Daily Inspiration Quote by Edwin Meese

Astonishment is doing heavy rhetorical work here. Meese isn’t just registering surprise; he’s trying to make a constitutional posture feel like an emotional overreach. By framing “uncritical” acceptance and “no appeal” as the implied demand, he recasts judicial authority as something closer to an edict than an argument. It’s a clever move for a public servant operating in the Reagan-era fight over courts: you don’t have to prove the Court is wrong on the merits if you can suggest it’s asking the country to stop thinking.

The sentence turns on “implication,” a word that widens the target. Meese can sound respectful of institutions while indicting a perceived attitude of judicial finality. He’s not saying “the Court is illegitimate”; he’s saying the Court’s defenders are smuggling in a norm that citizens and elected branches should treat rulings as unquestionable truth. That’s a softer accusation with sharper consequences: it invites listeners to see skepticism as civic duty, not partisanship.

Context matters because Meese, as Attorney General, was a leading voice for originalism and for the idea that constitutional interpretation isn’t monopolized by the judiciary. The subtext is separation of powers as public psychology: if people internalize “no appeal,” then legislative debate and executive discretion shrink before they even begin. The line is calibrated to rally democratic pride against technocratic closure, while leaving enough ambiguity to deny he’s advocating lawlessness.