Rating: 
Summary: A Sobering Look At Our Nation's Judiciary
Review: Although America's constitutional courts' usurpation of political power does not yet match that in Israel or even Canada, Bork's expose of judicial misconduct is a sobering look at how representative democracy and the will of the people are all-too-frequently overruled in the name of "the rule of law" - lately become a euphemism for "the rule of judges".Are they enacting their own agenda? Or are they influenced by powerful forces the authors of the Constitution intended them to be free of? If you've ever wondered how on earth courts can reach (let alone justify) such decisions as legalizing abortion, outlawing the death penalty, or overturning laws prohibiting homosexual behavior, Bork explains it. The answer is unsettling.
Rating: 
Summary: Misinformation abounds...
Review: Bork is a precise legal surgeon. He slices the body politic open to expose the spreading cancer of judicial activism. Exemplified by increasing international law and judicial review gone awry, the results are drifting further away from our US Constitutional moorings. If the constitution has no primal meaning or intent, on what firm basis do we have any confidence in any legal ruling? If we cannot argue over "intent of meaning" than we are left to whatever controlling body is on the bench. The culprits provide no explanation, other than victory. In fact, Bork quotes the recent ABA president: "An attack on activist judges is an attack on our Constitution." Go figure! In convincing and lucid writing, Bork concludes: "When it becomes apparent, as it has over and over again, that the courts are not expressing the meaning of those documents (constitutions and approved treaties) but merely using the documents as launching pads for the reforms they prefer, the claim of constitutionality is revealed as fraudulent." What does the liberal left respond with? Name calling! See Ann Coulter's erudite research into this "Slander:Liberal Lies About The American Right." Providing legal case history to support his contentions as he proceeds through international law, US Supreme Court, and Canada and Israel, Bork serves up more than adequate fear which "should" spread fear and terror in all American citizenry. If only that would happen. That likely as Bork surmises would be the only way now to reverse what the Court intelligentsia has done damage to our system. Vote out all the New Class from politics, academia, and slowly bring back Constitutional judges so that the reversal of such judicial creativity to soothe their cultural dreams. This is Bork's best work to date. He has provided us with clear treatment of landmark judicial activism. No more poignant than this dissent opinion by Justice Blackmun: "not because they contribute, in some direct and material way, to the general public welfare, but because they form so central a part of an individual's life. The concept of privacy embodies the 'moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole." Bork replies: "No greater endoresement of radical individual autonomy or of sentiment more disintegrative of society has every before been articulated in a constitutional opinion." Toss out the rule of law! Toss in the rule of judges. Lord have mercy on the 'ole USA. Interested parties will want to check out John Warwick Montgomery's "Law Above the Law."
Rating:
Summary: Condemning Exposure of Court That Spins Constitution
Review: Bork is a precise legal surgeon. He slices the body politic open to expose the spreading cancer of judicial activism. Exemplified by increasing international law and judicial review gone awry, the results are drifting further away from our US Constitutional moorings. If the constitution has no primal meaning or intent, on what firm basis do we have any confidence in any legal ruling? If we cannot argue over "intent of meaning" than we are left to whatever controlling body is on the bench. The culprits provide no explanation, other than victory. In fact, Bork quotes the recent ABA president: "An attack on activist judges is an attack on our Constitution." Go figure! In convincing and lucid writing, Bork concludes: "When it becomes apparent, as it has over and over again, that the courts are not expressing the meaning of those documents (constitutions and approved treaties) but merely using the documents as launching pads for the reforms they prefer, the claim of constitutionality is revealed as fraudulent." What does the liberal left respond with? Name calling! See Ann Coulter's erudite research into this "Slander:Liberal Lies About The American Right." Providing legal case history to support his contentions as he proceeds through international law, US Supreme Court, and Canada and Israel, Bork serves up more than adequate fear which "should" spread fear and terror in all American citizenry. If only that would happen. That likely as Bork surmises would be the only way now to reverse what the Court intelligentsia has done damage to our system. Vote out all the New Class from politics, academia, and slowly bring back Constitutional judges so that the reversal of such judicial creativity to soothe their cultural dreams. This is Bork's best work to date. He has provided us with clear treatment of landmark judicial activism. No more poignant than this dissent opinion by Justice Blackmun: "not because they contribute, in some direct and material way, to the general public welfare, but because they form so central a part of an individual's life. The concept of privacy embodies the 'moral fact that a person belongs to himself and not others nor to society as a whole." Bork replies: "No greater endoresement of radical individual autonomy or of sentiment more disintegrative of society has every before been articulated in a constitutional opinion." Toss out the rule of law! Toss in the rule of judges. Lord have mercy on the 'ole USA. Interested parties will want to check out John Warwick Montgomery's "Law Above the Law."
