Rating: 
Summary: An Earth-Shattering Work of Common sense!!
Review: It's hard to imagine a neutral opinion about Robert Bork. Mostly, he is exalted or dismissed because of supposed political views he holds. Liberals dispise his 'anti-abortion' record and conservatives cheer his 'pro-religion' stance. For the record, he is a conservative libertarian (if there really is such a thing) but those who are looking for political argument will find none here.
In fact, he admirably restrains with a capital 'R' from political discussion in this book. Instead, he outlays his judicial philosophy of 'original intent'; quite simply, the judge as an extention of a law as seen by its original legislators. Unfortunately, this leads to some results that make modern day liberals cringe. Abortion, private discrimination and the like are nowhere in the constitution thus becoming state and personal issues under amendment X (how many people really pay attention to that amendment anyhow?). Despite these results, Bork insists on judicial neutrality aware that the legislature is the ONLY branch that should have their eye on results. The judiciary simply takes the WRITTEN law and upholds it.
The only thing I have a problem with is that sometimes Bork takes a strict textual approach and sometimes not, For example, his view of the 'equal protection' clause as a procedural, not a substantive issue relies strictly on the text of the fourteenth amendment. It would stand to reason that his first amendment view should also rely on text but 'Congress shall make no law..' apparently wasn't what the founders really meant after all.
For those not schooled in the current debate over various methods of constitutional interpretation, I would read Jack Rakove's "Interpreting the Constitution" and maybe Antonin Scalia's "Matter of interpretation" first as more views are given than in this book. Again, I stress, if you are looking for Bork's assertion of political views, THIS IS NOT THE BOOK!! Read his other one.
Rating:
Summary: important book by a decent man who was done wron
Review: It's Two! Two! Two books in one! The primary function of this book is as a brilliant defense of Judge Bork's philosophy of original understanding and an excoriating polemic against judicial intervention. Surveying the entire history of American jurisprudence, Bork takes on interventionists of the Left and of the Right and makes an irrefutable case for the proposition that judicial intervention is a threat to the very functioning of the Republic. As you read his arguments and watch him marshal the facts, it's easy to understand why his nomination to the Supreme Court became such a political crucible. We lost the opportunity to have a really first class mind shape the Court for a generation when he was defeated. That entire ugly confirmation fight makes up a kind of book within the book. It is excruciatingly painful to read this section, as genuine ... like Ted Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum and Joe Biden sit in judgment on Bork in the Judiciary Committee hearings. I can understand why the Left thought it was so important to keep him off of the bench, but the lengths they went to, including lies, character assassination and invasion of privacy, are really sickening and continue to reverberate through our politics today, to noone's benefit. This is an important book by a decent man who was done wrong. GRADE: A+
Rating:
Summary: Why judges have to apply, not invent the law
Review: Judge Bork writes a very logical and reasoned book about why judges cannot let there desired outcome effect their rulings. He argues that the judge must look to what the lawmakers intended when the law was passed, and if not unconstitutional, let it be. He also argues that the Constitution is law and should be treated in the same manner. This flies directly in the face of the idea of a "living document". This book is a must for anyone seeking to understand the debate about courts "legistlating from the bench."
Rating:
Summary: A Critical Contribution to Constitutional Legal Scholarship
Review: Perhaps one of the fruits resulting from the defeat of Judge R. H. Bork's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, The Tempting of America is a splendid piece in which Bork outlines and defends his statutory and constitutional interpretation philosophy of "original intent." The book reads slowly at some points, but at these junctures Bork defends his commonsense theory with the utmost clarity and complexity. I also particularly enjoyed Bork's personal account outlining his nomination to the Court - where Bork details the "campaign" designed to maliciously destroy his character and grossly misrepresent his scholarship - en route his defeat. Judge Bork is a shining example of the very finest and most admirable within American legal discourse, be it as a member of the U.S. Judicial branch of government, a professor of law, or lawyer. Although the defeat of Judge Bork's nomination hurt the American people and the Judiciary in more ways than one can possibly fathom, this fine piece of legal scholarship is but one of the ways Bork continues to influence many students of the law - even if he's not writing Supreme Court opinions.
