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|  | Author: Mark Levin
Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
List Price: $16.95
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Seller: Yankee_Clipper_Books_
Rating:  259 reviews
Sales Rank: 12428
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 1
ISBN: 1596980095
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9781596980099
ASIN: 1596980095
Publication Date: September 25, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Sail the Seas of Value.
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Showing reviews 256-259 of 259
 Democracy vs Oligarchy February 7, 2005
J. Aubrey (Seattle, WA)
283 out of 373 found this review helpful
This book is for those who actually want to understand the Constitution and the power grab by the very institution with the responsibility for interpreting it--the Supreme Court.
The Court has the power to declare federal and state laws unconstitutional. That means a committee of nine unelected, unaccountable (life tenured) LAWYERS have a a veto power over our elected officials. To the extent that power is abused, the effect is to substitute oligarchy for democracy. Hence the phrase "judicial tyranny."
Until about fifty years ago, the governing principle for interpreting the Constitution was the understanding of the ratifiers when it was adopted, determined from the language of the document and the history and circumstances at the time. This "originalist" approach to Constitutional interpretation generally held sway until the 1960s, when some of the justices started speaking in terms of the Constitution as a "living" and "evolving" document with "penumbras." In other words, this committee of nine give themselves the right to "modernize" the Constitution by striking down laws enacted by elected legislators if they offend their individual sense of the "evolving standards" of society." They just know better than our elected officials.
A good example is the recent decision striking down all state sodomy laws. The first time the court considered this was in 1987, when a majority applied a originalist interpretation in concluding that the ratifiers could not have intended to create a constitutional right to sodomy. That was obvious given that sodomy was universally outlawed when the Constitution and relevant amendments were ratified and for over 150 years later. As the court pointed out, societial norms may have changed since ratification, but the proper way for that to be addressed is by our elected representatives, not a court decision. The recent sodomy decision reached the opposite conclusion, with the enlightened public policy of our robed masters overruling our state legislatures.
This usurpation of democracy is also reflected in decisions relating to abortion, religion, immigration, elections, civil rights and many other areas.
Since the political left cannot convince a majority to adopt its European agenda, it resorts to the Court and that's why originalist judges are essential to preserve the separate roles of the legislative and judicial branches of our constitutional system.
 A Cogent Disscetion of Judicial Tyranny February 3, 2005
Edward Garea (Branchville, New Jersey United States)
618 out of 950 found this review helpful
The framers of the Constitution took care to see that our government would depend upon a delicate balance between the executive, legislative and judicial powers, each there to hold the others in check and preserve the republic. But what if one branch began to usurp the power of the other two branches, and in effect, become a self-legislating body? And what if this was the one branch not elected by the people, but rather appointed by the other two branches? This is exactly the dilemma we have today, according to Mark Levin. The Supreme Court was seen by the framers as a body that acts only on the constitutionality of a particular legislative action when brought before them. When the Supreme Court becomes an activist court, it makes, rather than interprets, the law. In doing so it usurps the authority of the executive and legislative branches, disenfranchising the will of the people, which is correctly exercised through the people's duly elected representatives.
Mark Levin, an expert in constitutional law, and a strict constitutionalist, takes a close look at the judicial activism of the Supreme Court and the mischief it has wrought upon the Constitution. Levin doesn't limit his examination to recent event, but starts from the beginning of American history, with Madison v. Marbury, in which Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the Court would now decide what is and is not constitutional. President Thomas Jefferson, a leading opponent of judicial activism, saw the consequences of such an action only too clearly: "But the opinion which gives to judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislative and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
Levin also examines the Dred Scott v. Sanford, a decision that upheld slavery based on a rather unique interpretation of the Fifth Amendment; Plessy v. Ferguson, which made segregation the law of the land until the Court reversed itself in the 1954 decision Brown vs. Board of Education; and the infamous Korematsu v. United States, wherein the Court found that the Fifth Amendment, which states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, did not apply as regarding the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Levin also examines Roe v. Wade, asking whether there exists a right to privacy in the Constitution, the 2000 election debacle, wherein the Court stuck its nose into the election process; and the Court's varied interpretation of free speech, allowing virtual child pornography as free speech while upholding the limits on free speech contained in the McCain-Feingold Act, devoting each chapter to the constitutional development of the issues that so move us today.
