Who's Junketing the Judges

     The Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) is a Bozeman, Montana-based non-profit that promotes “free market environmentalism,” a doctrine that advocates reliance on the free market and private property rights, instead of environmental laws, to protect the environment. FREE began offering its series of seminars for federal judges in 1992 and immediately established itself as a major player on the private seminar circuit. From 1992 to 2004, 207 federal judges reported 410 trips to FREE seminars, and since 1995 FREE has been accommodating roughly as many, or more, attendees as the long established programs offered by the Law and Economic Center. FREE boasts that nearly one-third of the federal judiciary has either attended or asked to enroll in a future FREE seminar and that, in 1996, nearly 150 federal judges applied for only 54 seminar openings.

     Part of FREE's popularity is surely attributable to their attractive seminar package. FREE provides judges with free travel, food and accommodations at one of a few private ranches near Bozeman, Montana, complete with plenty of “time for cycling, fishing, golfing, hiking and horseback riding.” For example, at the Elkhorn Ranch, one of FREE's recurring venues, judges may enjoy “some of the world's finest blue ribbon trout streams,” take a horseback ride through “millions of acres of pristine and spectacularly beautiful mountain scenery,” or maybe go whitewater rafting. Montana's Gallatin Gateway Inn(www.gallatingatewayinn.com), another frequent FREE destination, boasts “[r]elaxing after a meeting could be basking in front of the Inn's distinctive fireplace, or soaking in the outdoor hot tub. During the summer months, you could also swim beneath the stars."

     In return for these perquisites, judges attend lectures that, in FREE's words, “emphasiz[e] property rights, market processes and responsible liberty.” Lecture topics at FREE seminars include: “Takings: Property, Environment and the Constitution;” ”Liberty and the Environment: A Case for Principled Judicial Activism;” “The Demise of Environmental Values in Environmental Law” and “The Environment – A CEO's Perspective.”