9/18/2023 0 Comments Was edwin meese ever charged![]() ![]() Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm - which many Republicans view as a facade - that the department should operate independently from the president. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. It is no exaggeration to say that what's on the line is not only the American democratic experiment, but also the basic idea of self-government itself. The New York Times has produced a truly scarifying piece of reporting that leaves no doubt what's at stake in courtrooms right now, and at the polling stations all over the country in 2024. ![]() Ed Meese should resign from his office.Rest assured, there are already plans in place to turn this country into Argentina under Galtieri, if not Chile under Pinochet. He cannot be impeached from office, but his tenure in the Cabinet must come to an end. While his views may be defensible in law school discussions, they do not belong in the Justice Department. However, the attorney general's latest statement betrays a fundamental lack of respect for the basic traditions of American jurisprudence. Though Meese's politicization of his office is incompatible with his position as the nation's top law-enforcer, he serves at the request and pleasure of a president who condones his behavior. But the fight against them can not be led from the office of the attorney general. There is no reason why everyone should agree with those decisions. It fits in with a pattern of using his office to undermine Supreme Court decisions he disagrees with-for instance, those guaranteeing the rights of the accused and of the oppressed. Meese's attempt to undermine the central role of judicial review does not come as a surprise. Meese, a graduate of Yale Law School, disagrees with that interpretation of the court's power. Board of Education-barring school segregation-to be "the supreme law of the land." In other words, school segregation in any part of the country was outlawed. ![]() That 1958 ruling declared the Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Meese only cited one Supreme Court case in his speech, Cooper v. It would allow citizens, officials and judges nationwide to ignore past High Court rulings and interpret the Constitution as they saw fit. If implemented, though, his theory would undermine the rule of law and subvert social order across the land. ![]() Meese made a name for himself as a tough law-and-order prosecutor in San Diego. Only the particular parties involved in cases decided by the Court, he said, are bound by its rulings. In a speech at Tulane University, America's highest-ranking law enforcement official asserted that the Court's decisions were not the supreme law of the land. That is until last week, when Attorney General Edwin Meese III declared that the Supreme Court of the United States was not the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution. Still, there are certain facets of the polity it sets up we thought had been settled long ago. THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION, an often vague political document written nearly two centuries ago, invites controversy. ![]()
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