Rating: 
Summary: A good read
Review: Bork's conservative politics are readily apparent in his writing, but his legal arguments are logical and apolitical. Hopefully this book will remind conservatives and liberals alike of the importance of proper legislative process. Bork argues that constitutional and international laws have become political tools with which judges impose "new class" political outcomes. Judges in different countries, interpreting different constitutions (or no constitution at all) signed and ratified at different times, representing different political and legal cultures, come to the same conclusion: the law requires judges to implement liberal political outcomes. Bork's case is pretty airtight. The best chapter is on international law as it pertains to military affairs. His argument is devastating, and changed the way I look at the UN and other internationl bodies.
Rating:
Summary: A wake-up call to the very real danger of losing liberty
Review: Former U.S. solicitor general Robert H. Bork criticizes the expanding power of judicial activism in the United States, Canada, and Israel in Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule Of Judges. From the inception and history of judicial review down to its modern-day abuse as a tool for judges to narrow the freedoms protected by constitutional governments, Coercing Virtue is a stringent wake-up call to the very real danger of losing liberty should the branches of government fall too far out of balance -- especially in this modern era of global terrorism and international organized crime cartels.
Rating:
Summary: Bork is too pessimistic
Review: I believe it was Nietzsche who said that the moment of total victory marks the beginning of the end. Bork didn't delve deeply enough into the OPERATIONAL foundations of the Constitution; therefore his pessimism -- that we are powerless before the balck-robed usurpers -- is flawed. The antidote is for us to get clear about how the Constitutional machinery operates (bear with me, little children, Uncle Tyrant-Killer will walk you through it): (1) All cases of Constitutional interpretation divide into Judicial-type and Political-type; (2) which type a given case falls into is NOT decided by any theory of judges [see Madison's Notes on the Convention of 1787] but by operation of mutual checks and balances; that is, (3) EITHER the Supreme Court (on appeal) OR the Court of Impeachment (the Senate) have jurisdiction over [right to judge] every person accused of wrongdoing; the jurisdictions are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, meaning (5) unless the Senate strip it away, every holder of a Constitution-created office (Presidents & Congressmen) ALWAYS enjoys "Sovereign Immunity" from judges, so that they may be judged guilty by the Supreme Court ["SCourt"] for NONE of their official acts, although the SCourt MAY nullify some [see below]; therefore (6) the SCourt's ruling is a nullity in Marbury v. Madison, where John Marshall, claiming power to arbitrate the other two Branches' powers, pretended to operational supremacism over his co-equal and co-ordinate ("equal-ranking") fellow Branches. (7) Judicial activists rant that without Marbury the SCourt cannot defend liberty against the other Branches, which ignores that (a) the SCourt may itself jeopardize liberty; (b) the Framers DESIGNED the SCourt to be (in their own words) the "weakest" Branch, NOT the strongest as supremacism necessitates; and (c) Common Law already gives judges, States and people collectively sufficient means of defending liberty against the Executive and Legislative. To prove (c) let's get clear how the Framers designed the Constitution to OPERATE to vindicate the liberty of persons lacking Federal Sovereign Immunity (i.e. States and people): (8) LIBERTY EQUALS INNOCENCE -- persons found guilty may legitimately have their life, liberty and/or property taken away; therefore, liberty depends on SOMEONE in authority finding you innocent. (9) The Framers granted (or left intact) to each Branch UNILATERAL powers to find innocence, to wit: (a) the Presidential PARDON nullifies both SCourt rulings and Acts of Congress [see Jefferson's blanket pardon of persons convicted under the Alien & Sedition Acts ruled Constitutional by John Marshall's SCourt]; (b) common-law