The Lever - MASTER PLAN BONUS: The Other Memo

In this exclusive MASTER PLAN bonus episode, Lever Time producer Arjun Singh and investigative journalist David Daley discuss the rise of the conservative legal movement, including another little-known memo responsible for the emergence of right-wing groups like the Federalist Society.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts overlaid on the Supreme Court building. (AP Photo / Nati Harnik)

Nearly a decade after the Powell memo was published, conservative legal activist Michael Horowitz was commissioned by the right-leaning Scaife Foundation to develop a ground-up strategy for enshrining conservative ideology into law. In his 1980 report, Horowitz recommended recruiting and empowering young conservative minds on law school campuses. By “captur[ing] youthful loyalties,” he argued, conservatives could “redefine what is moral in law.”

Horowitz also pressed for a rebranding of the ideological right, noting “the very decline in power of the American business community over the last decade… is perhaps the best evidence that the skills in the business community are not well correlated with the skills involved in generating idealism and enlisting the intellectual loyalties of bright young men and women.”

These writings would become the foundation of the Federalist Society, which used the strategy laid out in Horowitz’s memo to recruit and advance the next generation of conservative legal minds — including six of nine justices who currently sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

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