Lawyers of the Right : Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition

A timely and multifaceted portrait of the lawyers who serve the diverse constituencies of the conservative movement,Lawyers of the Rightexplains what unites and divides lawyers for the three major groupssocial conservatives, libertarians, and business advocatesthat have coalesced in recent decades behind the Republican Party. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than seventy lawyers who represent conservative and libertarian nonprofit organizations, Ann Southworth explores their values and identities and traces the implications of their shared interest in promoting political strategies that give lawyers leading roles. She goes on to illuminate the function of mediator organizationssuch as the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policythat have succeeded in promoting cooperation among different factions of conservative lawyers. Such cooperation, she finds, has aided efforts to drive law and the legal profession politically rightward and to give lawyers greater prominence in the conservative movement. Southworth concludes, though, that tensions between the conservative law movement's elite and populist elements may ultimately lead to its undoing.

Ann Southworth is professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law.