One of my favorite sites is Balkinization. So, in a thread that features an ongoing dispute between a conservative commenter and his liberal interlocutors, this conservative commenter included a link to the Federalist Society reading list, which was a suitable entry point, for me, into the world of the Federalist Society..

Start with this somewhat paranoid assertion as a way into this bizarro world:

We strongly suspect that college courses on legal issues tend to overemphasize the idea of law as a tool for social engineering, and downplay (or ignore) more conservative views of law as furthering private property rights and limiting government. (This is particularly true with respect to constitutional law; indeed, it would not be surprising to find many college students who think that constitutional law is the foundation for all other areas of law -- thus confusing public and private law, as well as the public and private sectors.) Even business students often have no systematic introduction to the comparison of markets and politics. [Emphasis added.]

Now constitutional law is the foundation for all other kinds of law. The confusion here is that one of the core principles of Constitutional government, that of limited government, is susceptible of two radically divergent interpretations. The first, which the FS subscribes to, is that 'limited government' means that public should yield to private, and that a private concern is, other things being equal, priviledged above a public one. So in effect, regulations involving, say, mercury in the environment, despite the weight of scientific evidence showing that this causes great harm to the public, must be ignored when one considers the millions in profits some private individuals rake in- and the millions, here, have already (since profit is predefined as the private citizen's weal) outweighed the toxic effects to society as a whole (which simply exists to generate these profits) as well as any demonstrable harms to private citizens- because these citizens harmed, being the least profitmaking ones, cannot prove their harms outweigh the goods that accrue to the profitmakers.

The other meaning of limited government is best expressed by the phrase "equal protections under the law." Government is limited because of its obligation to not serve as an instrument of private profit. It must provide equal protections to all, because its power flows from individuals considered as a whole. This concept is falsely construed by the FS as 'communist,' but in fact, it is simply an obligation to respect the rights of all without arbitrarily favoring some.

 This obligation of government to abide by its own commitment to avoid the arbitrary (read lawless) use of power is very far from an "unconstrained" view of human nature. On the contrary, it is the utopians who believe the market will create an idyll:

If we had to recommend only one book to a student seeking to understand the nature of legal and political debate in this country, we would unhesitatingly name A Conflict of Visions, by economist Thomas Sowell. Sowell makes the case that there are two perspectives on human nature: one that it is essentially "unconstrained" (and thus subject to manipulation via various schemes of social engineering) and one that it is "constrained" (and thus resistant to the perfecting efforts of the government).

What neither Sowell, nor his allies, can do is explain how unconstraining government from its origins as a compact among the People makes individuals less susceptible to "manipulation via various schemes." It is true that government must be constrained; privatizing it releases it from these constraints.

Human nature requires limits on power. But humans also require enough power to avod being oppressed in turn. Where does this power originate, and how can it best be checked, without this act of checking itself overstepping limits on power? These are the questions a serious legal philosophy must address, which the FS cannot even begin to ask.