ADDRESSING over 2,000 conservative lawyers and friends at a banquet in central Washington, DC, last week, Neil Gorsuch was in j ocular form. "If you're going to have a meeting of a secret organisation, maybe don't have it in the middle of Union Station!" quipped the newest Supreme Court judge. This was disingenuous. The reason many worry about the Federalist Society, the legal organisation whose annual bunfight Justice Gorsuch was addressing, is not because it is shadowy, but because its influence is vast, brazen and part of a wider politicising of the last branch of American democracy to succumb to partisanship. His speech suggested those worries are if anything underplayed.
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