The Meese Revolution: The Making of a Constitutional Moment

The Meese Revolution explores how Ed Meese became the most powerful and important Attorney General in American history.

Edwin Meese III is the most influential person ever to hold the office of U.S. Attorney General - and almost no one knows it. Ed Meese was at the center of virtually every major accomplishment of Ronald Reagan’s transformative presidency, from winning the Cold War without firing a shot to the economic boom that by the end of the 1980s was the envy of the world. More to the point for this book, Ed Meese is the person most responsible for the rise of constitutional originalism, which treats the text and original meaning of the Constitution rather than the policy fads of the moment as authoritative law.

In 2024, originalism is a major force in the courts, with a majority of Supreme Court justices and a raft of lower-court and state-court judges at least taking it seriously as a major contributor to decision-making. That result was unthinkable in 1985 when Meese took office and originalism was essentially unknown to the legal academy and almost wholly absent from the judicial process. Ed Meese turned the U.S. Department of Justice into ＂the academy in exile,＂ where originalism was developed, refined, theorized, and put into practice.

This book describes the rise of originalism, which necessitates telling the story of Ed Meese, without whom it surely does not happen. Meese’s story threads through virtually all important legal and policy events of the 1980s, many of which continue to shape the world of the twenty-first century. We are still living through the Meese Revolution.

Prof. Steven G. Calabresi is the Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor of Law at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Fall 2013-2022; a Visiting Professor of Political Theory at Brown University for 2016-2017; and the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of the Federalist Society’s Board of Directors. Professor Calabresi worked in the West Wing of President Ronald Reagan’s White House; was a Special Assistant for Attorney General Edwin Meese III; and he clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court and for Judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter on the federal courts of appeals. Prof. Calabresi has written over seventy law review articles and essays. He is the author of The History and Growth of Judicial Review: Volume I The G-20 Common Law Countries and Volume II The G-20 Civil Law Countries. Professor Calabresi is also a co-author on two books: The U.S. Constitution: Creation, Reconstruction, the Progressives, and the Modern Era; and The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush. Professor Calabresi has taught: Constitutional Law I; Comparative Constitutional Law, Federal Jurisdiction, Administrative Law, State Constitutional Law, and the Separation of Powers.