Old words, new urgency.

In 1986, Rae Condon, about to step down as executive director of what is now the state Ethics Commission, had a message for those who cared about Rhode Island’s conflict of interest law: Guard it with your life.

She said her successor and members of the commission would have a constant fight on their hands, to preserve the law and make it work.

“It’s really a fight against the Establishment,” Condon told me back then. “It’s necessary to keep people consciously aware of a high standard, and that’s always a battle, because once you try to implement it, everybody wants to defend their own camp or circumvent the law. They want to defend their own actions, whether or not the actions are ethical, and whether or not they’re consonant with the conflict of interest law.”

Later in 1986, voters approved a state constitutional amendment that ushered in a strengthened ethics code. But it’s now jeopardized by a Superior Court suit brought by former Senate President William Irons. In a case relating to CVS, the ethics panel has accused Irons of having a conflict and using his office for financial gain. He wants Judge Francis Darigan to bar the commission from prosecuting him.

I thought of Condon and the alarm she sounded as I visited Darigan’s courtroom last week.

The charges against Irons involve votes he cast while receiving insurance fees from CVS. His lawyer, John Tarantino, argues that punishing Irons for such actions would violate an old constitutional provision meant to protect the ability of lawmakers to do their work without interference.

In an interview, I asked Tarantino why Irons doesn’t just admit to the charges or reach a settlement with the commission instead of dragging things out and trying to get off on a technicality.

“I simply would never refer to the Constitution as a technicality, ever,” Tarantino said. “I think that’s not only disrespectful, but it’s one of the most dangerous things that anyone could say. The Constitution means something.”

I agree that the Constitution means something. I believe it means what Ethics Commission lawyers Jason Gramitt and Katherine D’Arezzo argued: that voters knew exactly what they were doing in 1986 by calling for a tougher ethics code, to apply broadly to legislators as well as to other officials, and that embracing Tarantino’s view would hamstring the panel’s ability to hold lawmakers accountable.

When Grammit says cases against former Sen. John Celona and House Majority Leader Gordon Fox couldn’t have been pressed if Tarantino’s view prevailed, it gives me the shivers.

I can’t believe that Darigan, a bright guy who was a clean-cut politician, is going to fall for this.

A big fan of the Kennedys, he should ponder a speech John F. Kennedy delivered to the Massachusetts legislature days before assuming the presidency.

“I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier.

“ ‘We must always consider,’ he said, ‘that we shall be as a city upon a hill — the eyes of all people are upon us.’

“Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us — and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.”

The eyes of Rhode Islanders are upon Darigan to guard the ethics code and allow it to work.

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com