined by the people who wrote it.

And you know, at the level of analysis of what the people intended, he's certainly correct, right. And so for Justice Alito, this decision by conservatives, including two conservatives, is activism. It's the thing that the Federal Society's statement of purpose is against. And on the other side, it's not activism. It's dictated by the text. It's an exact embodiment of

what the federal Society is supposed to stand for. And I guess what I'm trying to say is in a world where those two views exist, sure you could say, well, we're a big ten, we have room. You know, Justice Course such will be just as welcome at the annual Convention as will Justice Alito. And I'm sure that's true. But they can't both be right, and they can't both be right that what they're doing is saying what the law is and not what it should be. I mean,

that's a real disagreement. Yeah, there is probably no theory of law or much of anything else that's worthwhile where you would where you couldn't have serious debates about exactly what's contained in it. I don't find that surprised. I mean, I don't want to focus on a suggest on Bostock where you know clearly amongst conservatives, course users opinions of minority opinions. But it's there are all kinds of cases which come up where you know there'll be differing views

and both will think they're right, and that's fine. The problem is you want to have a framework within which judges generally try to work and that's sort of where I think that whole range of Federalists, and I'd like to think a bunch of pep who aren't necessary federalists operate.

The Federal Society, I think you'll agree, was in some way born out of a sense of embattlement, and its early years it was very self conscious of being a minoritarian movement in a legal establishment that was heavily liberal. And over your time in the organization you've seen that change as you guys have become the publishment, and then in a sense during the Trump years, you hit the jackpot.

Six of the current Supreme Court justices of nine are either current or one time members of the organization, and huge numbers of judges on the courts of appeal. And your one time colleague Leonard Leo took a leave from the Federal Society to go and advise the Trump administration

on judicial appointments. And some people said, imprecisely but maybe truly at some level that Trump had outsourced appealed judicial selection to the Federal Society, And certainly we got an enormous number of Federal Society affiliated judges on the bench. I mean, you couldn't imagine a greater success than what you've achieved, I don't think during the Trump administration. So

what's next? I mean, what remains for the organization after having gone from being the margin to the all powerful You know, actors, you know, what do you do for an encore? Well, I mean once saying do you understimate maybe the people's imagination? More seriously, look, I mean you already stated one huge area of the law schools, and you know we have a very very long way to go to create, from the standards say, of the national political scene, a balance in the law schools. That's one

huge area. How do you do that? By the way, what is the sort of Since you guys had a thirty year strategy that worked for the judiciary, I might guess is it will now work for the law schools. But how do you do it? I admire your confidence. I mean, what we try to do and what we very much hope will work, is the same sort of things we've done all along, which is trying to foster this type of debate and discussion, and we do think that will persuade a lot of people over time, to

the extent you can get ideas fairly hurt. I would say that one other thing that causes some confusion is all the emphasis on judges which are in nuditia, which

is extremely important. But there are all kinds of other aspects of law and the impact of law and society, where there's all kinds of discussions regulation, how and what the role of law should be in sort of guiding the country in certain ways, all the debates about the laws of moral force, the question of leaving people free to do what they want to do even when you

think it's a mistake. There's a whole battle about elites versus sort of the average person in terms of there are a lot of elites who think, you know, really most people don't fully understand a lot of these things and they need help. And then there are a lot of people will say they should make their own decisions, and yeah, give them information, but don't try to force them.

So they are all those battles and discussions. How do you respond to the view that's sometimes taken by critics of the federal society, especially from the left, that because of your funders, you inevitably end up pushing a view that is consonant with corporate interests in some way. I mean I'm sure you have an answer to that. Well, partly I don't think it's true. Well, that's part of

the answers to say more about it. I mean, if you look get big business right now in the country, it's not good all clear that pushing in the a quote conservative or libertarian direction. But we have a pretty basic rule we either seek nor take funds that. You know, we make it pretty clear the type of things we do. If people want to fund that, we're delighted. If they don't want to fund that, then find somewhere else to give.

