How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America - Men in Black

"There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe". This quote by Orwell came to mind when, having finished Men in Black, I read here some of its reviews. One of the most voted reviews claims that the problem with the book is polemic "masquerading" as legal scholarship. I guess then thirty six pages of footnotes plus quotes from old decisions, new decisions and letters by the founding fathers, are all part of the masquerading. Give me a break. Men in Black is excellent and doesn't masquerade anything. Quite the contrary--it sheds a lot of light in a direct and powerful manner, on an extremely important subject.

The book is not about Levin simply showing that the federal government "has done some things" that he, Levin, does not agree with. If Levin had a problem with a government policy, he would simply discuss it. Levin may be against recreational drugs, but it does not mean that he necessarily would agree with a Supreme Court decision that supports a federal prohibition and that strips from the states the right to decide on the issue. In fact, Men in Black has for example an entire chapter on _Bush v. Gore_--a decision that Levin condemns ("the U.S. Supreme Court's unprecedented intervention to restrain [the Florida Supreme Court] will reverberate ominously for years to come") despite the fact that it helped elect the candidate he probably preferred. So if you are reasonable you will see, after several examples in the book, that one big problem today is not the types of policy pronouncements the Supreme Court makes, but rather that it makes policy pronouncements. Many of the policy pronouncements it makes are none of its business; they should come from federal/state legislatures or sometimes from the executive. And worst yet, in order to make its own pronouncements, the Court often does not follow jurisprudence. After you read Men in Black, check for example the first few pages of John Roberts' dissent in _Massachusetts v. EPA_. This issue will be evident.

Obviously the Supreme Court should not always defer to the legislatures or the executive if that would violate the plain language of the constitution. But unfortunately such deference is precisely what you find in many important decisions, like _Plessy v. Fergunson_ or _Korematsu v. U.S._. The disingenuous argue that in such cases the Court did what Mark Levin advocates because the Court was "not active". But that is rubbish. Deference that violates the constitution is judicial activism because the judiciary is acting independent of what the constitution says.

Not surprisingly, sometimes a decision by the Court yields an outcome in line with the constitution, but the reasoning behind the decision has little or nothing to do with the constitution.

So you can think of judicial activism as the judiciary doing its own thing: It acts when it should not or it does not act when it should. I believe the book does a superb job in making this clear and in making the case that, if we tolerate this, what is the point of having a written constitution?

Levin offers a host of historical perspectives that lead one to the conclusion that the American people have been getting screwed for decades. If reading this book doesn't further excite the debate regarding the direct application of Article 5, nothing will.

When the Constitution was adopted over 200 years ago it instantly became a ground breaking guide for how free people would govern themselves and pass on a heritage of freedom to future generations. Yet over time it has been interpreted by the courts in ways that would dumbfound the framers. For people like me who are not constitutional scholars it was difficult to understand how this elegantly simple yet profound document became so mangled in its application. Until now.

Mark Levin is a scholar, lawyer and commentator who has devoted his life to the core principles of our founding fathers. Having seen and fought against the departure from the fundamental rule of law they envisioned he has taken it upon himself to explain how we have departed from the path they laid out for us and offers suggestions on how we can right things. He draws from examples of current interpretations of ideas we take for granted today such as the right to privacy, property rights, the role of law and the courts in modern society and compares them to the original ideals set out in the 18th century. He explains how they have slowly become misinterpreted to fit fallacious ideals of contemporary society drawing upon flawed logic, political agendas and even foreign laws that are inimical to what the framers intended. Time and again he highlights the dangers that judicial activism continue to pose for our liberty as truly free men and women. It is frankly frightening to those of us who value our freedom and fear what so-called "rights" our unaccountable jurists might yet have in store for us. It is instructive to see how one error in judicial interpretation centuries ago leads to the next and the next and how taken together our liberty is dieing a death of a thousand cuts at the hands of the courts. More troubling is that as this process continues we are at their mercy and only the most challenging and fundamental groundswell of outrage by citizens who wish to recapture the rights intended by the framers can counter this cancer of tyranny that is slowly destroying us from within. My only regret is that I waited too long to read it.

Mr. Levin's book should be required reading for all Americans who love and value liberty. More importantly it should be part of every school curriculum in educating our youth.