"Men in Black" is a pithy, well-reasoned argument against judicial activism, written without reliance on legal jargon or bombast. Those fans of his popular radio show who buy this expecting the sort of bombastic jargon he uses on the show will be disappointed, but every reader who comes to this book expecting a rational, well-researched argument against judicial activism will find their expectations amply filled.
The Great One Speaks the Truth! January 27, 2005
D. McGovern (New Jersey)
65 out of 90 found this review helpful
Finally what we've been waiting for, The Great One's first book. Not only is it filled with fascinating and insightful commentary on the history and current status of our judiciary, Levin also takes us case by unconstitutional case to prove his points. One of the best political books I've read. Get off the phone you libs!
The Stakes are High January 26, 2005
R. S. Corzine (Steubenville, OH United States)
118 out of 153 found this review helpful
There is arguably no issue of greater importance to the future of the American republic than how the coming war over nominations to the federal judiciary will turn out. President Bush has upped the ante considerably and admirably by making clear his intention to appoint to the bench only those who will take the Constitution seriously and who understand that interpretation is not the same thing as making public policy. He seeks those who will be guided by the framers' original intentions rather than the moral mood of the moment.
As if to infuriate his critics all the more, the president has indicated that Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia -- originalists, both -- are his kind of judges. The very thought of more Thomases and Scalias has left the liberal apologists for judicial activism sputtering with rage and plotting further filibusters in an attempt to undermine the president's constitutional power of appointment.
The stakes could not be higher. Will the federal courts generally, and the Supreme Court in particular, continue down the path of creating new rights out of whole cloth without any support in the Constitution itself -- giving the nation such things as the right to privacy, the right to abortion and the right to homosexual sodomy -- or will it be returned to the republican fold by carefully-chosen and vigorously-defended nominees who are properly committed to the idea of judicial restraint? Everyone who cares about this battle for American constitutionalism would be well advised to turn to Mark R. Levin's new book, "Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America." With a scholar's eye and an advocate's eloquence, Mr. Levin plunges to the heart of why this is a war that simply must be won. In place of constitutional government of limited and enumerated powers, he argues, we are careening toward nothing less than "a de facto judicial tyranny."
Not since Raoul Berger's seminal "Government by Judiciary" has a book exposed so clearly the political dangers of ideologically freewheeling and constitutionally untethered judges being allowed -- indeed, encouraged -- to transform the Constitution. While most of the public's attention focuses on abortion and gay rights, Mr. Levin shows how many other areas of our basic constitutional law have been corrupted by judges willing to supplant the intentions of the framers with their own moral predilections.
"Men in Black" surveys a broad political landscape that has come to be littered with the handiwork of justices who have forgotten their constitutional place. Here one can see how the Supreme Court has gone far beyond the right of privacy in sexual matters and has interfered with laws on everything from immigration to restricting virtual child pornography to the war on terror. One of the most helpful chapters is one that makes sense of the underlying issues in Bush v. Gore and why the Supreme Court did what it did -- and why it should never do it again.
Perhaps the most important contribution of this readers' guide to the judges' war is the story of how we got to this unhappy place. After all, the constitutional provisions for the federal judiciary are relatively meager. The Constitution does not really create the federal judiciary as an institution but only creates the judicial power, leaving most of the institutional details -- such as kinds and numbers of courts, number of justices on the Supreme Court, appellate jurisdiction and the regulation of the judicial process -- to the discretion of Congress. Nor is there even any explicit provision in the Constitution for the power of judicial review itself. As Mr. Levin makes clear, this is not exactly the kind of foundation one would expect for an institution that some now insist is meant to be the moral guardian of the republic.
In part, this has come about through an unholy alliance between left-wing interest groups and the Democratic members of the United States Senate. Not being satisfied with telling the story of how those senators accommodate themselves to their well-organized ideological constituents, Mr. Levin reproduces the series of memoranda that passed back and forth during Mr. Bush's first term, laying the groundwork for just how the Senate would exercise its power of advice and consent to block the president's nominees to the federal bench.
The most lasting contribution of this fine book is its commitment not to conservatism but to constitutionalism, to the belief, as Alexander Hamilton put it, that the Constitution is the embodiment of "the intention of the people" and that, in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall, the idea of a written constitution was "the greatest improvement on political institutions." This is a book that should be on the desk of every senator. [By Gary L. McDowell - The Washington Times]
Showing reviews 256-259 of 259
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