"Now, I am certain Mr. Matthews is an able lawyer, and the fact that he has logged no time at all as a judge should not necessarily count against him. But a brief glance at his résumé suggests that Matthews' strongest credentials for this federal appeals court seat include his role as former state chapter president of the Federalist Society, and ranking close behind that is his membership on the board of directors for the Landmark Legal Foundation."

First, if he is a successful practicing lawyer, that is more than Lithwick has ever been. I am sorry but working at daddy's firm in Nevada before running off to play journalist doesn't count. Second, the guy is a phi beta kappa and a former Justice Department Lawyer and a graduate from Yale. He is also head of the IT law department at a large firm. In this day and age, having a judge who understands IT law in this day and age is both a rare and valuable thing. I think those things count a little bit more than being a member of the Land Mark Legal Foundation. But none of that matters to Lithwick, in one of her typical ignorant McCarthyite rages. All that matters to her is "are you now or have you ever been a member of the Federalist Society".

Every day it becomes more and more apparent that Lithwick just isn't very bright. I really wonder if perhaps she was a legacy at Stanford and that is how she got in to such a prestigious law school. Clearly, she doesn't think very well and I seriously doubt anyone, who is not one of her family members, would trust her to practice law. As it is, why does Slate put up with her substandard writing and casual slanders? I know it is a liberal magazine and Lithwick dutifully toes the liberal line, but surely Slate could find someone who does a better job than this.

Dahlia does a fine job and you are a jealous blow hard.

Irony. Self awareness. Intelligence.

Look 'em up.

I'm always fascinated by the need to inject ad hominem attacks into criticism of, in particular, Dahlia Lithwick's writing. Perhaps I'm not very bright, either, but it does not appear to me that her qualifications to be a federal judge have much to do with this article.

Or it might be that there isn't really that much substance to your argument, and ad hominem is the best choice available to you. Phi Beta Kappa is a good thing, but it's not as meaningful at the University of South Carolina as at better schools, and there are lots of Phi Beta Kappans who aren't appointed to federal appeals courts. His law firm may be large by South Carolina standards, but let's be honest - it isn't large by national standards, and there isn't that much competition in South Carolina. All in all, I would say that it's a safe bet that there are a hundred or so lawyers in South Carolina who both share his level of academic and legal qualifications and who are Republicans, and it's fairly likely I've underestimated that number by a pretty good margin.

On the other hand, there aren't a lot of lawyers in South Carolina or elsewhere who can match some of the other key elements of his resume, notably the deep involvement in the Federalist Society and sitting on the board (not merely being a member, as you suggest) of the Landmark Legal Foundation. It's not much of a leap to conclude that those are the parts of his resume that caught the attention of the people vetting judicial nominations for the Administration. Actually, it isn't a leap at all, particularly given this Administration's longstanding practice of looking at political qualifications almost to the exclusion of legal qualifications when filling legal positions.

it's because she shamelessly equates her personal socio-political worldview with objective, three-dimensional reality. Now if she's a pundit or editorialist, have at it. But Lithwick typically strikes the journalist's pose, and the top poster is spot-on in identifying her habitual, sanctimonious biases in this connection. From SCOTUS nominees to the Duke lacrosse case, her own normative projections dressed up as straight news are old news on this forum.

And you join in----"deep" involvement in the Federalist Society, then the LLF---heaven forfend! Never mind that across the nation, activist conservative law students gravitate to the F.S., while their (considerably more numerous) progressive counterparts look to the National Lawyers Guild. You won't hear the likes of Lithwick prating on about the dangers of, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg having "deep" ties to the NLG, and then the ACLU. That's because to Lithwick that orientation---and Ginsburg's uncontroversial Congressional approval---is normal, appropriate, and even praiseworthy, not pathological, sinister, or an exercise in ideological cronyism. Her ersatz "reportage" follows that template without exception.

I didn't say that membership or deep involvement in the Federalist Society (or Landmark, for that matter) was a bad thing, just that it appears that his involvement in those organizations was a more likely reason for his nomination than his other qualifications. I don't know Lithwick's position on the Federalist Society, but personally I don't think involvement in it is either good or bad and, as you note, any ambitious conservative lawyer knows that it's a good idea to get involved.

The comparison to Ginsburg actually makes the point that Lithwick was making, by the way. Ginsburg's qualifications for the D.C. Circuit and then the Supreme Court were analyzed almost entirely on the basis of her academic and work record, not her memberships. (Lest we forget, she made law review at both Harvard and Columbia, was one of the great civil rights litigators of the 60s and 70s, with a very impressive record before the Supreme Court, and had been on the D.C. Circuit for a good long time before her Supreme Court nomination.) If her involvement in the National Lawyers Guild even came up during the discussion of her nomination to either court, it probably was just in passing. (And, for the record, membership in the NLG is not what you'd call a pipeline to great jobs under Democratic presidents.)

