Playing for the Rules: How and Why New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms Invest in Secular Litigation

Abstract

This article catalogues and analyzes the litigating behavior of four of the leading New Christian Right Public Interest Law Firms (NCR PILFs). Consistent with the finding from judicial politics that all PILFs seek first and foremost to have policy influence, we find that most of the litigation these PILFs invest in is either explicitly or implicitly religious or mission driven. However, we also observe a trend of increased participation in secular cases by the two largest NCR PILFs in our study. Through in‐depth, qualitative content analysis of the briefs submitted in these secular cases, we show that while some of this behavior can be attributed to organizational maintenance or coalitional goals, most of this secular participation appears motivated by a desire to influence the legal rules rather than the outcome of the particular case. In doing so, this article shows how PILFs engage with an increasingly complex legal and political landscape.

Lawyers and the Conservative Counterrevolution

“…It includes not only the libertarians, who are the primary focus of Decker's and Hollis-Brusky's books, but also business representatives, social conservatives, nationalists, and Tea Party activists (Heinz, Southworth, and Paik 2003). The lawyers for these different constituencies hold very different views about policy priorities (Southworth 2008, 101–10; Hollis-Brusky and Wilson 2017). For example, business representatives and libertarians do not share the religious right's opposition to same-sex marriage and commitment to outlawing abortion, and libertarians and social conservatives are not particularly interested in advancing business advocates’ priorities, such as limiting class actions and tort liability for corporations.…”