Posted by Eugene Volokh: And Here We Thought That Ideological Diversity Is Good Enough: http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_07_08-2007_07_14.shtml#1184005025
The Federalist Society general tries very hard to make sure that panels as its conferences represent many different views, and not just those within the Society itself. There may be some exceptions (the [1]tribute to Judge Bork seems to have had fewer liberal speakers than is the norm for us, though I expect that some libertarian speakers, such as the Conspiracy's own Ilya Somin, expressed views that differed markedly from Judge Bork's). But as a general matter, our panels are about as diverse as you're likely to see in the conferences of any ideologically minded organization. [2]Eric Muller (Is That Legal?) and [3]Mary Dudziak (Legal History Blog) are unsatisfied by this: They fault the Bork conference, and, in Prof. Muller's case, [4]another panel for having no women. I agree that people who care deeply about the sex of the person speaking should probably go to other organizations' events. (Federalist conferences often include quite a few women, but we don't try to provide any sort of sex balance.) On the other hand, people who don't care about the sex of the speakers but care about the substance -- including on whether the substance reflects genuine diversity of views -- should find Federalist conferences to be quite interesting. References 1. http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/id.460/default.asp 2. http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2007/07/im_a_federalist.html 3. http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2007/07/video-of-federalist-society-bork.html 4. http://volokh.com/posts/1183697701.shtml _______________________________________________ Volokh mailing list [email protected] http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
