The first day of the 2024 Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention is in the can. And unfortunately, the Fifth Circuit could not stay this change of venue. After nearly four decades at the Mayflower, FedSoc moved about a mile down Connecticut Avenue to the Washington Hilton. Yes, the hotel where President Reagan was shot. Not exactly the best vibes. But I will still try to be objective. The verdict, from my perspective, is mostly negative, but there are some upsides.
I’ll start with the downsides. The Mayflower is a classic hotel. Every ballroom was finely crafted with accents on the walls, and a welcoming ambiance. So much history was made in those rooms. The Washington Hilton feels like a hospital. It is cold, sterile, and soulless. The smaller conference rooms have low ceilings and obstructive columns in the middle. The cavernous ballroom has dreadful acoustics. It is nearly impossible to hear anything close to the stage (thankfully there were closed captions). I felt like I was attending someone else’s conference. Moreover, the hotel rooms are dark and drab, and desperately in need of renovation. The wireless in the room is also painfully slow–I am on my hotspot at the moment. On a personal note, I have lifetime platinum status with Marriott Bonvoy, but am a mere plebeian with Hilton Honors.
But there are some plusses. FedSoc long ago outgrew the Mayflower. The hotel room blocks quickly sold out, which forced people to stay at nearby hotels. The conference rooms were not nearly big enough. It was difficult to find a seat for most panels, and the overflow rooms were packed. It could take nearly 20 minutes just to get lunch at the buffet. The Hilton has more than enough space to fit four concurrent panels. That simply cannot be done at the Mayflower.
Another plus is the lack of schlepping: the conference is at the same hotel as the annual dinner. That hasn’t happened in about two decades. In the old days, everything would be held in the Mayflower. But since the 2000s, the conference would be at the Mayflower, and the dinner would be somewhere else–the Marriott Wardman (now defunct), the Omni Shoreham, and more recently Union Station. The former two hotels were a short cab ride from the Mayflower. The latter could take nearly an hour by cab. (FedSoc members tend not to take the Metro). And do not even remind me of the dreadful time we had to schlep to the Gaylord National Harbor. That took nearly two hours on the busses! But with the Hilton, we merely have to take an escalator to the annual dinner. It was a delight. I didn’t need to go outside all day. (It was raining apparently). Plus, this ballroom can fit several hundred more people than Union Station.
It is true that more people can attend, but this leads to a massive drawback. The greatest feature of the National Convention is the networking. The panels are fun, to be sure. But the magic happened outside the sessions. I wrote an entire book chapter about how the constitutional challenge to Obamacare was hatched in the grand hallway of the Mayflower–the Mayflower Compact. That space worked so well because everyone had to congregate in a centralized location to get too and from the panels. There was no way ot avoid the hallway. That was a magical time. Alas, the Hilton has no such centralized place. The 2024 convention takes place on three levels. At any point, FedSoc members are scattered throughout the hotel. And we are no longer standing shoulder-to-shoulder. There is ample space between us–dare I say, social distancing! These positions are simply not conducive to spontaneous order. I can spend an entire day schmoozing and not see certain people that I want to see.
In some regards, the bigger conference space is perhaps emblematic of the bigger tent that FedSoc has become. As the group grows and grows, it becomes harder and harder to forge the sorts of personal relationships that were developed years ago. Sure, we can now fit a few hundred more people into the conference. But that increased head count makes the networking more diffused. It was much easier for me to pinhole Randy Barnett in a single hallway. But I didn’t see my colleague at any point today. (We will have a book signing on Friday at 10:45–stop by!).
I understand that we will be stuck at the Hilton for the foreseeable future. I think we’ll have to get used to it.
I’ll close on a positive note. It was so refreshing to see Justices Breyer and Gorsuch speak at the Scalia dinner. They have such a good rapport, and they demonstrated through word and deed why protecting the Court is so important. I would hope that the American Constitution Society could host a similar gathering at their annual conference. The Court would be in a much better place than it was only a few years ago.
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