Rating:
Summary: Oustanding work tracing the politicization of the Court.
Review: Robert Bork has written a masterpiece defending the "original understanding" of the American constitution as the ONLY valid approach to constitutional understanding. In his introduction, Bork describes how American institutions have struggled with the temptation of politics and egalitarian outcomes. He sets the tone with the following passage: "In law, the moment of temptation is the moment of choice, when a judge realizes that in the case before him his strongly held view of justice, his political and moral imperative, is not embodied in a statute or in any provision of the Constitution. He must then choose between his version of justice and abiding by the American form of government. Yet the desire to do justice, whose nature seems to him obvious, is compelling, while the concept of constitutional process is abstract, rather arid, and the abstinence it counsels unsatisfying. To give in to temptation, this one time, solves an urgent human problem, and a faint crack appears in the American foundation. A judge has begun to rule where a legislator should." Judge Bork traces many movements of the Supreme Court from its beginning, through the new deal and into the Warren, Burger and Rehnquist courts, focusing on the slow slide away from original understanding the framers intended. He then devotes several chapters to original understanding, objections to original understanding and various alternative constructions to original understanding. He completes the book with an examination of the political processes mobilized to keep him from being appointed to the Court by President Reagan. I'm no lawyer, and hardly a major student of the constitution. Still, I found this a compelling book which I pick up again and again. I must agree with the Chicago Tribune's review, "A conservative legal classic"!
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking, but rife with logical inconsistencies
Review: The book, by defeated US Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, is very smart and well-written, but plagued with logical inconsistencies. The "tempting" that he condemns is the temptation to use result-driven pseudo-legal reasoning to interpret the Constitution to say what liberal judges want it to say. To the extent that Bork's claim is that sometimes judges choose between a number equally plausible choices based on the policy result they may wish for, his claim is well-supported, and his argument against the practice is well-reasoned. But Bork reaches much too far. Often his compaint with the Supreme Court is that their way of interpreting the Constitution isn't exactly the same as his way. Thus, he thinks that the Court invented new law when it found a Constitutional right of privacy implicit in the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th, and 14th Amendments. But here, I'm doing Bork too much credit, for he fails to acknowledge the 9th and 10th Amendments, stating respectively that "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," which are central to the argument. What do these two Amendments mean, if not that US citizens have other substantive rights, in addition to those enumerated in the Bill of Rights? And if those rights don't include a right to privacy, so implicit in the other rights of the people, then what specific rights does Bork think we do have? Now, I'm not saying that this argument ends the debate over abortion, but Bork's view, that the Supreme Court is jsut making things up that have no textual basis in the Constitution, is just overreaching. And so that leaves us with Bork saying one thing about what the Constiution means, and the Supreme Court of the United States saying a different thing about what the Constitution means. But the Constiution itself says that the Supreme Court has the authority to interpret the Constitution, not Bork. So, it really seems to me that Bork, and not the Supreme Court, is the judicial activist, making up new law, when he says that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution. Bork's view is that when the Constitution is not perfectly clear about what it says and means, then the courts should defer to legislative majorities, which are the part of our government, unlike the courts, which is supposed to make policy decisions. So, it is ironic that Bork spends so much time at the end of the book expressing his disdain for the legislative process that defeated his nomination to the Supreme Court in the Senate. He complains bitterly of lawmakers' distortions of the facts, their unyielding loyalties to special interest constituencies, their backroom agreements to vote together in regional blocks, and--most ironically of all--of their lack of familiarity with and understanding of Constitutional law, sufficient to understand the issues involved in his nomination. It seems as though Bork's only occasional desire to defer to legislative majorities is, itself, result-driven. This brings me to the fundamental dishonesty of the book. Bork insists that the Supreme Court's expansive reading of the Constitution is result-driven, and insists that his doctrine of original intent is result-neutral. I don't believe this to be true. The Constitution, it is often said, is "a floor and not a ceiling on individual rights". Thus, the more narrowly the Constitution is interpreted, the less freedom and rights for individuals, and the more power for states and for the other branches of the federal government to criminalize otherwise-protected conduct. And that's the