judges' invocation of HABEAS CORPUS may nullify both Legislative enactments and Executive prosecutions; and (c) Congress may immunize persons retroactively against both Executive prosecution and Judicial conviction with a BILL OF INDEMNITY -- a prerogative of Parliament left intact by Madison's affirmation that the Constitution incorporates Common Law. It follows that (10) the Framers made guilt OPERATIONALLY more difficult to find than innocence, meaning illiberty more difficult to arrange than liberty: -- Federal defendants can't be guilty unless ALL THREE Branches agree; the same defendants are innocent if ANY ONE Branch disagrees. Necessarily implied is that (11) the SCourt has NO POWER TO OVERRIDE PRESIDENTIAL OR CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS OF INNOCENCE -- including the innocence of States -- Marbury notwithstanding. How then to scotch judicial activism and supremacism? Simple: (12) single-handedly the President can (a) PARDON THE STATES whose laws were made guilty ("struck down") by the SCourt, restoring into force (i) Texas's sodomy law or (ii) Washington State's term-limit law, but not necessarily (iii) Alabama's segregation laws IF HE AGREES on Alabama's guilt [he'll lose re-election if he doesn't]; (b) announce he will SIMPLY IGNORE all past, present and future SCourt rulings arbitrating his or Congress's powers, proceeding to enforce (i) the Legislative Veto Act and (ii) the Line-Item Veto Act, for examples, both of which are settlements between Congress and President like the War Powers Act, and none of the SCourt's business. NEVERTHELESS, (13) the SCourt may nullify as many Executive and Legislative acts as it pleases, so long as its nullifications consist of FINDING THE FEDERAL DEFENDANT INNOCENT, otherwise the SCourt has NO power to nullify anything. (Think, you stupid wrong-wingers, THINK: a Line-Item Veto and a Legislative Veto find nobody guilty, they check and balance the legislative process, either neutrally -- a Line-Item Veto nullifies spending, -- or else IN FAVOR OF INNOCENCE -- a Legislative Veto finds States and people innocent whom unelected Federal bureaucrats would have found guilty.) So what happens if a Branch plays "hard ball"? -- the SCourt orders the President's arrest? or the President defies a writ of habeas corpus and keeps a man jailed? The Framers did not make the contest equal if carried to an extreme: the President can send in the Marines and shoot the SCourt. He ought to shoot the Federal Marshalls: it's unconstitutional for the SCourt to wield ANY Executive power, because (14) enforcement of SCourt rulings was DESIGNED to hinge operationally on the President's agreement. The Framers provided that President and Congress may suspend habeas corpus, too. The SCourt's weakness, which the Framers designed, entails by design that (15) the States and people must have a hand in saying what the Constitution means, by electing and un-electing Presidents and Congressmen, or by taking up arms against usurpations. It follows (16) the Constitution's meaning was designed to be THE issue in every Federal election. Some people say the Constitution should be kept away from that Great Evil, "politics". The same brain-dead flatliners, too stupid to perceive their own contradiction, worship "democracy" as the Great Good! They should be forced to break rocks in the Gulag until they disprove this: (a) "Man is the political animal" [Aristotle]; therefore, (b) if politics is bad, then man is bad. Judicial supremacist usurpation has become so brazen that today THE ONLY social force supporting it is a monopolistic, viciously partisan media, and their mind-slaves those Democrats who are also Fascist wrong-wingers. Their demise is only a matter of time.
Rating:
Summary: One of the things I thank God for in my prayers.
Review: I pray to God. One thing I always thank Him for is denying Bork the position on the Supreme Court that he was nominated for, which would have been a disaster for America. Whenever you see him being interviewed on TV, he displays a lack of character and bitterness. He is contemptuous of the decent values of decent hard working Americans. He supports the acquittal of white-collar criminals. He is opposed to solutions that help working Americans, the ones who make our country great.