Finally, I suppose I shouldn't give advice to other posters, but it's always seemed to me that the best response to what you think are incorrect opinions is not to say that the person who holds them is not very bright, but to explain why those opinions are incorrect. On the other hand, maybe I just have a bias towards rational discourse.

doubting your rationality, nor even Lithwick's---it's just that most folks, myself included, tend to designate their own views as the point of departure for that rationality, for what is normal versus beyond the pale, and all things in between. As a journalist, Lithwick has a higher responsibility to keep the treatment objective, at least to present the best arguments from both sides. I've seen her do that here rarely, if ever, and I'm not the only "rational" opinion on that score.

Her views on the Federalist Society have been covered here before; she and other Slate contributors seem to view it as some sort of cross between John Birch and Skull and Bones. Finally, re Ginsburg, I didn't mean to emphasize ambition so much as activism or ideological affiliation---not to say your points aren't well-taken in that regard. What I was getting at is the double standard for analysis that arises when progressives seem to define their own views as the center---hence the unabashedly (and creditably) left activist Ginsburg is a "typical" nominee in the media and Senate, while thoroughly right-wing nominees are axiomatically "controversial" or "divisive".

There are two major problems with the Federalist Society that do not exist with other organizations like the NLG

1. They explicitly advocate a fairly radical and dramatic departure from decades of jurisprudential history. History upon which modern society - which the vast majority of the public actually like rather well - is structured
2. Invariably the claims of Judicial Restraint and accusations of Judicial Actiivism by leading lights or advocates of the FS, end up being highly hypocritical and inconsistent (Scalia in BushVGore or Kehlo for two blatant examples).

Now there is a bit of a point about the McCarthyish quality of judging someone purely by their associations with an organization. But you also have to accept that what journos face is the need to convey the story in a limited number of column inches. While Slate does not have the printed cost/space constraints of an LA/NY Times or Chicago Trib, readers expect a similar compactness of story in a journalistic piece.

Thus even if it didn't cost Slate $1 more for Lithwick to write a deeply analytic tome equivilent to a 100 page footnoted thesis, it wouldn't be something Slate would publish - because few if any of online readers would actually bother to read the whole thing.

Hence some level of "code words" are necessary in an article. And given the judicial activism and hypocrisy of The Federalist Society and its most august members, that's a pretty good code word.

but your #1 is squarely within the perpectivist problem I was describing to Randy. It depends upon whose ox is being gored---change or lack thereof can equally be lionized. Your "They explicitly advocate a fairly radical and dramatic departure from decades of jurisprudential history" certainly describes the efforts of the ACLU, NAACP etc., as well, but we judge on the results based on our socio-political preferences. Brown v. Board of Education, for instance, was a radical departure from long-settled precedent, and its progeny, especially the school busing cases, certainly offended the long-existing, majority-approved status quo. Roe v. Wade also works in this connection. Federalist Society folks would like a Roe or two of their own---that fact, in and of itself, is unremarkable unless one chooses to openly deplore their agenda on the merits. No problem with that, but you and Lithwick should just name it for what it is.

So how does the ACLU advocate a radical and dramatic departure from jurisprudential history? Some examples would be nice. But I don't think you will find a lot of them.

Brown V Board of Ed was not at all a radical departure. That's precisely why it was succesful. You might want to watch Simple Justice on this. Admittedly somewhat hagiographic, it DOES show how the NAACP built a long case history supporting BrownVBoardOfEd and that it was not at all a radical departure.

The same applies to Roe. A truly "radical" ruling or plaintiff brief in Roe would have focussed on Am14 and gone for a complete preclusion of The Government's right to compell ANY carrying to term in ay cirumstance.

The Federalists are looking for no such iterative and well reasoned approach to jurisprudence. Most of the leading lights are strong proponents of the Constitution In Exile belief. With folks like Thomas and Scalia being quoted as speaking of "restoring the lost constitution", (albeit not necessarily advocating for all of the contents of that book). Mix in Scalia's blithe willingness to include Catholic theology in his rulings and his and Thomas' Kehlo hypocrisy, and I don't think you nearly have the arguement that the ACLU is no different than The Federalist Society.

Remember, the ACLU has been scrupulous to the point of harming its public image, in being CONSISTENT on the positions it takes vis-a-viz things like Free Speech (Skokie) and religion etc.

But that said, Given that the conservatives like Hannity, Limbaugh and Fox News regularly use Ginsberg's associations with the ACLU as "proof" that she is liberal and unfit to be a SCOTUS judge, why is it unreasonable to use the Federalist Society as a similar litmus test of conservative activism?

I can't resist one more "Federalist Society" hypocrisy when it comes to "constitution in exile". The big bugaboo many of the Federalist Society members hold above all else is the Interstate Commerce Clause. Yet who leveraged ICC in the Raich ruling? Our own Federalist Society Leading Light Antonin Scalia and the "conservative" Stevens who wrote the opinion.