ABSTRACT
Attorney General Edwin Meese and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan squared off against each other, debating the ground rules for constitutional interpretation. Speaking to the American Bar Association, the Attorney General admonished the Justices to mind their own business, which he conceives to be the strict construction of the Constitution. The post-New Deal Court, dominated by Roosevelt appointees, looked tolerantly upon state regulation of economic activities but scrutinized closely any state regulation of first amendment activities. Critics accused the Court of reading the Constitution as if it mandated the postwar liberal political agenda. In the 1960s the Court, dominated by a new generation of liberals under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, gave the Constitution an egalitarian gloss. Today those who applauded the Warren Court's "progressive" interpretations of the Constitution worry that a Reaganized Supreme Court will indulge in "reactionary" interpretations of the Constitution.
