OF MEESE AND MEN IN BLACK:

Assessing a Wishlist for the Justice System: Changes on Supreme Court Could Advance Goals Of Reagan-Era Document on Constitution (JESS BRAVIN, 9/27/05, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)

John Roberts is poised to become the first alumnus of Ronald Reagan's Justice Department to sit on the Supreme Court, with the Senate likely to confirm him as chief justice this week. But will he use his new post to advance that era's blueprint for a conservative judiciary?

In 1988, under Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the department's Office of Legal Policy issued a 199-page report titled "The Constitution in the Year 2000." The document, capping years of administration efforts to reverse liberal legal precedents, envisioned a justice system that upheld "traditional family values," set rigid definitions of private property, and enforced "laws that reflect conceptions of public morality."

The report concluded that the future would depend on "the values and philosophies of the men and women who populate the third co-equal branch of the national government-the federal judiciary."

Nearly a generation later, much of the Constitution 2000 blueprint has been realized, thanks to the people placed on the bench by President Reagan and his Republican successors.

"The criminal-defendants' rights revolution has clearly stalled, there has been a fair amount of laissez-faire in antitrust issues and regulatory issues in general and considerable deference to the executive in administrative law," says Washington lawyer David Rivkin, who helped draft Constitution 2000.

In the 1960s, liberals "were arguing there was a constitutional basis to allow a judicially imposed redistribution of wealth: 'Why should one person live in a hovel and another live in a palace?'," Mr. Rivkin says. "None of it got off the ground."

Still, there are areas where the vision remains incomplete. Constitution 2000 and related Reagan administration documents dismissed the "so-called 'right to privacy' " -- which the court still reads to encompass abortion and homosexual activity -- as "not reasonably found in the Constitution."

Those are among the issues where Judge Roberts's former colleagues hope that he can make a difference. A second Bush Supreme Court nominee, who may be announced as soon as this week, could accentuate that shift, by succeeding retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- a Reagan appointee who nonetheless has ruled against some Constitution 2000 ideals.

It's the Stevens resignation that will really clear the decks for an assault on the "right to privacy."

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 27, 2005 2:19 PM