conservative agenda-- to limit the right to privacy, to limit the right to free expression, to limit the right to speak out against the government, to expand the powers of the police, and to dictate victorian sexual practices. Thus, I submit that the original intent doctrine is every bit as result-driven as any liberal reading of the Constitution-- the desired result being to curtail individual freedom. There are many other errors in the book, some more obvious than others (particularly ill-composed is his attack on First Amendment protection for flag burning: he says that the law restricted only the manner, and not the content of the expression, even though burning flags with different patterns than the US flag would have been permitted by the statute, and even though burning any representation of the flag, no matter it's size or material would have been outlawed; yet he goes into a vigorous defense of why the image of the flag is so sacred in our culture and deserves special consideration, based on the content of the message it conveys). But Bork makes many good points as well, and, as I say, his early arguments against result-driven decision making are very thought provoking. I am an attorney, and found the book easy to follow, but I worry that it may have been a little too dense (and far too persuasive) for some non-attorneys.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Defense of Original Understanding
Review: This book has forever changed how I look at the judicial branch of government, namely by showing that the greatest threat to the rule of law in the United States occurs when the judiciary takes on legislative functions. As Robert Bork explains in this book, there are key differences between legislators and judges which make it vital that judges do not usurp legislative authority. When the judiciary creates the law instead of merely applying it, democratic representative government is replaced by judicial oligarchy. Because Supreme Court judges are unelected, appointed for life, and exercise a governmental power which is virtually unchecked, their decisions can threaten the rule of law when the justices choose to depart from the law in favor of their own moral philosophies. Robert Bork presents a litmus test for all judges to use when extrapolating legal principles from legislation and the Constitution: these principles must be neutrally derived, neutrally defined, and neutrally applied. This doesn't mean that the Constitution itself or other legislation is neutral, but it does mean that when judges hear a case, they must defer their personal moral philosophies to the rule of law. The law must provide the standard of neutrality which the judge is to apply, not the judge's own subjective views. This book is a masterpiece of judicial analysis. Robert Bork not only builds an excellent case for his thesis, but addresses the major arguments against his thesis in a way that bolsters his argument's credibility. This book examines the phenomenon of judicial activism superbly, not only offering criticism, but presenting a logical solution.
Rating:
Summary: America's Real Supreme Court Justice
Review: This book is a treasure, to be read again and again. If our republic is to stay strong, this book will be credited with helping its rebirth.
If you want to know what a real, solid American supreme court judge should think, study Bork. You may lose friends, make new enemies, but you will be doing the right thing for your country.
Left-wing liberals assasinated Robert Bork's character and moderate Republicans let this great judge hang out to dry. But the truth always eventually comes to light, as this classic demonstrates.
For those who did not see the hearings of Bork before the Senate Judiciary committee, what you need to know is that the committee conducted a kangaroo court reminiscent of a bunch of hack communist apparatchiks in some backwater Soviet satellite regime.
Immediately upon President Reagan's appointing Bork, Senator Edward Kennedy forever disgraced himself by running in front of microphones and cameras to bleet about "Robert Bork's America . . ." Kennedy's remarks will go down as another demonstration of the total bankruptcy of moderan American liberalism.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading!
Review: This book is one of the 10 best books on governmental issues you can buy anywhere. I think it is the FIRST one to read about the American judicial system. It reveals exactly what's gone wrong and provides the fundamental information you need to join the struggle over whether America will be ruled by laws or tyrants. Fascinating from cover to cover, it reads much better than do these reviews. Among other things, it can equip you to ask questions of judicial candidates in your state that will reveal whether or not anyone should vote for them! I've bought extra copies as gifts.
Rating: 
Summary: Recommended, especially if you disagree with his methods.
Review: This book makes interesting reading. I have to confess up front that I don't agree with much of what Bork stands for in terms of his constitutional methodology. But, having said that it does make for fascinating reading and should be on the "must-read" list for anyone interested in the practice of law. The book gives great insight to the debate between those who take very different views of constitutional interpretation: the originalists v. those who view the Constitution as "alive." Highly recommended reading, especially if you disagree with his interpretive methods!!!
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