Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (Paperback)

~ Mark Levin (Author)
Key Phrases: manual recounts, judicial nominees, Supreme Court, United States, Fourteenth Amendment (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Conservative talk radio host, lawyer, and frequent National Review contributor Mark R. Levin comes out firing against the United States Supreme Court in Men in Black, accusing the institution of corrupting the ideals of America's founding fathers. The court, in Levin's estimation, pursues an ideology-based activist agenda that oversteps its authority within the government. Levin examines several decisions in the court's history to illustrate his point, beginning with the landmark Marbury v. Madison case, wherein the court granted itself the power to declare acts of the other branches of government unconstitutional. He devotes later chapters to other key cases culminating in modern issues such as same-sex marriage and the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. Like effective attorneys do, Levin packs in copious research material and delivers his points with tremendous vigor, excoriating the justices for instances where he feels strict constit utional constructivism gave way to biased interpretation. But Levin's definition of "activism" seems inconsistent. In the case of McCain-Feingold, the court declined to rule on a bill already passed by congress and signed by the president, but Levin, who thinks the bill violates the First Amendment, still accuses them of activism even when they were actually passive. To his talk-radio listeners, Levin's hard-charging style and dire warnings of the court's direction will strike a resonant tone of alarm, though the hyperbole may be a bit off-putting to the uninitiated. As an attack on the vagaries of decisions rendered by the Supreme Court and on some current justices, Men in Black scores points and will likely lead sympathetic juries to conviction. --John Moe --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The Supreme Court is speeding the country on the road to tyranny, according to this jeremiad from Levin, a conservative constitutional lawyer and radio talk show host. Levin argues that the Constitution is under siege by "judicial activists" obsessed with remaking America to reflect their personal political and moral philosophies. Liberal judges who view the Constitution as a document whose meaning evolves over time are at odds with the founding fathers' "clear and profound vision for what they wanted our federal government to be." "Activist judges," he says, "make, rather than interpret, the law." The author champions originalism, the conservative legal philosophy hinging on a narrow interpretation of the Constitution's text, and he contends that moving the judiciary back into the originalist fold could thwart the power grab by "radicals in robes." Levin traces trends in judicial activism through some of the Supreme Court's most famous cases, from Marbury v. Madison (1803), which enshrined the high court's power to weigh the constitutionality of presidential and congressional acts, to Roe v. Wade (1973). He also blasts affirmative action decisions, contending that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause should be sufficient to combat racial discrimination. Levin is an ardent advocate, but at times his strident tone gets in the way of objective analyses of the system's flaws. Would the founders be as "appalled" by the present-day Supreme Court as Levin is? That's impossible to say, but many likeminded critics are certain to be galvanized by this spirited "clarion call," which is bookended by raves from conservative radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh and former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc. (September 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596980095
• ISBN-13: 978-1596980099
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (255 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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116 of 151 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Stakes are High, January 26, 2005

By	R. S. Corzine (Steubenville, OH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (Hardcover)

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]

282 of 372 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Democracy vs Oligarchy, February 7, 2005

By	J. Aubrey (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (Hardcover)

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.

48 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exellent Arguments, February 16, 2005

By	Critcal Reviewer "CR" (Newburgh, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (Hardcover)

Many historians talk about the huge increases in presidential power throughout history. Now however Mark Levin has done an excellent job of showing rather how the courts have, in effect, absolute power to push their social will on America. There is no checks and balances in place for activist judges. Their rulings are supreme. The book is also an excellent read to learn the history of the Supreme Court and various Supreme Court judges which presided over the court in the past. Whether you are liberal or conservative, you will find it hard to disagree with the points made in this book.

Highly recommended.