Conservative Lawyers Group Pops Champagne With Cautious Optimism

As hundreds of lawyers and judges filed into a meeting room in the Washington Hilton midday Friday, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne was placed on the stage.

A panel discussion on administrative law doesn’t typically feature glasses of bubbly. But 2024 was no ordinary year for members of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers group that held its annual convention just a week after President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans secured the electoral trifecta of the White House and both houses of Congress.

Cheers went up as Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger popped the bottle to celebrate a ...