don@brillig.umd.edu (11/14/86)
(Reprinted without permission from the Washington Post, Thursday, October 23, 1986, page A4.) Meese Says Court Ruling Not 'Supreme Law' Officials Have a 'Right to Respond,' Attorney General Contends. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, in a speech released here yesterday, said that rulings of the Supreme Court are not "the supreme law of the land" and that other branches of government at the state and national level have a "right to respond" to high court decisions with which they disagree. Meese said it was necessary to make this point because of suggestions that officials must accept Supreme Court rulings uncritically. In a speech delivered Tuesday at Tulane University in New Orleans, he said that approach confuses the Constitution, with the court's interpretations of the Constitution. "If a constitutional decision is not the same as the Constitution itself, if it is not binding in the same way that the Constitution is, we as citizens may respond to a decision we disagree with," Meese said. "As Lincoln, in effect, pointed out, we can make our responses through the presidents, the senators and the representatives we elect at the national level. We can also make them through those we elect at the state and local level," he said. Meese cited criticism of the nominations of Daniel A. Manion to become a federal appeals judge. Manion, narrowly confirmed, came under fire for introducing a bill as an Indiana state senator that seemed to conflict with a Supreme Court ruling banning the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Meese said, "Obviously, it [a Supreme Court ruling] does have binding quality: It binds the parties in a case and also the executive branch for whatever enforcement is necessary. But such a decision does not establish a 'supreme law of the land' that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and evermore." Otherwise, he said, the court would not be able to overrule itsself in a constitutional case. -------