Do yourself a favor: read this book, pass it along to your family and friends so that they might be educated about the real dangers to liberty that face us. Armed with this knowledge I pray we can reverse the erosion of liberty before it is too late.

Probably the most disturbing book I've ever read. Could only read a few pages at a time, as my blood would boil. There's nothing in the Constitution requiring SOCTUS Judges be lawyers, maybe someone with an IQ above a turnip and common sense would work. Their ability to ignore The Constitution and create law, in violation of said document, is grounds for impeachment and removal from office. Sickening.

Mark Levin, "the great one", is a gifted author, brilliant constitutional counselor, incredible talk show host and a dog lover. What's not to admire. This book gives great insight into our SCOTUS. Written to read and written to absorb. Get it. Read it. Learn what's going on. Thank you Mark.

After reading this book I decided to dig further about the supreme court before Justice Marshall made his decision in Marbury V. Madison in 1803. I then found this video that explains the original thought process behind supreme court decisions and compares them to decisions that happen nowadays especially when the progressives took our culture to a new level. I believe that this adds to the book. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/166627-1

Another great book by "The Great One" Mark Levin. Read this book and learn how a single group of unelected people are single handily changing America according to their whims regardless of what the Constitution allows them to do. More people need to read this book and learn why we need to take our country back.

this is the best book on judicial activism.. i had always wondered how such a wonderful judicial system, and the u.s.a. got so screwed up. now i know when where how, and who screwed it up. i also have liberty, and tyrany, and ameritopia.. all three are excellent books. extremley well written, and factual

More of America needs to listen/ read to the great one. The warning signs were all posted by Mark early. If only the State run media had not been in the Tank for Barry America would not be on a down ward spiral. The Court has grown to abuse their power granted by our founding fathers.

More of America needs to listen/ read to the great one. The warning signs were all posted by Mark early. If only the State run media had not been in the Tank for Barry America would not be on a down ward spiral. The Court has grown to abuse their power granted by our founding fathers.

The antics of the Supreme Court (Supreme God ?) were quite eye opening, and who better to tell the story.....

Our population needs to start marching in front of the court building and making our opinions known.

This book points out the problems when people are appointed for life and then have NO ACCOUNTABILITY.

The detail about the cases cited and researched is amazing....the facts are scary, but important for everyone in America to understand that the Court can and does regularly take away in some way every liberty we think we posess.

A must reading......I highly recommend it.

I enjoyed the background information on the Justices. Makes you realize how mortal the judges are and how jaded some are. Some treat the Constitution as old and irrelevant. I am in awe of our Founders and I wish some of "activists" on the bench would agree with me. Mr. Levin does a very credible job.

Mark Levin is an astoundingly intelligent patriot only outshined by some of our Founding Fathers such as James Madison or Thomas Jefferson. He masterfully explains the founding principles and shows how much the Supreme Court hs devolved into a legislative arm of government that it was never intended to be. He points out the foresight of such men as Yates, who feared this during the Constitutional Convention. Mark Levin, as with all his writings, has clearly been exhaustive in his research and we owe him a great debt of gratitude for doing the difficult reading and explaining things in such a way that even the most ignorant Liberal could understand how far we have strayed from the original intent of our Founders. An excellent book and a must read for every American.

The U.S. Supreme Court has morphed from an institution designed to maintain the intent of the constitution's framers, into an institution bent on enforcing the statist, progressive ideology on Americans. This book by Mark Levin, written several years ago, is more relevant than ever now, as a result of the recent horrendous decision in the Obamacare case. Men In Black disects the Court, and its decisions, demonstrating to the reader just how much it has strayed from its original purpose.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has done permanent damage to the Constitution in his opinion on the Obamacare case. So why are RINO's and others defending Roberts? These misguided people are engaging in a fantasy that Roberts had some sort of secret motive in making this horrendous decision, that he had a plan, a secret plan to help conservatives, and that there is therefore an upside to this mistake. This is absurd.

Various versions of this "plan" of Roberts' have him upholding Obamacare to rally the opposition, or get even with Obama by creating a tax debacle issue for future political use. Well, the tax issue was already there before Roberts' betrayal, and is not going away. This fantasizing by RINO's and other deluded Roberts' supporters is at best naive, and at worst, intellectually dishonest.

