Extreme Right and the Courts

Dec 6, 2021

The conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court who will decide the fate of abortion rights are all members of an organization called The Federalist Society. It is a network of 42,000 right-wing lawyers, with chapters at 150 law schools, and with 75 lawyers’ groups nationally.

Back in 2011, the executive director of the Federalist Society, Eugene B. Meyer, acknowledged that without major funding from a billionaire on the extreme right named John M. Olin, The Federalist Society “possibly wouldn’t exist at all.”

The Olin family made a lot of money in the chemical industry, some of which came from producing the banned pesticide DDT. The Olin Corporation was charged with dumping huge quantities of toxic mercury into the Niagara River in upstate New York. It was one of the polluters linked to the Love Canal toxic waste site in New York.

While accumulating wealth and damaging the environment, the family set up The John M. Olin Foundation as a family tax shelter. Over time, its “charitable work” came to be funding far-right causes. The fund spent itself out of existence in 2005, but not before it lavished over a third of a billion dollars perpetuating far-right ideas.

A special focus was on U.S. law schools. It spent millions at Harvard, Yale, and other leading law schools, educating future right-wing “legal scholars.” It funded all-expense-paid “judicial seminars” at luxury locations.

Before they were on the U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas each attended one of these “training junkets.”

So, the idea that the U.S. Supreme Court is somehow above the fray and not influenced by money is absolutely ridiculous!