This chapter considers the present status of conservative lawyers' campaign to push the legal profession rightward and to translate conservative impulses into law and policy. It concludes that lawyers for conservative causes have succeeded in many respects but tensions between the movement's elite and populist elements may contain the seeds of the conservative law movement's undoing. It identifies several recent major brawls within the Republican coalition—over Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination, the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the Department of Justice's hiring and promotion practices,...

This chapter considers the present status of conservative lawyers' campaign to push the legal profession rightward and to translate conservative impulses into law and policy. It concludes that lawyers for conservative causes have succeeded in many respects but tensions between the movement's elite and populist elements may contain the seeds of the conservative law movement's undoing. It identifies several recent major brawls within the Republican coalition—over Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination, the firing of U.S. Attorneys, the Department of Justice's hiring and promotion practices, and the Bush Administration's treatment of detainees in the War on Terror—and considers how each reflects not only deep policy disagreements among the strands of the conservative alliance but also conflict among its lawyers over professional values.