Edwin Meese currently holds fellowships and chairmanships with several public policy councils and think-tanks, including the Constitution Project and the Heritage Foundation.
54 Facts About Edwin Meese
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Edwin Meese was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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Edwin Meese currently sits on the National Advisory Board of Center for Urban Renewal and Education.
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Edwin Meese is on the board of directors of The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
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Edwin Meese has served on the board of Cornerstone closed end funds.
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Edwin Meese was raised in a practicing Lutheran family, of German descent.
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Edwin Meese's father was an Oakland city government official, president of the Zion Lutheran Church, and served 24 years in the non-partisan office of Treasurer of Alameda County.
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At age 10, Edwin Meese published along with his brothers a mimeographed neighborhood newspaper, the Weekly Herald, and used the proceeds to buy a war bond.
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The young Edwin Meese rode a bicycle on a paper route and worked in a drugstore.
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At Oakland High School, Edwin Meese was involved in the Junior State of America and led his high school debate team to statewide championships.
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Edwin Meese served as president of the Yale Political Union, chairman of the Conservative Party, and chairman of the Yale Debating Association.
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Edwin Meese made the dean's list, and graduated with a bachelor of arts of political science in 1953.
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Edwin Meese became a member of ROTC upon enrollment at Yale, and upon graduation he obtained a commission in the United States Army as a Second Lieutenant.
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Edwin Meese spent 24 months at Fort Sill near Lawton, Oklahoma.
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Edwin Meese gained experience in logistics, conducting installation and operations of the 240 mm howitzer M1.
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Edwin Meese completed active duty in 1956 and continued in the United States Army Reserve, specializing in military intelligence.
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Edwin Meese retired from the Army Reserve as a colonel in 1984.
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Edwin Meese returned to California, obtaining a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he was a state Moot Court champion.
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Edwin Meese graduated in 1958 and accepted a position with the district attorney's office of Alameda County as a law clerk.
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Edwin Meese prosecuted felony cases while maintaining a private practice on nights and weekends, focusing on civil law.
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Edwin Meese served as legal affairs secretary from 1967 to 1968 and as executive assistant and chief of staff to Governor Reagan from 1969 to 1974.
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Edwin Meese was known for his "unique ability" to explain complex ideas to Reagan in a way that often mirrored Reagan's own speaking style and mannerisms.
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Edwin Meese was widely criticized for escalating the official response to the People's Park protest, during which law enforcement officers killed one student, on his way to class, who was not a protester and injured hundreds of others, including bystanders.
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Edwin Meese advised Reagan to declare a state of emergency in Berkeley, contrary to the recommendation of the Berkeley City Council.
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Edwin Meese was recognized as one of five "Outstanding Young Men of California" by the California Junior Chamber of Commerce for his role in countering the Berkeley demonstrators.
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From January 1975 to May 1976, Edwin Meese served as vice president for administration of Rohr Industries in Chula Vista, California.
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Edwin Meese left Rohr to enter private law practice in San Diego County, California.
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Edwin Meese became Counselor to the President, who appointed him as a member of both his Cabinet and the National Security Council from 1981 to 1985.
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On Monday, September 14,1981, Edwin Meese chaired the first White House discussion of what would become Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile defense program.
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Edwin Meese served as a liaison to the conservative evangelical community, arranging for meetings between social-conservative leaders and the president.
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Edwin Meese was considered a powerful and influential figure inside the White House.
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Edwin Meese created a "storm of controversy" in December 1983 after his responses to questions about hunger in America.
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Shortly after, Edwin Meese offered a tongue-in-cheek defense of Scrooge, saying that he "had his faults, but he wasn't unfair to anyone" and that he suffered from "a bad press".
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Reagan nominated Edwin Meese to be William French Smith's successor as Attorney General on January 23,1984.
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In 1985, Edwin Meese received Government Executive magazine's annual award for excellence in management for his service in this role.
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The investigation centered on actions Meese took that benefited him and his longtime friend and former lawyer, E Robert Wallach.
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Robert Wallach worked as a lobbyist for the company and sought help from Edwin Meese on Wedtech contract matters.
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The Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, often called the Edwin Meese report, convened in the spring of 1985 and published its findings in July 1986.
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The Edwin Meese Report advised that pornography was in varying degrees harmful.
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One of Edwin Meese's innovations was to seek the cooperation of drug-producing countries.
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In 1985 Edwin Meese delivered a speech calling for a "jurisprudence of original intent" and criticizing the Supreme Court for straying from the original intention of the US Constitution.
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Edwin Meese was well known for his opposition to the Miranda Warning ruling by the Supreme Court requiring a suspect's rights to be read to him before he is questioned by authorities.
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In May 2006 Meese was named a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group by group co-chairmen James Baker III and Lee H Hamilton, commissioned to assess and report on the contemporary status of the Iraq War.
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In 1982, Edwin Meese was elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.
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Edwin Meese has held the Ronald Reagan Chair in Public Policy at the Heritage Foundation since 1988, when he joined the think tank.
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Edwin Meese is chairman of Heritage's Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, founded in 2001 to advance conservative views about the Constitution, legal principles and their impact on public policy.
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Edwin Meese is currently the Second Vice Chairman of Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative non-profit legal group.
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Edwin Meese serves as an Adjunct Fellow at the Discovery Institute and serves on the board of directors of the Junior State of America Edwin Meese is on the board of directors for the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank devoted to the research of non-profit groups.
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Edwin Meese served on the executive committee and as president of the Council for National Policy, and he served as co-chairman of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Sentencing Committee.
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Edwin Meese served two terms as a member of the Board of Visitors of George Mason University from 1996 to 2004.
51.
In 2017, Edwin Meese became a Veteran Companion of the Military Order of Foreign Wars.
52.
Edwin Meese serves as a member of the board of directors of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a non-profit market-oriented research, education, and outreach think tank located on George Mason University's Arlington campus.
53.
Edwin Meese has authored or co-authored a number of books on government, judiciary and civics, including:.
54.
Edwin Meese has been a subject of many TV documentaries.