Far-Left Academics Wrote Scientific Advisory Guide Used To Influence Judges

The Federal Judicial Center (FJC) casts itself as an ostensibly nonpartisan research agency that provides “objective information and education” to America’s judicial system. So, why did it permit major Democrat donors — several of whom openly espouse radical leftist views — to author part of an FJC manual advising judges on scientific matters before the bench?

The new discovery comes as part of The Federalist’s investigation into the taxpayer-funded FJC. The federal agency has come under fire in recent years following reports about left-wing climate activists’ growing bid to influence federal judges on environmental-related cases through the Federal Judicial Center.

Just last week, The Federalist revealed how the authors of a since-retracted “Reference Guide on Climate Science” contained in the FJC’s latest Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence are radical leftists. This reporting came months after it was discovered that the climate section of the manual — which advises federal judges in their assessment of science-related matters in cases — was littered with citations and footnotes to left-wing climate advocates.

A Federalist inquiry into the manual’s “Reference Guide on Forensic Feature Comparison Evidence” shows that the section’s authors have made numerous financial contributions to Democrats and Democrat-aligned entities in years prior. Several of these authors have not been shy about espousing their left-wing ideology, including one who touts support for abortion and transgenderism.

Meet the Authors

Valena Beety is listed as a law professor at Indiana University (IU) and is described as an “innocence litigator” and a former federal prosecutor. She previously served as the founding director of West Virginia University College of Law’s “West Virginia Innocence Project,” which “aims to serve and to free people who are in prison for crimes they did not commit” and seeks “to fix the problems that lead to wrongful convictions in our justice system, and focus on those issues important to the people of West Virginia.”

In addition to writing research articles and works about “wrongful convictions, forensic evidence, prosecution, and incarceration,” Beety is the author of an upcoming book titled, Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity. A description provided on her IU bio says the book “uses the examples of innocent women who have spent decades in prison for ‘no crime convictions’ and the strategic use of criminal law to limit the bodily autonomy of and criminalize pregnant women, new mothers, and queer people to argue that the criminal treatment of the most vulnerable endangers the rights of everyone.”

On Bluesky — a pro-censorship social media platform frequented by radical leftists — Beety’s profile is littered with posts showcasing her affinity for left-wing orthodoxy.

In a recent May 6 post, the IU law professor encouraged her followers to donate to a fund seeking to raise money for women in need of so-called “abortion care” but who “are forced to travel to neighboring states” to obtain it given Indiana’s pro-life laws. The linked fundraising page reads in part, “Together, we can make accessing an abortion a little bit easier for Hoosiers …”

Beety reposted a December 2024 tweet highlighting the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral arguments for U.S. v. Skremtti, a case in which the court would go on to uphold state laws prohibiting harmful “trans” procedures on minors. The post’s author characterized the then-pending case as being “important … not just for transgender rights, but for gender equality for everyone,” and claimed that the “equal protection jurisprudence of the Roberts Court requires a decision” in favor of so-called “trans kids.”

The law professor also separately retweeted a post commemorating “Transgender Day of Remembrance” and another seemingly critical of the Trump administration’s restrictions on gender dysphoric individuals serving in the military.

Equally notable about Beety, however, is her extensive history as a Democrat donor.

Federal Election Commission (FEC) records indicate that the IU professor has made more than 100 financial contributions throughout the past several years to ActBlue, a major Democrat Party fundraising platform under federal scrutiny for its criminally suspect activities. She’s also recently made several donations to Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom’s 2026 Senate campaign, according to the federal agency.

Much like Beety, forensics guide co-author Jane Campbell Moriarty has also made numerous financial contributions to Democrat causes.

The FEC records reviewed by The Federalist seemingly show that the Duquesne University Law School professor donated to entities supporting Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris’ respective presidential bids. She’s also given multiple donations to ActBlue, as well as Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s 2022 Senate campaign.

According to her Duquesne University bio, Moriarty obtained a B.A. in philosophy at Boston College and later a J.D. at the university’s law school in the early 1980s. She later attended “Neuroscience Bootcamp at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Neuroscience and Society” in 2010 and more recently acquired an M.A. in “health care ethics” from Duquesne in 2021.

