I can’t speak to the full body of people in the world who call themselves “legal conservatives,” but I do know the legal academy, and I don’t agree that a “sizeable majority” of conservative legal academics are bad faith actors.
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Hence my comment on different views of legal conservatives. Outside of academia, it looks different than inside, and the most prominent voices are not generally academics (although there are still many, like Barnett, Vermeule, that I think argue in bad faith).
FedSoc crosses that boundary and is a source of much of it however. And there are others in the constellation of activist orgs who play an outsize role in driving an agenda ostensibly steeped in legal conservatism.
Some names and orgs that come to mind are Ilya Shapiro, Kristin Waggoner, Amy Swearer, Mark Paoletta, John Eastman, Carrie Severino, David Koprl, Adam Mortara, Heritage, ADF, NRA, FIRE, Becket Fund, and so on...
And we can't ignore bad faith reaoning by the courts themselves‐James Ho, Matt Kacsmaryk, Kathryn Mizelle, Bill Pryor, Reed O'Connor and SCOTUS not least (as detailed by Senator Whitehouse [Knights-Errant] as well as others like Kyle Velte [The Supreme Court's Gaslight Docket]).
Originalism itself is, I would argue (as others have), a bad faith premise.
You no doubt have a view of academia where you encounter principled conservative academics who can and do argue positions based on well-articulated principles that are held regardless of the outcome they direct—
—but in the world where law and politics intertwine, it seems almost a rule for conservatives that principles bend in service to power. And that seems to me the definition of bad faith.
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You no doubt have a view of academia where you encounter principled conservative academics who can and do argue positions based on well-articulated principles that are held regardless of the outcome they direct—