Can’t Stay Away From Convention
By KAREN LEE TORRE
I had to hop so many flights and spend so much time in Washington D.C. this year that I thought for once I might skip the annual Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, which will take place starting November 12.
I could use a break from it—the law, lawyers and legal debates.
I thought I’d stay put, read a novel rather than convention material, and ponder simple issues, like whether I’d just fixed a proper nautical knot, rather than knotty issues of law and judicial activism.
But then I looked at the convention roster and changed my mind. Although Fed-Soc conventions are usually impressive for their intellectual menus, this year’s gathering and debates are especially attractive.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. will deliver a keynote. I was in the audience once before when he gave an address (not long after his confirmation) and on other occasions for addresses by Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts.
Justice Alito matches his two colleagues’ well-known ability to enchant an audience but he has an amusing ability to convey unspoken sentiment with a facial expression, quite easily interpreted by those intimately aware of what the justice endured as a nominee.
While nothing can compare to the liberal establishment’s savage campaign against Justice Clarence Thomas—perpetrated by a cabal of scheming senators, some duplicitous judicial colleagues, and some creeps on the Yale Law School Faculty—Justice Alito’s confirmation process was still another tale of two standards when compared to the honorable treatment accorded to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
As usual, the convention list includes jurists from all of the circuit courts of appeal, all intellectual heavyweights whose discussions are worth hearing.
And the topics are certainly timely: redistribution of wealth, federalism and the economic crisis, the regulatory state, affirmative action, religious liberty, the stuff of current debate. As with every convention, you have to pick and choose which panel discussion you’ll attend. I have my favorites. I like to hear Judges Frank Easterbrook and Diane Sykes of the 7th Circuit; 5th Circuit Chief Judge Edith H. Jones; Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit and Judge William H. Pryor, Jr. of the 11th Circuit.
A politician or two usually gives an address. Among them this year is Senator Jeff Sessions, the Republican leader on the Senate’s judiciary committee, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently during Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.
Very nice gentleman. He will undoubtedly offer thoughts on judicial selection and the future.
But among those I’d really love to meet is someone who ought to bring some spice to the affair – Mark Levin, radio host and popular author.
I am a newcomer to Levin’s rapidly growing legion of fans. I only just started Levin’s “Liberty and Tyranny,” his best-selling “conservative manifesto.” He combines powerful oratorical skills with the insight and smarts of the like of the brainy Michelle Malkin.
But how I came to become a fan is itself amusing. Throughout my many travels the past two years, I used the same driver to take me to and from airports, using the time to read briefs and materials, prepare for an argument and so forth.
But the driver would listen to Levin’s radio with the volume rather loud and repeatedly say, “You gotta listen to this guy. You gotta read his book.” But I could do neither.
Later, I was provided another driver to shuffle me and some clients around to meetings in New York City. This driver, too, had Levin on the radio. Given that he was a stranger, he maintained his distance from me and did not speak.
But he overheard my conversation with the clients and quickly discerned who we were.
“Can I say something?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
He was an immigrant, Hispanic, and, he added, a conservative. “Sotomayor, no. Mark Levin, yes.” We roared laughing and invited him to join us for dinner. Mark Levin, yes.
I’ll listen in D.C. •
Karen Lee Torre, a New Haven trial lawyer, litigates civil rights issues in the federal courts. Her e-mail address is thimbleislands@sbcglobal.net
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