In 1985, Edwin Meese was sworn into office as the 75th Attorney General of the United States.

In their new book, The Meese Revolution, the making of a constitutional moment, Stephen Calabrese and

Gary Lawson, argue that Meese became the most significant Attorney General in American

history by turning the Department of Justice into what they call

an Academy in Exile, where originalism was developed, refined, theorized, and put into practice.

Hello, friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center,

and welcome to We the People, the weekly show of

constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit, chartered by Congress to increase

awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.

In this episode, Stephen Calabrese discusses Attorney General Mesa's role in the rise of

originalism and in Ronald Reagan's

transformative presidency. Stephen Calabrese is the Clayton, J. and Henry R. Barber, professor of law

at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Professor Calabrese worked in the West Wing of President

Ronald Reagan's White House, was a special assistant for Attorney General

Edwin Meese, the third, and he clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court and

for judges Robert H. Bork and Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Steve, it is wonderful to

welcome you back to We the People. Thank you so much, Jeff. It's a great honor to be on We the People,

a great honor to talk to you.

I'm a huge admirer of the National Constitution Center. You do fantastic work, and so I'm thrilled to be here.

Thank you for the very kind words. Congratulations on the new book. You argue that Edwin Meese was the most influential Attorney General in history. Why?

Well, there's essentially two reasons, and I'll just mention them briefly, and you may want to go into them in more detail.

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