2025 National Lawyers Convention
The 2025 National Lawyers Convention took place on November 6-8, 2025. All panels were livestreamed and video is now available online.
The 2025 National Lawyers Convention took place on November 6-8, 2025. All panels were livestreamed and video is now available online.
The 27th Annual Federalist Society Faculty Conference will take place from January 7-8, 2026 in New Orleans, LA at the Loews New Orleans Hotel. The conference will proceed under the general aegis of the AALS Annual Meeting.
Click below to view our panels livestreamed from the historic Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington, DC.
In RTP's new three-part video series, host Adam Thierer takes us through the hidden boundaries shaping the things Americans use daily. Experts explore the tensions between innovation and control, safety and freedom.
On October 7th, 2025, several judges hosted a panel on campus free speech, Oct. 7's impact, antisemitism, and why open debate is vital to the Western tradition.
On October 1, 2025, the Federalist Society's Faculty Division and Practice Groups hosted a panel at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC to preview the 2025 Supreme Court term. This event was livestreamed and is available in the link below.
This event kicked off a year-long celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and America's semiquincentennial.
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Next week, in Trump v. Slaughter, the Supreme Court confronts these issues head-on. The case presents a rare opportunity for the Court to reassess whether Humphrey’s Executor can be squared with the Constitution’s guarantee of separation of powers. The debate surrounding this
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Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his partial dissent in Seila Law, “Humphrey’s Executor poses a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people . . . Our tolerance of independent agencies in Humphrey’s Executor is an unfortunate
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The Court has revisited these tensions repeatedly in cases like Morrison, Free Enterprise Fund, Seila Law, each time acknowledging the difficulty of reconciling Humphrey’s Executor with Article II’s text and structure.
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This framework born out of the New Deal era’s rapid expansion of government, authorized Congress to create “independent agencies” whose leaders could be shielded from presidential control. Over time, Humphrey’s Executor became the cornerstone for a host of powerful, insulated
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However, the Supreme Court ultimately held that Congress could restrict the President’s ability to remove certain agency officials, creating the modern category of “independent agencies” insulated from presidential at-will removal. This decision marked a dramatic departure from
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Article II vests ‘the executive Power’ in the President alone. That raises a core constitutional question: what mechanisms ensure that executive officers act consistently with that grant of authority? From the Founding, the President’s removal power has been central to ensuring
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The dispute began in 1933, when President Franklin Roosevelt sought to remove FTC Commissioner William Humphrey based on policy disagreements. Humphrey insisted the President lacked that authority under the FTC Act’s for-cause removal protections. Humphrey refused to resign, and
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For nearly a century, Humphrey’s Executor has shaped and complicated the constitutional landscape of the administrative state but what is this controversy really about? And why should Americans care about this 1935 case?
President Trump’s effort to remove an FTC Commissioner has renewed attention on one of the...
Gabriel Olivier is an evangelical Christian who often shares his faith in public. In May...
Humphrey's Executor v. United States, decided in 1935, upheld the Federal Trade Commission Act, declaring...
The Federalist Society’s Practice Group members are grouped by substantive area of law. Every Practice Group has an Executive Committee that meets once a month. These volunteers help track major developments in their area of expertise and direct the content and programming of the Practice Group. They organize events including FedSoc Forums, in person programs, and panels for several single day conferences like the annual Executive Branch Review Conference. Executive Committee members regularly author blog posts and articles featured in FedSoc’s Publications. They also help plan and present FedSoc’s flagship annual conference, the National Lawyers Convention.