You know, we don't take restricted grants to do X, Y and z. We might take a restricted grant to have a discussion of tech policy or something. Oh, we wouldn't take a restricted grant to have it more limited than that. And you know, if we end up having discussions and whoever the donor is decides they're unhappy, they don't give to us again, and that's fine, that's their decision. But you know, in part the people involved in this went into it because of the ideas and because of

the commitment of the ideas. I guess I'm probably the person who's been you know, most committed in terms of being the CEO and being you know, having a Favy fundraising role, it wouldn't make sense to me to try to raise more money by doing things that I don't think you're consistent with what we really want. So your mission driven and then if people want to fund that, they come along, and that's that's the answer that you

can give. Yeah, and very consciously so only the people we have, anybody we have is helping us on fundraising or development, we make that those instructions clear. Another way of putting that would be that if the critics are saying the reason that you take view X and why that's conservative is, who's funny you're saying this the other way around? We have those views, We actually are those things. We actually are conservators and libertarians, and then people come

and fund us because they like what we think. I would also say one other thing, anybody who looks at corporate donations, they're philosophically spread across the map. Yes, there's very little indication that you know, you can make more of that argument with foundations. I mean, it's interesting and sometimes there are questions about, well, your donors are most of our donorshire listener any report, But we do have a few who requested anonymity, and we have a number

who've given through a couple of donor advised funds. And I'd say a couple of things about that, because I know this question comes up, soidal's good opportunity. What is that People request dunonymity for probably three basic reasons. There are some who conrest unnamity for something closer to the little idea of you know, well, they're just trying to hide exactly what they're giving because I think people won't approve it or will hurt their business or hurt them

in some way or other. A second reason is because they don't want a bunch of other people coming and asking them for money. And if they're giving, particularly giving sizeable amounts to a few organizations and it's listed, everybody in the world's going to be knocking on their door,

and they don't want that. And the third reason is there's a widespread view, particularly in religious areas, but not exclusively that you know, it's not universal, but a wise for review that donations are we do this for the good that we hope we will be doing. We don't do it for personal and grandizement. I'm not saying that people who do who be listed are doing first line randizement. But that's a view of some donors too. So what percentage do you think roughly of your donations are anonymous

or in one form or another. You know, it's an interesting question. It makes a big difference whether you count the donor advised funds or not. We'll say, count them and give me a ballpark. I count them. I don't know, might be a quarter or something like that. Maybe a little bit more, not much more. And the other thing is if somebody says, well, you know you're you're hiding the ball because you some of donors to donor trust, I don't know who they are. I wish I did,

but I don't. Right, So you know they can't really real anonymity, right, yeah, right, I can't have very much influence. I mean when I don't know who they are. Last question for you. For twenty years, so not all, but a good chunk of the life of the federal society.

Liberals have been saying, we have to have our own federalst society, and yet the American Constitution Society and other organizations that have tried haven't, by common consensus, really gotten close to having the kind of impact or influence that you have had. What are they missing? What's the secret sauce that your imitators, your self conscious imitators have not managed to pull off well. I think there are a

couple of factors. One is that we are kind of the only game in town for the type of ideas we're talking about in law. There are so many other groups on the left. They're pursuing somewhat similar things, and I don't think inherently one or the other strategy is better. I have no problem at all with sort of diversification in that kind of way. I think that's been one factor.

I think the second factor goes to the core of what we do, which is, in spite of questions being raised about it, we are an organization does not take positions. We are an organization that's serious about debate and discussion. I think we are able to attract a lot of people who may not think they necessarily agree with a lot of the things many of our members think. I think, boy, it's an interesting place to be in to discuss ideas.

When ACS was Market Cuts, I was first started looked with two different executive directors there who came to me and saying, you know, Jaya, basically, any thoughts, and I was happy to give. Well. I thought, I actually I can prove this because I have a quote in the New York Times and that effect back when the ACS

had started. But I thought and believed that if they would be an organization on the left committed to debate and discussion in the way we were, I thought it would be a really good thing for both the left in the country. And I think the more more we can have civil, serious, energetic and sharp debates and discussions, not of the old cross fire line where people yell at each other, but of the lines where people really are trying to exchange ideas, I think all of us benefit.

And you know, I certainly believe in the broad ideas the federal side discussed, but I also believe that that type of discussion I think may help something many of those ideas, but I think the extent it more across society, I think it will help all of us. Gene, I want to thank you for your candor and for the conversation, and thank you very much for joining us, and I look forward to speaking again in the future sometime. Thanks

so much. Take care. I was grateful to Gene Meyer for living up to the stated principles of the Federalist Society and being willing to discuss openly challenges and questions around the Federalist Society it's funding, the way it operates, and the way it's going to operate in the future. I hope you found the conversation as engaging as I did.

You can buy our new audiobook, Takeover How a Conservative Student Club Captured the Supreme Court, on Pushkin's website, Pushkin dot FM, or on Audible or wherever you get your audiobooks. Until the next time I speak to you, Be careful, be safe, and be well. Deep background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Mo laboord our engineer is Martin Gonzalez, and our shorerunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Guerra

at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia, Jean Coott, Heather Faine, Carl mcgiori, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts, go to bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and if you liked what you heard today, please write a review or tell a friend. This is deep background