In addition to penning articles “about behavioral and forensic science evidence, the Salem witchcraft trials, and violence against women,” Moriarty has published works indicating where her political beliefs lie.

The university professor wrote a March 2025 piece bemoaning what she characterized as a “Dangerous Decline of Expertise in Federal Government.” She specifically took shots at President Trump and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to reform the federal government, writing, “While some scholars have presciently recognized the dangerous trend of devaluing expertise, few imagined a world where the entire Republican party — which runs all branches of government — would align itself with such negative views on expertise. But here we are.”

Moriarty went on to lament the firing and “demonizing” of so-called “experts” from government positions. She further attacked “unqualified” Trump cabinet appointees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and fomented media-manufactured fears that Trump is playing into so-called “Christian nationalism” and “the argument that he is ruling by divine mandate.”

“But given that many Ivy League or elite-university graduates are at the top levels — The President, Vice-President, Mr. Musk, and others in the White House — it is hard not to assume that the death of experts, i.e., voices with knowledge, means there is only one voice of authority. And that voice is the one in the White House,” Moriarty wrote. “Eliminate the competing voices of authority in every area of specialty means leaves us with one voice. And that voice now claims the authority of God. And that authority has clearly decided he prefers loyalty over competence.”

Moriarty separately wrote an article a few years ago titled, “Hysteria Redux: Gaslighting in the Age of Covid,” for a “Symposium” on “Gender, Health, and the Constitution.” The work’s abstract noted that its purpose was to examine “the relationship among hysteria, gaslighting, and gender during the Covid pandemic in the political and public-health messaging about Covid” and “analyze[] the U.S. public health messaging in the age of Covid, explaining how individualism, gender, and gaslighting have shaped the public response to the virus and negatively affected public health.”

“In explaining the poor U.S. public health outcomes during Covid, the article evaluates the role of disinformation about vaccines, the ‘feminization’ of masking, and the ‘vax and relax’ public mantra, which suggested that those who did not relax were perhaps a bit hysterical,” the abstract reads. “Finally, the article considers how gaslighting occurs in the context of dismissing the potential long-term dangers of Covid infections and reinfections.”

The last forensics guide co-author is UC Berkeley Law professor Andrea Roth.

According to her university bio, Roth served as a public defender for nine years and was a fellow at Stanford Law School for three years prior to her time at Berkeley. Her academic focus is on “how pedigreed concepts of criminal procedure and evidentiary law work in an era of science-based prosecutions.”

In 2015, Roth authored an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times praising President Obama’s “push for meaningful criminal justice reform.” She advised that if the Democrat president “and reformers hope to radically reduce the number of people in American prisons and address glaring disparities in criminal justice,” they should treat “the overpunishment and racially disparate treatment of violent offenders” as a “necessary step toward reining in this country’s bloated prison system.”

“The sooner lawmakers and reformers come to terms with that uncomfortable truth, the sooner America can move beyond the scourge of mass incarceration,” Roth wrote.

Similar to Beety and Moriarty, Roth boasts a track record of donating to Democrat candidates and causes. In addition to numerous ActBlue donations, FEC records indicate that the UC Berkeley professor made contributions to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the campaigns of Democrat congressional candidates, and Pete Buttigieg’s Win the Era PAC.

An Unchecked Bureaucracy Run Amok

These latest discoveries further underscore an alarming pattern, in which federal, taxpayer-funded agencies onboard left-wing ideologues to shape America’s supposedly “nonpartisan” bureaucracy and their published works — works which are now being used to advise federal judges on issues that come before their courts.

The FJC’s apparent embrace of this dynamic has not gone unnoticed, however. Responding to The Federalist’s recent reporting about the agency’s reliance on left-wing climate activists for its science manual, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., wrote on X, “No more taxpayer-funded ideological conditioning for federal judges.”

Read part one of The Federalist’s investigation into the Federal Judicial Center here.

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Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood