Formal rooms, serious law, full arguments.
FedSoc Events captures the sound of legal events in full: introductions, credentials, moderators, panels, and long-form argument. Its recent run centers on Justice Alito, Supreme Court doctrine, AI, science in the courts after COVID and Skrmetti.
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FedSoc Events presents legal argument in its event-room form. It is formal, credential-heavy, and built around panels rather than a recurring host-led conversation. Episodes often begin with chapter officers, moderators, and speakers being situated through clerkships, courts, law schools, government service, and other markers of legal authority. The pace is measured. Once the program turns from ceremony to substance, the feed becomes a steady sequence of doctrinal claims, case references, institutional concerns, and interpretive theories. Recent programming gives special attention to Justice Alito's influence. One panel treats his work on religious liberty and speech, including free exercise, the Establishment Clause, and free speech. Another examines statutory interpretation, with speakers contesting the idea that his approach is merely pragmatic and instead presenting a theory tied to textual meaning and speaker intent. A jurisprudence panel considers originalism, constitutional torts, federal common law, lower-court guidance, and the tension between principled restraint and aggressive legal change. Criminal law and procedure receive similarly detailed treatment, with discussion of sentencing, jury rights, law enforcement workability, reliance interests, and Supreme Court precedent. The feed also ranges beyond one justice. National Lawyers Convention episodes cover landmark Supreme Court decisions of the 2020s, AI for the law and law for AI, science in the courts after COVID and Skrmetti, parental rights, property rights, education, health, and labor. Some moments are dryly funny, especially around convention rituals, banquet remarks, and the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. But the center of gravity remains legal analysis for an audience comfortable with dense public-law vocabulary. The show is openly tied to Federalist Society settings and reflects conservative legal movement debates, including textualism, originalism, administrative deference, constitutional restraint, and skepticism of certain expert or agency claims. Its value is not speed or intimacy. Its value is access to the full public event: the moderator's setup, the panelist's thesis, the doctrinal example, the polite disagreement, and the institutional self-understanding of a legal network speaking to itself and to the wider profession.
Made for: FedSoc Events suits lawyers, law students, judges, and listeners who want extended conservative and libertarian legal analysis in event-audio form. It is best for listeners comfortable with case names, constitutional theory, and public-law vocabulary.
What sets it apart: The feed keeps the architecture of legal events intact: introductions, institutional context, panel transitions, audience-facing remarks, and full-length arguments. It offers primary-source access to Federalist Society legal culture rather than a compressed news recap.
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. This podcast feed contains audio files of Federalist Society panel discussions, debates, addresses, and other events related to law and public policy. Additional audio and video can be found at https://fedsoc.org/commentary.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Detailed panel discussions make judicial reasoning, statutory interpretation, and the practical consequences of constitutional doctrine easier to follow.
FedSoc Events preserves legal argument as it unfolds before conference audiences, with judges, professors, and practitioners working through doctrine and its consequences.
An in-ground trampoline becomes a legal question, and suddenly you're invested in landscaping.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Federalist Society panel makes the case that Justice Alito's statutory method is a fuller kind of textualism than familiar labels imply.
Statutory interpretation is the focus as a Federalist Society panel considers how Justice Samuel Alito's approach sits inside textualism, and where it may sharpen it. Benjamin Keener opens the recording, and Professor Robert G.
A careful panel on Alito's influence on criminal law, sentencing, and procedural doctrine.
The panel opens in a formal register and moves steadily through sentencing guidelines, the Sixth Amendment jury right, Miranda, Ramos, and reliance interests, with Judge Andrew Oldham moderating.
A Penn Federalist Society panel that uses Gundy to frame Alito's pragmatism and caution about doctrinal change.
A Penn Federalist Society panel on Justice Alito's jurisprudence starts with a long credentialed introduction, then settles into the panel's real work: originalism, common-sense pragmatism, and the challenge of giving lower courts workable guidance.
A formal panel on how courts should test scientific claims after COVID.
FedSoc Events frames a legal conference room as a deliberate debate over who gets to speak for science once the courts enter the picture. David Hongs opens the fourth and final showcase panel, then introduces Judge Jennifer Mascot, and the discussion settles into questions about…
A panel that turns a landscaping dispute into a broader meditation on AI.
FedSoc Events closes the 2025 NLC with a panel that moves from an insurance-contract dispute over whether an in-ground trampoline counts as landscaping to textualism, dictionaries, and ordinary meaning.
A Federalist Society banquet turns from rivalry jokes and legal ceremony into a personal conversation about work, marriage, and public life.
The closing banquet works best when its formal legal ceremony loosens into room-level comedy. Michigan's November 30, 2019 loss to Ohio State becomes an easy recurring jab, while Akron, Case Western, Cincinnati, and Cleveland State get the kind of pointed recognition that makes…
A formal panel that maps Alito's speech cases with uncommon care.
The panel presents Justice Alito as a strong First Amendment figure, and the discussion stays focused on compelled speech, union dues, and pressure on speech platforms.
Careful law for digital public life.
Canadian estates law, case by case.
Christian legal thought with public stakes.
UK Supreme Court judgments, rebuilt one case at a time.
This Federalist Society panel in Philadelphia examines Justice Samuel Alito's jurisprudence on religious liberties and free speech.
This episode is the beginning of the Hon.
This Federal Society webinar discusses the legal implications and litigation surrounding military academies following the Supreme Court's Students for Fair Admission (SFFA) decision on affirmative action.
The Federalist Society's closing banquet at Michigan Stadium features a fireside chat with Judge James C.
Ed Gould opens the panel by introducing Judge Stephanos Bibas and the Penn Federalist Society setting.
The panel opens with a formal introduction before Caleb Belker turns the discussion over to Judge Andrew Oldham.
This panel discussion examines Justice Samuel Alito's significant impact on religious liberties and free speech through his judicial interpretations and contributions to constitutional law.
FedSoc Events' "Plenary Panel 1: Justice Alito's Impact on Statutory Interpretation" is a legal-theory panel about Samuel Alito's reading of statutes through text, context, and original public meaning.
Saturday morning opens the third and final session of the 2025 NLC.
This panel discussion features constitutional advocates analyzing landmark Supreme Court decisions of the 2020s and their impact on legal interpretation and freedoms.
David Hongs opens the fourth and final showcase panel and introduces Judge Jennifer Mascot as the moderator.
This episode humorously reflects on the University of Michigan's storied history and intense football rivalry with Ohio State, while acknowledging Ohio law schools at an event.
This episode features a panel discussion on current and future communications and technology policy challenges, including AI, cybersecurity, and broadband funding, moderated by a federal judge.
A panel discussion on diversity and modern litigation examines the legality and wisdom of identity-based preferences in law, education, and corporations, referencing historical legal perspectives like Justice Harlan's colorblind Constitution.