by Liz Daube
Staff Writer
Former U.S. Attorney General and Counselor to Pres. Ronald Reagan Edwin Meese III spoke to attorneys, students and instructors last Thursday during Florida Coastal School of Law’s first-ever Alumni Week.
Meese continues to work and write on public policy as he approaches his 75th birthday this year. At Florida Coastal’s Center for Law and Public Policy’s issues forum, he discussed his views on presidential powers and what he calls “judicial activism.”
Meese said recent comments and decisions from current and former Supreme Court Justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, are “bringing the nation a step closer to dictatorship” and “relate to an aging debate that has been continuing since 1985.”
Meese was part of that original debate 21 years ago when he began criticizing the Supreme Court for straying from the original intents of the Constitution. Justices William Brennan and John Paul Stevens publicly responded to his accusations, and a controversy that Meese calls “judicial activism v. judicial restraint” began to heat up.
Much of the debate over the issue is political in nature. Meese, known for his conservative policies, contends judicial activism threatens to override majority rule, create law rather than interpret it and push the agendas of “outside groups” – including the NAACP, according to Meese – in the courts. People have argued against this view on several fronts, some concluding the “judicial activism” label is a political euphemism for decisions a political party doesn’t care for.
FCSL students and other audience members were encouraged to ask any tough questions they had after Meese’s talk. One person asked if he thought Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down racial school segregation, was an abuse of judicial activism.
Meese said he supported the decision, but noted that he didn’t support Roe v. Wade – the landmark 1971 decision that found laws against abortion violated the 14th amendment – because he thought the legislature should handle policy changes.
“Legislatures are bodies that are designed to adapt,” he said, answering another question on how the Constitution should be interpreted. “The court has to engage in a certain humility and leave that to the established legislative branch.”
After expressing a strong support for the “stability and predictability” of keeping with precedent, Meese was asked if overturning Roe v. Wade would be constitutional after more than 30 years.
“If it’s found to be unviable or that it is greatly unfair, not in the spirit of the Constitution ... when it has caused more problems than it solves,” said Meese, “it could be overturned.”