Top 36 Quotes & Sayings by Edwin Meese

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American public servant Edwin Meese.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Edwin Meese

Edwin Meese III is an American attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial administration (1967–1974), the Reagan presidential transition team (1980–81) and the Reagan administration (1981–1985). Following the 1984 election, he was considered for the position of White House Chief of Staff by President Reagan, but James Baker was chosen instead. Meese eventually rose to hold the position of the 75th United States Attorney General (1985–1988), a position from which he resigned following the Wedtech scandal.

To restore the American experiment in democratic self-government, religious believers need to redouble their civic efforts. For without our active participation in politics, the government will continue to trample on our rights. The Constitution does not prevent people of faith from being active in politics.
The Black Panthers was what we would call today a criminal gang that was formed by Huey Newton. Now, interestingly enough, I knew Huey Newton before he formed the Black Panthers. He was a student of mine when I was a teacher, instructor at Oakland City College back in the very early 1960s.
The implication that everyone would have to accept its judgments uncritically, that it was a decision from which there could be no appeal, was astonishing. β€” Β© Edwin Meese
The implication that everyone would have to accept its judgments uncritically, that it was a decision from which there could be no appeal, was astonishing.
Religious-liberty protections are one way of achieving civil peace even amid disagreement. The United States is a pluralistic society. To protect that pluralism and the rights of all Americans, of whatever faith they may practice, religious-liberty laws are good policy. Liberals committed to tolerance should embrace them.
Nicaragua is fast becoming a terrorist country club.
I've been in several situations where police officers and district attorneys have had the cooperation of people in the news media without either endangering the reporter or compromising their sources.
The United States is in a time of transition. Courts have redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. Will the right to dissent be protected? Will the right of Americans to speak and act in accord with what the United States had always believed about marriage - that it's a union of husband and wife - be tolerated?
I don't think a reporter necessarily becomes an arm of law enforcement. I think a reporter is like any other citizen. If a citizen can do his or her duty as a witness, if they have information about a crime, or if they have information about a criminal group, I think that there's a duty on the part of the citizen.
It should be remembered that the president cannot, by executive order, do things that affects the public at large unless there is some Congressional basis for it.
Democracy demands that judges confine themselves to a narrow sphere of influence - that is why the late Alexander Bickel called the judiciary the 'Least Dangerous Branch.' In a world governed by a proper conception of their role, judges don't play at being legislators - they leave that job to our elected representatives.
In the course of his ongoing crusade for Medicaid expansion, Ohio governor John Kasich has suggested that Ronald Reagan, Saint Peter, and God Himself all would support his plan to accept Obamacare's Medicaid expansion.
A written constitution guides and directs the application of law in a way utterly unlike oral guidance. It reminds us that the certainty and consistency of legal application is essential.
As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.
President Reagan, expanding on President Lincoln's phrase, referred to America as 'the last, best hope of man on Earth.' But this last, best hope is beginning to fade.
America was founded to be a beacon of liberty, particularly religious liberty. The framers of our Constitution sought to preserve religious liberty to such an extent that they made it the first right protected in the Bill of Rights.
Reagan cut through irrational federal regulations to allow children to live with their parents, where they could receive care that would cost the taxpayer one-sixth as much as institutional care. By contrast, Obamacare has added thousands of pages of bureaucratic regulations and will cost the federal government untold billions.
In 'The Heritage Guide to the Constitution,' you find a most remarkable collection of scholarly work. Over a hundred people have contributed to explaining what the Constitution says, what it means, how it has been interpreted over the years, and how it is important to people today.
Pastors can lead the way in motivating the faithful to wise stewardship of their citizenship responsibilities. Without a healthy culture and civil society, limited government and ordered liberty will be impossible.
Expanding a failing, big-government program that reduces flexibility for the states and traps generations of Americans in dependency is not consistent with the kind of conservative solutions that Reagan sought during his terms as governor of California and president of the United States.
An expert is somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.
The 1986 act didn't turn illegal immigrants into citizens on the spot. It granted temporary resident status only to those who could prove they had resided continuously in America for five years. After 18 months, their status could be upgraded to permanent residency, and only after another five years could they become U.S. citizens.
In most countries, you have a monarch or some other principal person to whom its officers and its military swear their allegiance. Our officials in this country and our military swear allegiance to the Constitution. We say that when we say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
Since the '86 amnesty, the number of illegal immigrants has quadrupled. That should teach Congress a very important lesson: Amnesty 'bends' the rule of law. And bending the rule of law to reach a 'comprehensive' deal winds up provoking wholesale breaking of the law.
The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed unanimously in the House, won 97 votes in the Senate, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Twenty states have passed their own versions of this law, and 11 additional ones have religious-liberty protections that state courts have interpreted to provide a similar level of protection.
Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.
Constitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government. β€” Β© Edwin Meese
Constitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government.
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
As a former U.S. attorney general under President Reagan, and a former Ohio secretary of state, we would like to say something that might strike some as obvious: Those who oppose photo voter-ID laws and other election-integrity reforms are intent on making it easier to commit vote fraud.
Ascribing racial animus to people who are trying to safeguard democratic integrity is a crude yet effective political tactic that obscures the truth. But there's something even worse than name-calling: legal interference from Washington with valid laws.
The idea that the police cannot ask questions of the person that knows most about the crime is an infamous decision.
[Nuclear war]... may not be desirable.
You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.
That conclusion is inescapable, given the well-established evidence that voter-ID laws don't disenfranchise minorities or reduce minority voting, and in many instances enhance it, despite claims to the contrary by Mr. Holder and his allies. As more states adopt such laws, the left has railed against them with increasing fury, even invoking the specter of the Jim Crow era to describe electoral safeguards common to most nations, including in the Third World.
I was attorney general; my name is Meese. I say, go to college. Don't carry a piece.
A Supreme Court decision does not establish a "supreme law of the land" that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and forevermore.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced his resignation on Thursday, leaves a dismal legacy at the Justice Department, but one of his legal innovations was especially pernicious: the demonizing of state attempts to ensure honest elections.
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