A new, left-of-center legal affairs group is considering coming to the Princeton campus.
Founded in Washington in 2001, the American Constitution Society aims to counter what they consider a conservative dominance in American legal thinking.
Though ACS is focused on opening campus chapters at law schools across the United States, "we're thinking about whether it makes sense for us to talk with folks at the [Woodrow] Wilson School [of Public and International Affairs] about a chapter there," said David Lyle, ACS deputy director.
Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 spoke at the Society's first annual convention in August. The convention also featured Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and former Attorney General Janet Reno as speakers.
Slaughter said in an email that she didn't know of plans for a chapter at Princeton. She said she spoke at the convention in her "personal capacity as a legal scholar."
Liberal alternative
ACS is intended to serve as a liberal alternative to the Federalist Society, a right-leaning legal affairs group founded in 1982. Unknown in its early years, the Federalist Society now boasts a membership of 25,000 and wields significant influence in legal and political circles.
The Bush Administration's Solicitor General, Theodore Olsen, is a member, as is Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Many of the Administration's judicial nominees have been endorsed by the Federalist Society, and conservative judges at the state and federal level often select their law clerks from the Society's ranks.
Lyle offered no timetable for ACS activities at Princeton, but said the "lack of presence at Princeton" represented a "void."
"If we decide it's something we want to do," Lyle added, "we'll do outreach [to the Wilson School] at that point."
ACS asserts the Federalist Society has succeeded in pushing American jurisprudence too far to the right.
"Groups like the Federalist Society . . . have been tremendously effective at communicating their vision of American law," Lyle said.
ACS has a current membership of 6,000 and 80 law school chapters.
Christopher Eisgruber '83, director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs, said he saw no need for an ACS chapter at Princeton, given the lack of a Federalist Society chapter. He criticized both groups as networks of political patronage.
"The Federalist Society is not a model that should be emulated," Eisgruber said. "It seems to me to amount to a party politicking that involves judges. Part of what goes on in the Federalist Society is a networking that goes on between judges and potential law clerks, and between judges and the people who might appoint them to office."
Eisgruber said the federal Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits political activity by federal judges.
Eisgruber stressed he was not criticizing Slaughter for speaking at the ACS convention this summer.
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