The Federalist Society is Full of Shit

How Conservative Legal Theory Collapsed Into Partisan Hackery

Photo by Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash

This is, after all, a philosophy blog. But sometimes the most important philosophical work is calling obvious lies by their proper names.

The Federalist Society has spent decades building a reputation as the principled alternative to liberal judicial activism. Their judges, we were told, would apply neutral principles regardless of political outcomes. They would follow the law wherever it led, interpreting constitutional text according to its original meaning rather than imposing contemporary political preferences. They were going to rescue American jurisprudence from result-oriented reasoning and restore the rule of law.

It was always bullshit. But now we have proof.

The Dobbs Standard vs. The Trump Standard

Let’s examine two recent Supreme Court decisions that expose the Federalist Society’s methodological fraud with surgical precision.

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the conservative majority declared that courts should never consider the practical consequences of their constitutional interpretations. Justice Alito’s majority opinion explicitly stated that the Court’s role is to determine what the Constitution says, not to worry about the policy implications of following constitutional text. If overturning Roe v. Wade created legal chaos across state lines, if it produced a patchwork of conflicting laws, if it generated confusion and conflict—none of that mattered. The Court’s job was simply to interpret the Constitution according to its original meaning, consequences be damned.

“We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision,” Alito wrote, presenting this indifference to practical outcomes as a virtue of principled constitutional interpretation.

Fast forward to Trump v. Anderson, the case involving Donald Trump’s disqualification under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Here, the same conservative justices who claimed consequences were irrelevant suddenly discovered that consequences were the only thing that mattered.

The Insurrection Clause is textually clearer than any abortion-related constitutional provision. Section 3 explicitly states that those who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion after taking an oath to support the Constitution are disqualified from holding office. Colorado’s Supreme Court found that Trump had engaged in insurrection and applied this constitutional text directly.

But rather than following their Dobbs methodology—interpreting constitutional text regardless of consequences—the conservative majority suddenly became deeply concerned about practical outcomes. They worried about disagreements among states regarding the definition of insurrection. They fretted about the chaos that might result from different states reaching different conclusions. They decided that the potential for conflicting interpretations was so concerning that no state could enforce this constitutional provision at all.

These positions are doctrinally incompatible. You cannot claim that constitutional interpretation should ignore practical consequences when overturning abortion rights, then invoke those same consequences to protect Donald Trump from constitutional accountability.

The Methodological Shell Game

This isn’t principled constitutional interpretation—it’s a methodological shell game where the rules change depending on which outcome serves conservative political interests.

When faithful application of constitutional text advances conservative goals (overturning Roe), consequences don’t matter and courts must follow the law wherever it leads. When faithful application would hurt conservative interests (disqualifying Trump), suddenly consequences are paramount and courts must avoid chaos above all else.

The Federalist Society judges aren’t applying consistent interpretive principles. They’re working backward from preferred political outcomes and selecting whatever methodological justification serves those ends. This is precisely the result-oriented reasoning they claimed to oppose.

The Birthright Citizenship Hypocrisy

The pattern becomes even more obvious when we examine the Supreme Court’s recent handling of birthright citizenship challenges.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s ruling on Trump’s executive order denying citizenship to newborn babies reveals the same methodological inconsistency. She argued that courts should give presidents “proper deference” and presume their executive orders are constitutional as a matter of “fair judicial procedure.” The Court, she claimed, should “put its predilections aside” and avoid nationwide injunctions that abuse judicial power.

This is the same Justice Barrett who had no procedural concerns when conservative judges issued nationwide injunctions against Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Apparently, the “proper functioning of the constitutional order” requires judicial deference when Trump denies citizenship to babies, but active judicial intervention when Biden tries to provide debt relief to students.

The message is clear: presidential actions deserve a presumption of constitutionality when they serve conservative ends, but aggressive judicial scrutiny when they advance progressive goals. The “neutral principles” of judicial restraint apply only when restraint benefits Republicans.

The Collapse of Conservative Legal Theory

What makes this particularly damaging to the conservative legal movement is that procedural consistency was supposed to be their defining characteristic. The Federalist Society built its entire reputation on the promise of judges who would apply neutral principles regardless of political outcomes.

They positioned themselves as the antidote to liberal judicial activism, offering a more rigorous, text-based approach to constitutional interpretation that would constrain judicial power rather than expand it. Their methodology was supposed to be their virtue—a principled alternative to result-oriented reasoning.

But when that methodology threatens their political coalition, they abandon it completely. When constitutional text clearly supports conclusions they dislike, they suddenly discover exceptions, procedural complications, and consequentialist concerns that require different approaches.

This reveals the conservative legal movement as exactly what critics always suspected: political actors using whatever interpretive framework serves their partisan ends, dressed up in the language of constitutional principle.

The Rule of Law vs. The Rule of Republicans

The deeper problem here isn’t just hypocrisy—it’s the systematic destruction of the rule of law itself. When courts apply different standards depending on which political party benefits, we no longer have legal principles governing constitutional interpretation. We have partisan preferences masquerading as jurisprudence.

The rule of law requires that similar cases be decided according to similar principles. It demands procedural consistency regardless of political convenience. It insists that constitutional provisions mean the same thing whether they help or hurt particular political parties.

But the current conservative majority has abandoned these requirements in favor of what can only be called the rule of Republicans. Constitutional provisions that advance conservative goals (like state abortion bans) must be enforced regardless of consequences. Constitutional provisions that threaten conservative power (like insurrection disqualification) must be ignored to avoid chaos.

This isn’t constitutional interpretation—it’s constitutional nullification. The selective enforcement of legal principles based on political utility rather than textual meaning or procedural consistency.

The Federalist Society’s Intellectual Bankruptcy

The Federalist Society cannot answer these contradictions because they reveal the intellectual bankruptcy of the entire conservative legal project. Their claim to principled judicial methodology has been exposed as a lie told to gain power, not a genuine commitment to constitutional governance.

For decades, they told us that liberal judges were result-oriented activists who twisted constitutional interpretation to achieve preferred policy outcomes. They promised that conservative judges would be different—more restrained, more principled, more committed to following law rather than making it.

But when faced with constitutional provisions that threaten their political coalition, these supposedly principled conservatives have proven themselves to be the most result-oriented activists in American judicial history. They don’t interpret the Constitution according to neutral principles—they interpret it according to Republican preferences.

The Federalist Society’s judges aren’t rescuing constitutional governance from political corruption. They are the corruption, using the legitimacy of legal institutions to advance partisan ends while maintaining the fiction of judicial neutrality.

What This Means for Constitutional Democracy

The implications extend far beyond particular legal doctrines. When the highest court in the land applies different methodological standards depending on which political party benefits, public confidence in judicial legitimacy inevitably collapses.

People aren’t stupid. They can see that conservative justices who claim to follow constitutional text are willing to ignore that text when it threatens Trump. They can observe that judges who preach about avoiding political considerations suddenly discover political considerations when Democrats might benefit from constitutional enforcement.

This systematic inconsistency destroys the very foundation of constitutional authority. Legal institutions derive their legitimacy from the perception that they apply law rather than politics, that their decisions flow from principle rather than preference, that justice is blind to partisan identity.

But when courts become obvious extensions of political parties, their constitutional authority disappears. People stop viewing judicial decisions as legitimate interpretations of law and start seeing them as partisan power grabs dressed up in legal language.

The End of Conservative Legal Legitimacy

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And when judges apply different constitutional standards depending on which political party benefits, they’re not practicing law—they’re practicing politics.

The Federalist Society promised us principled constitutional interpretation. They delivered partisan judicial activism with better marketing. They claimed to offer neutral methodology. They provided result-oriented reasoning with conservative outcomes.

Their entire intellectual project has been revealed as fraudulent. Not wrong in some complex philosophical sense, but straightforwardly dishonest about its basic commitments. They said they would follow the law wherever it led, but they only follow it when it leads toward Republican victories.

This isn’t a critique of conservative legal theory—it’s a documentation of conservative legal theory’s nonexistence. When your methodology changes depending on which political party benefits, you don’t have a methodology. You have a marketing strategy.

The Federalist Society is full of shit. Not as hyperbole or partisan attack, but as empirical observation about an organization whose stated principles dissolve the moment those principles threaten conservative political interests.

Constitutional democracy depends on institutions that apply consistent principles regardless of political convenience. The current conservative legal movement has abandoned that requirement entirely, choosing party loyalty over constitutional fidelity, partisan advantage over procedural consistency, Republican rule over the rule of law.

They’ve told us who they are. We should believe them.

And we should stop pretending that their constitutional interpretation deserves the respect we give to legitimate legal reasoning. When political hacks wear judicial robes, calling them political hacks isn’t partisan—it’s accuracy.

The center cannot hold when the institutions supposed to anchor it operate according to partisan preference rather than constitutional principle. But at least now we know what we’re dealing with: not principled conservative jurists, but Republican operatives who happened to go to law school.

The Federalist Society’s judicial revolution is complete. They’ve successfully captured the Supreme Court and transformed it from a legal institution into a political one. The only question now is whether American democracy can survive the courts they’ve created.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the Federalist Society is full of shit.

The revolution is recognizing the con for what it is. The rebellion is refusing to treat partisan hacks as legitimate constitutional interpreters. The resistance is defending the rule of law against those who would replace it with the rule of Republicans.

Remember what’s real.