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Conservative & Libertarian Pre-Law Reading List Conservative & Libertarian Legal Bibliography The
Great Debate: National Federalist Society Events
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The Federalist Society is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be. The Stanford Chapter provides a forum for discussion of these ideas at Stanford Law School, primarily through sponsorship of debates, lectures, and symposia. Organized in 1982, the Stanford Chapter is one of the founding chapters. The National Organization
In April 1982, a small group of law students
from Stanford, Harvard, Chicago, and Yale
organized a symposium on federalism at Yale
Law School. These students were greatly
dissatisfied with the academic climate on
their campuses and wanted to create a forum
for debate on a wider range of legal
viewpoints than their law school classroom
experiences were providing. When the first
symposium was held, there were fledging
chapters at only these four universities.
Inspired by the success of our initial
program, other chapters soon formed at law
schools across the country. The Federalist
Society was then incorporated in August
1982. Later, to answer the obvious need at
the next level of the legal community, the
Society developed a Lawyers Division that
successfully took root in every major legal
center. Why Join?
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"The
courts must declare the sense of the law; and if
they should be disposed to exercise WILL
instead of JUDGMENT,
the consequences would be the substitution of
their pleasure for that of the legislative
body." -- The Federalist No. 78 |