By Ann W. Parks

Ed Meese, the nation’s 75th attorney general, visited Georgetown Law March 13.

More than two decades after the era of Reaganomics and Iran-Contra, Edwin Meese III — the nation’s attorney general from 1985 to 1988 — came to Georgetown Law to share his thoughts on constitutional interpretation today.

Meese spoke in the Law Center’s Hart Auditorium March 13 at the invitation of the Georgetown Federalist Society, which presented the 75th attorney general with its 5th annual Lifetime Service Award. The award is given to those individuals who have made significant contributions to the realization of the Federalist Society’s principles, which include the idea that it is “emphatically the duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; former Attorney General Richard Thornburg; former Solicitor General Theodore Olson and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit have been past recipients of the award.

Some in the audience may not have been born in 1985, when Meese gave a speech to the American Bar Association calling for “a jurisprudence of original intention” (meaning that any interpretation of the Constitution should remain true to the founders’ original intent). The speech sparked a back-and-forth debate between Meese and former Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, who viewed the law as a living process adaptive to changing needs. This debate between judicial restraint and judicial activism, Meese noted, still continues today.

Addressing the question of how America’s founders might view today’s Supreme Court, Meese noted that Jefferson, Adams and company were careful to divide the country’s power vertically — between the federal government and the states — as well as horizontally between the three branches. To further guard against oppression, Meese said, they adopted a written constitution and called for an independent judiciary that was far different from the king’s “mouthpieces” in England.

The founders, Meese asserted, would likely be surprised to hear judges quoting foreign law when interpreting the Constitution; to see “the finest judges pilloried” in confirmation hearings; and to witness the increase in government power via the Constitution’s Commerce Clause and the Establishment Clause.

The purpose of the Establishment Clause “was to keep the federal government from interfering with the states,” Meese said. “Now, it’s used to prevent religious activity.”

A story for every occasion

The former attorney general also shared a few memories of his former boss.

“He had a joke and a story for every occasion,” said Meese of Ronald Reagan. The former president, who had Irish ancestors, would tell a story every St. Patrick’s Day about a CIA agent named Murphy who was sent to a small town in Ireland to investigate certain activities of the Irish Republican Party in the United States, Meese said.

When a courier sent to find the agent discreetly went looking for him at an Irish pub, he was dismayed to discover that there were four Murphys in that town — including the bartender. So the courier proceeded to test Murphy the bartender with a prearranged code phrase.

“The bartender said, ‘You want Murphy the spy,’” Meese recalled, chuckling at Reagan’s joke. “‘He lives around the corner.’”

Matthew Walker (L’10), a co-vice president of public relations for the Georgetown Federalist Society, said that Meese has greatly contributed to bringing the originalist interpretation of the Constitution into public discourse.

“The Federalist Society was founded by several law students in the 1980s based, in part, on Mr. Meese’s groundbreaking speeches on constitutional interpretation and the need for judicial restraint,” he said, noting that the Georgetown Federalist Society is experiencing some of the highest membership rates ever. “We owe our success and the success of the Federalist Society to great men such as Ed Meese.”