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GOVERNMENT RESOURCES
United States Committee on the Judiciary: Committee Reports
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Policy: Judicial Nominations
United States Courts: The Federal Judiciary
Administrative Office of the United States Court: Understanding the Federal Courts
The Federal Judicial Center: An Analysis of the Judicial Recusal Statutes The Federal Judicial Center is the research and education agency of the federal judicial system. It was established by Congress in 1967 (28 U.S.C. §§ 620-629), on the recommendation of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
LEGAL RESOURCES
American Judicature Society The American Judicature Society works to maintain the independence and integrity of the courts and increase public understanding of the justice system. It is a nonpartisan organization with a national membership of judges, lawyers and other citizens interested in the administration of justice.
American Bar Association: Center for Professional Responsibility The ABA is the largest voluntary professional association in the world, and provides law school accreditation, continuing legal education, information about the law, programs to assist lawyers and judges in their work, and initiatives to improve the legal system for the public. Their Center for Professional Responsibility published The ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct.
LEGAL ORGANIZATIONS
Alliance for Justice: Judicial Selection Project The Alliance for Justice is a national association of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women's, children's and consumer advocacy organizations. The Alliance's Judicial Selection Project has taken a leading role in efforts to ensure a fair and independent federal judiciary. The Project monitors judicial nominations at all levels of the federal bench.
Brennan Center: Fair Courts Project The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law advances a nonpartisan agenda of scholarship, public education, and legal action that promotes equality and human dignity, while safeguarding fundamental freedoms. The Center's Fair Courts Project works to preserve fair and impartial courts and their role as the ultimate guarantor of equal justice in our constitutional democracy.
The Center for Responsive Politics: Open Secrets, Guide to Money in U.S. Elections The Center for Responsive Politics is a nonpartisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C., that tracks money in politics, and its effect on elections and public policy. The Center conducts computer-based research on campaign finance issues for the news media, academics, activists, and the public at-large.
Center for Individual Rights CIR is "a national public interest law firm specializing in civil rights, First Amendment issues, and constitutional limits on federal power." The Detroit Free Press writes that since founded in 1989, Washington, D.C.-based CIR has "been working diligently and often irreverently to get the country back on the right track -- the political right...These guys are conservatives, almost libertarians. Their motto is less government is better....CIR's budget was $220,000 the year the group started, mostly in grants from a handful of conservative foundations. By 1997, the budget had grown to $1.32 million, including more than $1 million from 11 conservative foundations." Funders include: Carthage Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, JM Foundation, Roe Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation.
Committee for Justice The Committee for Justice (CFJ) and Committee for Justice Foundation (CFJF) is composed of eminent leaders, former government officials, legal scholars, and practitioners based in Washington, D.C. united to defend and promote constitutionalist judicial nominees to the federal courts and educates the public on the importance of judges in American life. Founded and chaired by C. Boyden Gray with the express mission to promote and defend Bush judicial nominees, the Committee for Justice has run print, radio, and TV ads supporting Bush's nominees. Gray was recently revealed as a Bush "pioneer" fundraiser. Members of the Steering Committee include Diane Allbaugh, Haley Barbour, and Edward Rogers of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc., a lobbying firm that has represented Philip Morris, RJR, Brown and Williamson, and US Smokeless Tobacco. Since 1997, it has gained the following total fees from tobacco companies: Philip Morris - $1,760,000; RJR - $1,200,000; B&W - $660,000; US Smokeless - $380,000. Haley Barbour also has connections to Senate Judiciary Committee member John Cornyn (TX). The Associated Press reported that 10 of the 15 members of the committee work for law firms representing corporations with lawsuits before federal judges and that their clients include RJ Reynolds.
Coalition for a Fair Judiciary The Coalition for a Fair Judiciary is an organization comprised of more than 75 grassroots organizations dedicated to supporting qualified, capable federal judicial nominees who are committed to fair and accurate interpretation of existing law. Judicial activism, characterized by rulings that create law rather than apply the law, has had a detrimental impact on American society and commerce.
Community Rights Counsel: Legal Resources Community Rights Counsel (CRC) is a nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. that was formed in 1997 to assist communities in protecting their health and welfare. CRC provides strategic assistance to state and local government attorneys in defending land use laws, environmental protections, public health measures, and other community protections.
Defenders of Property Rights Defenders of Property Rights was founded in 1991 "to counterbalance the governmental threat to private property as a result of a broad range of regulations. We believe that society can achieve important social objectives such as protection of our environment and preservation of our national heritage without destroying private property rights or undermining free market principles." DPR pursues anti-environmental lawsuits through the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Funders include: Carthage Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, JM Foundation, Roe Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation. The group has also received more than $100,000 in funding from Philip Morris to support a campaign promoting smoking as a private property issue. Other industry partners listed on the group's website include American Loggers Solidarity and the Hardwood Manufacturers Association.
Earthjustice: Examining Lifetime Federal Judicial Nominations Earthjustice is the nonprofit law firm for the environment, representing - without charge - hundreds of public interest clients, large and small. Earthjustice works through the courts to safeguard public lands, national forests, parks, and wilderness areas; to reduce air and water pollution; to prevent toxic contamination; and to preserve endangered species and wildlife habitat.
Endangered Environmental Laws: Links The Endangered Environmental Laws Program is managed by staff from the Environmental Law Institute, Community Rights Counsel, and the Brennan Center for Justice.
Federalist Society More than half of President George W. Bush’s federal judicial nominees are affiliated with this conservative legal fellowship, which formed out of the belief that “law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.” With more than 25,000 members and affiliates - including Supreme Court Justices Thomas and Antonin Scalia – the Federalist Society consists of an influential and well-funded conservative and libertarian political and social network sharing the belief “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.”
Placing a priority on individual liberty and traditional values, The Federalist Society seeks to reform the current legal order, and holds conferences and seminars to debate legal issues out of its lawyer chapters in 60 cities and student chapters on 140 out of 182 accredited law school campuses. Though officially non-partisan, the Society’s membership is decidedly Republican, and in effect it achieves in the courts what the GOP could not achieve politically. The Society is organized into 15 “practices group” areas ranging from labor and employment law to civil rights. Many leaders of these practice groups are also litigators for activist conservative legal organizations, fighting in courts to reform the law on these issues.
Funders include: Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Charles G Kock Charitable Foundation, Philip M. McKenna, Earhart Foundation, Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
FREE: The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment FREE is a Montana-based non-profit that promotes “free market environmentalism.” They advocate reliance on the free market and private property rights, instead of environmental laws, to protect the environment. FREE began offering expense-paid seminars for federal judges in 1992 on topics including “Takings: Property, Environment and the Constitution;” ”Liberty and the Environment: A Case for Principled Judicial Activism;” “The Demise of Environmental Values in Environmental Law” and “The Environment – A CEO's Perspective.” According to FREE, nearly one-third of the federal judiciary has either attended or asked to enroll in a future FREE seminar and, in 1996, nearly 150 federal judges applied for only 54 seminar openings. Funders include: William H. Donner Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, JM Foundation, Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation.
Institute for Justice
"Founded in 1991, the Institute for Justice is what a civil liberties law firm should be. As our nation's only libertarian public interest law firm, we pursue cutting-edge litigation in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion on behalf of individuals whose most basic rights are denied by the government - like the right to earn an honest living, private property rights, and the right to free speech, especially in the areas of commercial and Internet speech." Funders include: David H Koch Charitable Trust, Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation, JM Foundation, Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Justice at Stake Justice at Stake is a nonpartisan campaign working to keep the courts fair and impartial. Justice at Stake Campaign partners educate the public and work for reforms to keep politics and special interests out of the courtroom - so judges can do their job protecting the Constitution, rights and the rule of law.
The Law and Economics Center (LEC) LEC is a non-profit organization affiliated with the George Mason University Law School in Arlington, Virginia. The Center offers seminars taught by legal scholars on wide-ranging topics, from “Science in the Courts” to “Milton, Locke and Mill on Liberty.” Since its first institute for judges in 1976, 800 judges have taken an LEC program, including two members of the Supreme Court, and over a third of the Article III federal bench. The LEC first accepted state court appellate judges into its programs in 2001, and since then 108 of them have taken an LEC program. Funders include: Sarah Scaife Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, The Abbott Laboratories Fund, and the Proctor and Gamble Fund.
Liberty Fund Pierre F. Goodrich, an Indianapolis businessman and lawyer, founded Liberty Fund in 1960 “to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.” A libertarian, Mr. Goodrich believed that “abuse of reason leads to restrictive institutional arrangements that concentrate political economic power” and that “such concentrations invariably erode liberty and moral values.” Liberty Fund conducts conference for judges focusing on individual liberty, and offers travel gifts to participants. According to the Community Rights Counsel, Republican-appointed judges took 97% of the reported Liberty Fund trips. Liberty Fund makes grants directly to conservative/libertarian organizations such as the Cato Institute, the Center for Study of Federalism, and the Political Economy Research Center. Federal judges have reported attending conferences around the nation on such topics as, "Liberty and the Separation of Powers," "Freedom and Federalism," "Law, Liberty and Responsible Individuals," and "Liberty and the Meaning of Rights."
Media Transparency: The Money Behind Legal Organizations and Think Tanks A searchable database of "conservative organizations" and the foundations that fund them.
People for the American Way: Independent Judiciary People for the American Way was established to address pluralism, individuality, freedom of thought, expression and religion, a sense of community, and tolerance and compassion for others. Their long term agenda includes reducing social tension and polarizations, encouraging community participation, fostering understanding among different segments of society, and increasing the level and quality of public dialogue.
Washington Legal Foundation Established in 1977, WLF is both a law firm and legal think tank. Its goal is "to shape public policy and fight activist lawyers, regulators, and intrusive government agencies at the federal and state levels, in the courts and regulatory agencies across the country." Through aggressive litigation and advocacy, legal studies, and public relations, they advance "free-enterprise principles, responsible government, property rights, a strong national security and defense, and balanced civil and criminal justice system." In addition to its work providing backing for efforts to weaken environmental regulations, WFL has received donations from the tobacco industry, including Philip Morris and the Tobacco Institute, to support research and litigation against government controls over tobacco sales. The Foundation has published numerous advertisements on the New York Times Op-Ed page with anti-regulatory, anti-RICO, and anti-class action messages. Its board members and speakers include Judges William Pryor and John Roberts.. Funders include: John M. Olin Foundation, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Carthage Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, JM Foundation.
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