ARI SHAPIRO, Host:
This is Weekend Edition from NPR News. I'm Ari Shapiro. In a moment, Robert Krulwich on the pranksters at Apple.
But first, America's legal societies, who's up and who's down. The last eight years were a good time to be in the Federalist Society. Members of that conservative legal group occupied every level of the Bush administration, and that infuriated some liberals. In 2005, Ralph Neas was interviewed on WHYY's Fresh Air. At the time, he was president of People For the American Way.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2005 INTERVIEW)
RALPH NEAS: The Federalist Society once was on the outside; it's now on the inside. It runs the White House counsel's office; it runs the Department of Justice; it runs most of the federal agencies.
SHAPIRO: The Federalist Society would dispute that description. The organization didn't literally run any part of government. But there's no question that in the Bush administration, Federalist Society members were among the most powerful people in Washington. Now Washington is changing. Democrats are ascendant, and so as is a different legal group, the American Constitution Society.
GOODWIN LIU: This is just a tremendous opportunity for us.
SHAPIRO: UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu is the new chairman of the board at ACS.
LIU: Whereas I think in the last seven or eight years we had mostly been playing defense in the sense of trying to prevent as many - in our view - bad things from happening. Now we have the opportunity to actually get our ideas and the progressive vision of the Constitution and of law and policy into practice.
SHAPIRO: The groups have similar structures. In fact, ACS was modeled on the Federalist Society. Both have debates, lectures and conferences to discuss how to approach the law. Essentially, the Federalist Society promotes a literal reading of the Constitution, and ACS believes people should consider the changes to society over the last 200 years when they interpret the Constitution.
Barack Obama has already tapped ACS Executive Director Lisa Brown to be his White House staff secretary, and ACS board member Eric Holder is his choice to be attorney general. Robert Raben is an ACS board member who's been active in the society since it was created eight years ago.
ROBERT RABEN: The fact that the new president is tapping so many already from amongst our midst is very exciting, and I think, frankly, there's more to come. But to be clear, there is no litmus test. There should be no litmus test. Membership in a particular organization should never be criteria for entrance to public service. Never.
SHAPIRO: It's important for Raben to say that because in the last eight years, Bush administration officials did use a litmus test for jobs that were supposed to be apolitical. The Justice Department's inspector general found that managers at Justice regularly hired conservative Federalist Society members over liberal ACS members for nonpartisan jobs even if the ACS members were more qualified. That violates federal laws and civil service rules. Goodwin Liu of ACS says it won't happen again.
LIU: I have a lot of confidence, actually, that the new people in the Justice Department and elsewhere in the government are keenly aware of that issue and that in the hiring of career staff that will not be an issue. However, in the hiring of political staff, as well as, frankly, in the nomination of judges, the decision-makers are entitled to consider a broad range of factors, including the political background or affiliations of the candidate.
SHAPIRO: This sounds a lot like the argument that Federalist Society leaders have made in the last eight years. They say people who gravitate towards these societies also gravitate towards government work. The society isn't the reason they're tapped for government jobs. Eugene Meyer has been president of the Federalist Society since its inception in the early '80s.
EUGENE MEYER: I don't think Eric Holder is going to be attorney general because he was an ACS board member any more than I think Spencer Abraham was appointed energy secretary because he'd been a Federalist Society board member earlier or I think Ted Olson was appointed solicitor general of the United States because he was highly involved in the Federal Society.
SHAPIRO: Now, as the ACS gains strength, the Federalist Society's philosophy is losing clout in Washington. Meyer isn't bothered.
MEYER: My view is that our role basically remains much the same, which is to vigorously examine and look at such ideas as interpreting the Constitution according to the original understanding of what it meant.
SHAPIRO: The difference is that now those discussions will happen from the outside looking in - just as members of the American Constitution Society did for the last eight years.