Rating:
Summary: A sobering analysis of judicial activism
Review: Judge Bork knows first-hand just how politicized the judicial branch of government has become. He is, after all, the source of the new word "bork" - meaning "to deny Senate confirmation of a nominee, especially for a U.S. Supreme Court or federal judgeship, by use of sustained public disparagement". More cogently, Judge Bork understands why the judicial branch is now so politicized and what this means for Western Civilization. This book is Judge Bork's thoughts and specific examples of how and why judges have usurped the role of the legislative branch in the US, Canada, and Israel. Any reader of this book will understand Bork's views better if they know his history - and not just the fact that Bork was not confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bork was a law professor at Yale in the 1960's. He probably was the only conservative law professor and there is a famous photograph of a confused Judge Bork standing by a pile of burning books torched by campus radicals. Understanding Bork's 40 year losing battle will help the reader understand the underlying pessimism and futility of this book. Bork takes issue with court cases starting with the famous Marbury v. Madison case of the 18th Century which "established the principle of judicial review" (as I recall from school). He examines many recent cases where unelected and unanswerable judges have over-stepped their bounds. This book also details the courts of Canada and Israel where the courts are even more dictatorial than ours. I note that yesterday the Supreme Court of Massachusetts forced legalized marriage of couples whose only claim to marriage is having a perversion in common - even though just last year the Massachusetts legislature rejected such ideas. Clearly this book is timely and important. Judge Bork marshalls support for his thesis well. The greatest strength of the book is his analysis of legal reasoning and the consequences of each case. The major negative of the book is that Bork finds no solution and clearly he didn't design this book to offer solutions; he mostly just wants to point out the problem. Bork notes that the Constitution allows Congress to limit jurisdiction but this won't fix the problem because the state courts are just as bad (note the Massachussetts case above). He discusses and discards Constitutional amendment, choosing good judges (Bork knows first-hand the futility of this approach), and persuading the sitting judges to behave better through threats like impeachment. In the final analysis, "the representative branches of government have no effective way of resisting the Court." Which means, God help us because we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. Read the book. Love it or hate it, you have to respect it.
Rating:
Summary: A sobering analysis of judicial activism
Review: Judge Bork knows first-hand just how politicized the judicial branch of government has become. He is, after all, the source of the new word "bork" - meaning "to deny Senate confirmation of a nominee, especially for a U.S. Supreme Court or federal judgeship, by use of sustained public disparagement". More cogently, Judge Bork understands why the judicial branch is now so politicized and what this means for Western Civilization. This book is Judge Bork's thoughts and specific examples of how and why judges have usurped the role of the legislative branch in the US, Canada, and Israel. Any reader of this book will understand Bork's views better if they know his history - and not just the fact that Bork was not confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bork was a law professor at Yale in the 1960's. He probably was the only conservative law professor and there is a famous photograph of a confused Judge Bork standing by a pile of burning books torched by campus radicals. Understanding Bork's 40 year losing battle will help the reader understand the underlying pessimism and futility of this book. Bork takes issue with court cases starting with the famous Marbury v. Madison case of the 18th Century which "established the principle of judicial review" (as I recall from school). He examines many recent cases where unelected and unanswerable judges have over-stepped their bounds. This book also details the courts of Canada and Israel where the courts are even more dictatorial than ours. I note that yesterday the Supreme Court of Massachusetts forced legalized marriage of couples whose only claim to marriage is having a perversion in common - even though just last year the Massachusetts legislature rejected such ideas. Clearly this book is timely and important. Judge Bork marshalls support for his thesis well. The greatest strength of the book is his analysis of legal reasoning and the consequences of each case. The major negative of the book is that Bork finds no solution and clearly he didn't design this book to offer solutions; he mostly just wants to point out the problem. Bork notes that the Constitution allows Congress to limit jurisdiction but this won't fix the problem because the state courts are just as bad (note the Massachussetts case above). He discusses and discards Constitutional amendment, choosing good judges (Bork knows first-hand the futility of this approach), and persuading the sitting judges to behave better through threats like impeachment. In the final analysis, "the representative branches of government have no effective way of resisting the Court." Which means, God help us because we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. Read the book. Love it or hate it, you have to respect it.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening
Review: Judge Bork provides an interesting insight to the evolving roles of the courts in our society.
| 