Defending Roberts' betrayal and the damage that he and his four left wing accomplices on the Court have done to the Constitution in his ruling in "National Federation of Independent Businessmen, et. al. vs. Sebelius", the infamous Obamacare decision, is exacerbating the damage that Roberts has already done to the Constitution, because it reveals a deep misunderstanding of Constitutional law, and the limited powers of the federal government on the part of the Roberts defenders. Roberts could have just as easily thrown the entire "Affordable health Care Act" out by saying it WASN'T a tax, and is simply an unconstitutional mandate, which is the plain and simple truth.
The transmutation by Roberts and his four left-wing accomplices on the Court of what is in fact an unconstitutional mandate, into a supposedly constitutional tax is astounding and shocking.

Instead of deciding the case based on the actual Constitution and the truth, Roberts has endorsed the modern liberal concept of a "living Constitution" and has opened the door to the passing of more such federal mandates by sending this message to congress and the president that they can do an end-run around the constitutional prohibition of mandates by simply lying and calling them taxes. By the way, the Obama Administration insisted that this was not a tax while they were forcing it through congress, then turned around and argued that it was a tax before the Supreme Court. Did Roberts really fall for this scam, or is there some other more sinister reason for this Chief Justice to turn his back on the Constitution?
The Supreme Court is supposed to interpret the Constitution, and Roberts has failed miserably here. He has joined the leftist activist justices in further eroding our liberty, and has helped to further the destruction of the Founding Fathers' concept of limited government, which is written into the Constitution, and which was duly ignored by Roberts and the majority.

Constitutional Scholar Mark Levin's excellent book on the topic on the excesses of the Supreme Court is a guide to all constitutional conservatives as to what the problem in the Court and in society is, and how we must address it to resore our liberty. The Obamacare decision demonstrates Levin's accuracy in the book regarding the continuing left movement of the Court, to the detriment of liberty.

The problem with this horrendous opinion by Roberts isn't the fact that it upheld Obamacare; I am confident that it will be repealed. The problem with this decision is that it fails to interpret the Constitution in its original meaning as a document designed to LIMIT government. By this failure, Roberts has permanently damaged the Constitution with his nonsense that Obamacare is a tax and not a mandate. The constitutional damage inflicted by Chief Justice Roberts unfortunately will long survive the Obamacare law, and will be much more difficult to remedy. Shame on John Roberts, and bravo Mark Levin!

A well researched book about courts and judges. You will be hard pressed to find the vast amount of information in one book anywhere else. Buy 2. One for you and one for someone else with an interest it truth.

great book. well written and thought out. lots of information and not personal opinion. author did a great job pointing out the many facets of the issues we face in America when dealing with an obviously biased and failure of a justice system ..

Everyone should read this book no matter where you stand politicially.
Our CONSTITUTION must be upheld for our GREAT NATION TO REMAIN FREE. Our Founding Fathers put together the Constitution to protect US from Government. This book shows that the SUPREME COURT JUSTICES choosen should ALL FOLLOW the Constitution and NOT TRY TO READ SOMETHING in it that is not there. 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.
Americans need to read this book ......READ YOUR CONSTITUTION with an honest, clear vision of our FREEDOMS.

Read this book and learned things I should always have known. This understanding of our system of government should be a dedicated course in high schools across America. Made me angry with myself for not knowing the information Mark gives in this book. Have lent or given copies of this book to friends to wake them up. There should be a warning on this book "This Book will make you angry with yourself, read and enter a new understanding of America and the dangers facing you and your family".

This book covers the history that they never taught you in school. He has researched this thoroughly and documents his quotes with several pages of citations. The recommendations at the end create a framework to make this unelected, unaccountable, out if touch branch of government as accountable to the people as the other branches.

This is the most surprising content for a better understanding of how our Highest Court operates, and why our's is the best legal system on the planet. Martk Levin is his usual funny self, and he explains this historically correct, yet politically incorrect volume in the most interesting and interest-holding way it could possibly be presented. highly recommened reading! Get your's today! XLNT Tranzaxion! Would buy again! Rating AAAAA+++++

Ultra liberals will not like this book as it focuses on those actions which have been promoted by liberals but are actually detrimental to our country. You either believe in the constitution or you don't. No middle ground here. Book is admittedly pro-constitution as written ..