# Conservative Legal Movement The **conservative legal movement** is the network of institutions that since the early 1980s has picked judges, built doctrine and produced test cases to move American law rightward. At its core are the [[Federalist Society]], the [[Heritage Foundation]] legal operations, the public-interest litigation shops and the dark-money groups that fund confirmation fights. It is the most successful long-term project of the modern right. Nearly every major structural ruling of the [[John Roberts]] Court came out of it. It does two jobs, which are often confused. The **pipeline** decides who becomes a judge. The **docket** decides which cases reach them. ## The pipeline - **1982: the Federalist Society.** Founded by law students at Yale and Chicago, with [[Antonin Scalia]] and [[Robert Bork]] as early faculty advisers. It was a debating society that became a credentialing network. - **1985: the Meese Justice Department.** Attorney General [[Edwin Meese]] made [[Originalism]] official Justice Department doctrine and used the Office of Legal Policy to vet judges for ideology. That office is still the White House's screening room ([[How a Nominee Becomes a Federal Judge]]). - **2016: the list.** Trump outsourced his Supreme Court shortlist to [[Leonard Leo]] and the Federalist Society. The three appointments that followed produced the 6–3 majority. - **The money.** Leo's network ([[Concord Fund]], formerly the Judicial Crisis Network; the [[Marble Freedom Trust]], with [[Barre Seid]]'s $1.6 billion) ran the confirmation campaigns. ## The docket Litigation shops create the vehicles: [[Pacific Legal Foundation]] (property rights and the administrative state), [[Institute for Justice]] (economic liberty), [[Alliance Defending Freedom]] and the [[Becket Fund]] (religion), [[Judicial Watch]] (records and investigations), and after 2021 [[America First Legal]] (Stephen Miller's shop, which targets DEI and "anti-white discrimination"). The results are the Roberts Court's defining cases: - [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] (2008) and [[New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen]] (2022) - [[Citizens United v. FEC]] (2010) - [[Shelby County v. Holder]] (2013) - [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]] (2022) - [[Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard]] (2023) - [[Loper Bright v. Raimondo]] (2024), ending [[Chevron deference]] - [[Trump v. United States]] (2024) - [[Trump v. Slaughter]] (2026), ending *Humphrey's Executor* and completing the [[Unitary Executive Theory]] project ## The split (2025–26) Winning produced a fight over who owns the movement. After the Court of International Trade struck down his emergency tariffs in May 2025, Trump turned on Leo, calling him "a real 'sleazebag'" who "openly brags how he controls Judges." The **MAGA legal wing** is represented by Mike Davis's [[Article III Project]], [[America First Legal]] and loyalist lawyers now in government such as [[Will Scharf]]. It values loyalty to the President over the Federalist Society's older commitments to originalism and limited government. The tariff case, which the Supreme Court later decided against Trump in [[Learning Resources v. Trump]], exposed the split. The older movement's nondelegation and major-questions doctrines were used against Trump's power, while the new wing wants judges who defer to him. ## See also - [[Federalist Society]] · [[Leonard Leo]] · [[Article III Project]] · [[America First Legal]] · [[Will Scharf]] - [[Originalism]] · [[Unitary Executive Theory]] · [[Chevron deference]] · [[Major Questions Doctrine]] - [[Lawfare]] · [[Lawfare Timeline]] · [[How a Nominee Becomes a Federal Judge]] · [[Senior Status]]