USD Legal Center Appears to Be Doomed Despite Ties to Meese

Its founder is the nation’s No. 1 lawyer. But that prestigious lineage isn’t enough to save a legal research center at the University of San Diego from extinction.

The Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Management, founded by U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III when he was a USD law professor in 1977, will cease to exist this fall--a loser in a fierce battle for funding prompted, ironically, by the austere policies of the Administration that Meese serves in Washington.

“It just died out, and not for lack of trying,” said Judge Richard Huffman of the San Diego County Superior Court, who became director of the center after Meese left USD in 1981 to serve first as counselor to President Reagan and then as attorney general.

At its peak, the center--which has held seminars, conducted research and published studies on major issues in criminal justice--had an annual budget of about $300,000 and a full-time staff of six, Huffman said.

Now, a staff of two is winding down a few last research projects, he said. A final-year budget of $70,000 will run out in September or October.

From its inception, the center’s primary financial backer had been the conservative Scaife foundations of Pittsburgh. But Scaife withdrew its support last year, amid a general consolidation of its activities.

That left the center to compete with other criminal justice researchers for a pool of federal funding sharply reduced by Reagan Administration budget cuts--National Institute of Justice grants have been slashed 22% since 1980--and for private grants that became ever tougher to win.

“There’s been such a drying up of public funds that the demand for private funds has just been enormous,” Huffman said. “It takes more skillful hands than I at grantsmanship to make it run.”

Meese, though aware of the center’s terminal condition, has not taken heroic steps to save it, Huffman said. As attorney general, he is in charge of the National Institute of Justice, and he judged it a potential conflict to appear to be intervening on the center’s behalf.

“I’ve told Ed several times in the past that, as I see it, we’re going to close,” Huffman said. “He recognized that problem and felt--and I agreed with him--that there’s nothing, really, he can do.”

In fact, Huffman said, the center’s association with Meese has proven something of a handicap in the race for government funding.

“It began to appear to me and Ed Meese and others that it was a little unseemly, given his position, for the center to be in the position of pushing too much for federal funding,” Huffman said. As a judge, Huffman also was in a poor position to raise money for the center.

Meese has only tenuous ties to USD, more than five years after he left for Washington. The law school’s bulletin lists him as a professor of law on leave for government service. But acting Dean Michael Navin said last week he was at a loss to describe Meese’s official connection to the university.

“I don’t really think Meese’s relationship with the law school is ongoing anyway,” Navin said.

Meese could not be reached for comment. But Terry Eastland, his Washington spokesman, said it was unlikely that the attorney general would return to USD when he leaves office.

“He has indicated he would probably go into the private sector and practice law,” Eastland said. “The San Diego law school is a long time ago for him.”

Meese and Huffman--both former county prosecutors--focused the center’s attention on topics of concern to law enforcement but tried also to make it a forum for prosecutors and defense attorneys to calmly debate the issues that entangle them in court.

The center prepared a much-quoted manual on Proposition 8, the so-called “Victim’s Bill of Rights” initiative approved by California voters in 1982, which altered criminal punishments and state court procedures. In the last few years, the center has conducted studies of the exclusionary rule, developed a model system for handling complaints against police officers and held forums on preliminary hearings and the diminished-capacity defense.

“We gave certain issues a fresh perspective,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Howard Shore, who researched a manual on scientific evidence while he was a visiting fellow at the center in 1983 and 1984. “It gave an experienced trial deputy the opportunity to do some really stimulating, creative thinking.”

In its waning months, Huffman said, the center is trying to pull together its research on restitution in hopes of publishing a study on the subject. Huffman also wants to at least begin planning a seminar, co-sponsored with the San Diego County Bar Assn., on pretrial motions in criminal cases.

Otherwise, the staff is busy crating up the materials that have piled up over the last nine years--in hopes, perhaps, that Meese will find his way back to USD someday.

“We’re saving all the books and all the files,” Huffman said. “If he decides to come back home, I’m sure the center could be restarted.”