The Mentor Group

Established 1983 in Boston, Mentor Group is a publicly supported research institute that founded a distinctive constitutional, legal-economic and political-economic exchange following the classical definition of political economy that applies the principles of justice to economic and business affairs.

Toward this end, Mentor created a peer group of Supreme Court Justices, EU Commissioners and Corporate Counsels in the European Union and the United States. Mentor Group began this exchange in its inaugural Symposium collaborating with the Woodrow Wilson Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Warren Burger presided over this Symposium in 1985 where the principal address was given by The Honourable Lord Cameron, KT (Lord of Session and President of The Royal Society of Edinburgh), who related Scottish political economy from the Enlightenment to the founding of the United States of America. US Appeals Court for the DC Circuit Judge Robert Bork responded to Lord Cameron. Mentor Group then helped prepare the overseas contributions to the United States Constitution Bicentennial Symposium of the Smithsonian Institution in May 1987.

In 1988, these comparative constitutional studies took on a specific “Supreme Court” aspect when Mentor invited Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, then President of the European Court of Justice, to Washington to discuss the evolution of European Community law and his Court in comparison with US Supreme Court historical development and the influence of Chief Justice John Marshall. Chief Justice Warren Burger presided at this Wilson Center Symposium. Senator Charles Mathias and Ambassador Elliot Richardson responded to Lord Mackenzie-Stuart.

Mentor Group’s next Symposium took place at the National Archives in Washington, DC and studied the achievement of the Grundgesetz (Constitution) of the Federal Republic of Germany on its fortieth anniversary in 1989. This Symposium explored the interdependence of the German Constitutional Court with the political and economic strength of the Federal Republic itself. These studies probed how the Grundrechte (basic rights) of the Federal Republic provided a source for the economic vitality of Germany and for its political capacity adapting to inevitable constitutional change imposed by the collapse of the Berlin Wall several months later in November 1989.

In 1989, Mentor Group prepared a Symposium in honor of the Franco-American Judicial Exchange, which began at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the French Conseil d’État led this exchange. In the same year, Mentor Group founded the Forum for Members of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Court of Justice of the European Communities, which convened at The Royal Society of Edinburgh in August 1991. During 1990, Mentor Group received a MacArthur Foundation presidential grant for the Forum.

Mentor Group’s work had been motivated by lack of understanding in the United States about the European Union and by misapprehension in Europe about the origins of the United States political economy. Such experience forged the following Mentor Group activities.