Professor Michael McGinniss selected for National Federalist Society Executive Committee

Michael McGinniss, Professor of Law, J. Philip Johnson Faculty Fellow, and former Dean, has been selected to serve on the Executive Committee for the national Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies Practice Group on Professional Responsibility and Legal Education. The Committee meets each month to address and discuss issues relevant to the practice group, and to plan conference events and other fora for the exchange of ideas in the areas of professional responsibility and legal education.

Professor McGinniss has served as the faculty advisor for the UND School of Law’s student chapter of the Federalist Society since joining the faculty in 2010. He regularly presents his scholarship nationally at events hosted by Lawyer and Student Chapters, has twice moderated works-in-progress panels at the annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference, and has thrice been invited to participate as a discussant at academic colloquia sponsored by the Federalist Society and the Liberty Fund (including an upcoming colloquium to be held in Boston, MA in April 2024 on The Authority of Law and the United States Constitution).

According to their website, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current 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.  The Society seeks to promote an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities.

This entails reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law.  It also requires restoring the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, law students and professors.  In working to achieve these goals, the Society has created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community.