Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society is the man to see if you aspire to the Supreme Court
Leonard Leo, a vice president of the conservative Federalist Society, will soon have his own grateful bloc of ideological allies on the Supreme Court.
Since the 1990s, he has been one of the most important inside players in the conservative legal movement and the man to see for those who aspire to sit on the nation’s highest courts.
Leo has been a longtime friend and champion of Justice Clarence Thomas, and he played a crucial role in promoting the two most recent Republican appointees to the high court: Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch.
And on Monday, President Trump is expected to nominate another new justice from the short list prepared by Leo and the Federalist Society.
It is quite an accomplishment for a young lawyer who came to Washington not for money or prestige, but instead to transform the Supreme Court and to bring it in line with conservative principles, including ending a court-created right to abortion.
“No one has been more dedicated to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade than the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo,” Ed Whelan, a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote in December 2016, shortly before President Trump nominated Gorsuch to fill Scalia’s seat.
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