Constitution Debate Renewed

Report Outline
Shift in Direction
Addressing the Issues
Back to the Future
Special Focus

Shift in Direction

Opposing Views on Applying Constitution

Americans sat-up and took notice last fall when Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr. took opposing sides in the long-running debate over the proper way to apply the Constitution to modern issues. Meese led off last July 9, using an address to the American Bar Association (ABA) to tell the Supreme Court that it was on the wrong constitutional track. Describing the decisions of the just-ended court term as a “jurisprudence of idiosyncrasy,” Meese urged the court to adopt one of “original intention.”

In October, Brennan, the senior sitting justice, responded, defending the modern court's approach of interpreting the Constitution in light of contemporary realities. “We current justices read the Constitution in the only way we can: as 20th-century Americans,” Brennan declared.

Elaborating on his theme, Meese told the ABA that many of the court's recent rulings seemed to be “more policy choices than articulations of constitutional principle…reveal[ing] a greater allegiance to what the court thinks constitutes sound public policy than a deference to what the Constitution—its text and intention—may demand.” It is the Reagan administration's belief, he continued, “that only ‘the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation,’ and only the sense in which laws were drafted and passed provide a solid foundation for adjudication. Any other standard suffers the defect of pouring new meaning into old words, thus creating new powers and new rights totally at odds with the logic of our Constitution and its commitment to the rule of law.”