Sheldon Gilbert to Lead Federalist Society

Today the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies announced that attorney Sheldon Gilbert will succeed Eugene Meyer as President of the Federalist Society. This is n excellent choice (though not one that had been foreshadowed in prior news reports). Text of the announcement is below.

The Federalist Society’s Board of Directors is delighted to announce that Sheldon Gilbert will become its second president on January 2, 2025. Gilbert, currently Walmart’s Senior Lead Counsel for Strategic Initiatives, will succeed Eugene B. Meyer, who has served as Executive Director, CEO, and/or President of the organization for  more than 40 years.

“Sheldon is a superb choice to take over as President of the Federalist Society,” said co-chairman of the Board of Directors Steven Calabresi. “His boundless energy and enthusiasm and deep engagement with all segments of the legal community, including different strands of the conservative and libertarian legal movement, make him the right person to lead the Federalist Society at this time.”

“Sheldon is both a thinker and a doer,” said co-chairman of the Board Leonard Leo. “His unmatched strategic sense, entrepreneurial mindset, leadership qualities, and vision make him uniquely qualified for leading the generational change the Society is poised to begin while preserving the Society’s core assets and commitments.”

“We are delighted to welcome Sheldon, who is joining the organization at a pivotal moment,” said outgoing President Eugene Meyer. “He shares a deep commitment to our mission and purpose, to provide a forum for fair, serious, and open debate about the role of the courts in saying what the law is rather than what they wish it to be, and to the centrality of the rule of law in protecting individual freedom and traditional values. It’s been an honor to have served over many decades. I am grateful to my colleagues, our members and those who have supported this mission over the years.”

“The Federalist Society’s strength comes from our members, and I’m proud to work alongside them to promote the Society’s founding principles and provide a thoughtful forum for discussion and debate,” said Gilbert. “It’s an honor to serve our members—including law school students and faculty, public servants in every branch of government, and private sector and non-profit lawyers— who tirelessly and fearlessly work to defend the Constitution, preserve freedom, and promote the rule of law.”

Before joining Walmart, Gilbert served as Vice President for Content and Development and Senior Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the National Constitution Center, as Director for the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement, and as Associate Chief Counsel for Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Litigation Center. He is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School and the University of Utah.

Gilbert is married with four children, and is himself a child of the Mountain West, where he was born in a coal mining town in Utah and raised in Idaho near the Grand Tetons. Before going to law school, Sheldon’s diverse interests led him to work in a wide range of roles, from software development project management for a nonprofit, to working in his University’s radiobiology research lab, to volunteer service in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for his church. Gilbert was selected following a nationwide search by the Board’s Presidential Search Committee, with key support from Andrea McDaniel Smith, a partner at CarterBaldwin Executive Search.

Founded by law students from around the country in 1982, the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current legal order. Under Eugene Meyer’s leadership, the organization has grown from a small group of law students to a community of 90,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law.

For my own views of the Federalist Society, see this post, which I wrote during the Gorsuch nomination fight in 2017.

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