The Roundtable
Welcome to the Roundtable, a forum for incisive commentary and analysis
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
on cases and developments in law and the legal system.
 By Joe Anderson Joe Anderson is a sophomore in the College studying Political Science and History. In addition to writing for the Roundtable, he is a member of the Penn Policy Consulting Group and Penn Debate Society, and a fellow at the Marks Family Writing Center. Legal conservatives have a tool at their disposal that their liberal opponents don’t: the Federalist Society. The organization officially advocates “reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law” [1]. It advances its mission by sponsoring events attended by law professors, lawyers, students, and judges, with the ultimate goal of advancing “originalism” in the legal profession—a conservative approach to law which advocates interpreting the Constitution as written. But perhaps its most influential pursuit is filling federal benches with originalist judges by touting its most qualified members to Republican presidents. In fact, Leonard Leo, a former Vice President of the Federalist Society, was Trump’s legal right hand man—with Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all appearing on the organization’s exalted SCOTUS shortlist. And it’s not just the Supreme Court. Leo touted the Federalist Society’s key role in filling influential Federal Appellate Court seats, a third of which now have Trump-appointed judges [2]. Liberals just don’t have the same third-party kingmaker.
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 By Joseph Anderson Joe Anderson is a sophomore in the College studying Political Science and History. In addition to writing for the Roundtable, he is a member of the Penn Policy Consulting Group and Penn Debate Society, and a fellow at the Marks Family Writing Center. Two days after a pro-Trump mob unraveled congressional proceedings to certify the 2020 Electoral College results, students and alumni of law schools across the country petitioned for state bar associations to disbar Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, arguing they encouraged the Capitol siege by objecting to Biden’s victory [1]. The senators called for an electoral commission to investigate the contrived fraud claims, and to grant state legislatures the right to change their votes as they saw fit [2]. Their objections legitimized the lies which animated the siege, but disbarment never came to fruition. It was hindered by state bar associations’ unwillingness to involve themselves in politics. Little could be done: the senators’ actions were sanctioned by institutional procedure, and no precedent exists for disbarring elected lawyers for their votes, no matter how unseemly. While Hawley and Cruz couched their objections in concerns about election integrity, their remedy would have overruled state law and opened the door to undermining millions of legal votes. But the Missouri, Texas, and D.C. associations had their hands tied.
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