The American Constitution Society has been busy this year. The list of events is really impressive, considering the ACS is only in its second year. As a rival to the Federalist Society, it's off to a great start. Notice, also, that the ACS is explicitly engaged in the project of countering conservative influence. Its mission statement is not nearly as bashful as that of the New America Foundation that I quoted below. The ACS was organized "to counter the dominant vision of American law today, a narrow conservative vision that lacks appropriate regard for the ways in which the law affects people's lives." Compare the mission statement of the Federalist Society:

Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.

Will (or has?) the Federalist Society become a victim of its own success?