Rating: 
Summary: Paradigm Shifting
Review: A previous reviewer said that this book changed the way he looked at the judicial branch of government. I share that experience. It is rare for one book to cause what I call a "paradigm shift," but The Tempting of America is such a book. Simply put, the Supreme Court has periodically taken too much power for itself to overrule democratically-made decisions. Such actions should be performed sparingly, in accordance with strict Constitutional interpretation. This has not been the case since at least 1962. As a result, political discourse has been impoverished, and the people have lost a significant amount of self-governance. The rule of lawyers and judges arises from a strong elitism, conscious or unconscious, that ordinary people cannot be trusted to reach the "right" results in their decision-making. As a former law student and lawyer, I can confirm that this is the case, and it depresses, angers and frightens me. I am grateful to Robert Bork for telling it like it is. I hope more law students will read this book and be challenged by it.
Rating:
Summary: Paradigm Shifting
Review: A previous reviewer said that this book changed the way he looked at the judicial branch of government. I share that experience. It is rare for one book to cause what I call a "paradigm shift," but The Tempting of America is such a book. Simply put, the Supreme Court has periodically taken too much power for itself to overrule democratically-made decisions. Such actions should be performed sparingly, in accordance with strict Constitutional interpretation. This has not been the case since at least 1962. As a result, political discourse has been impoverished, and the people have lost a significant amount of self-governance. The rule of lawyers and judges arises from a strong elitism, conscious or unconscious, that ordinary people cannot be trusted to reach the "right" results in their decision-making. As a former law student and lawyer, I can confirm that this is the case, and it depresses, angers and frightens me. I am grateful to Robert Bork for telling it like it is. I hope more law students will read this book and be challenged by it.
Rating:
Summary: A work of brilliant, eye-opening legal analysis!
Review: As a law student in my final year of law school, I have taken three courses dealing with constitutional law from professors who are experts in the field. In "The Tempting of America," Judge Bork brilliantly sums up the evolution of judicial activism. You learn of the transformations this activism has undergone, and Judge Bork provides an excellent analysis of the landmark cases demonstrating such activism (Dred Scott; Lochner; Roe v. Wade; etc.-in other words, essentially all the key cases you'd need to know about).
From this backdrop, Judge Bork moves into his argument in favor of "original understanding" of the Constitution. Now, perhaps I am a little biased in that I was already in agreement with this theory prior to reading this book, but nevertheless Judge Bork details the most compelling argument in its favor that I've read yet. In addition, unlike many books on the subject, Judge Bork chronicles the arguments against "original understanding" and the arguments specifically in favor of other theories of constitutional interpretation.
I would highly recommend irrespective of your legal education. While it may be a little tougher read for those untrained in the law, it will provide such valuable insight that it is worth the effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-articulated, but occasionally long-winded
Review: Bork does a terrific job of making a logical argument in favor of interpreting the Consitutuon (and any other law) according to the original understanding of the legislators who ratified it. He cites numerous examples of judicial legislation, in which the originial intentions of various laws were ignored by Justices in favor of those Justices' opinions of what "ought to be," and by showing how this trend has become more common since the New Deal, demonstrates that the policization of the courts is a growing problem. He also makes several salient points about the so-called "right to privacy," supposedly created by various amendments between 1 and 14, and points out that the ninth and tenth amendments, by acknowledging that rights may exist outside of what is written in the Constitution, refer to rights that are...outside the Constitution. You can argue, if you believe it, that we have a right to privacy; what you can't argue is that we have a Consitutional Right to Privacy, because it's not in the Constitution. I'm pretty sure that the Framers could have placed a generalized "right to privacy" in its own separate amendment if they had really intended it to be there. Any claim that the Constitution supports such a right is a projection of one's personal beliefs onto an otherwise unambiguous document, and Bork's whole point is that judges should not decide cases based on their personal beliefs, they should rule on the text of the law. That said, at times Bork can be redundant, which makes for a somewhat longer book than is strictly necessary. Also, the discussion of his nomination battle, while fascinating in its own right, is really an entirely different book- it's more about answering his critics' charges (which he does by referring to his conclusions elsewhere in the book)than about an originalist understanding of the Constitution. It is interesting to read, though, and because it's sectionalized, readers can skip that part if they want to (though I wouldn't recommend doing so). All in all, a very interesting and thought-provoking book.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: For those of us that know that the Supreme Court is leaving its constitutional bounds, but do not know exactly why, this book is a must read. Judge Bork's brilliance shines through, forever condemning those that rejected him and his stances for political reasons.
Anyone that wishes to defend the constitution will find that this book is a powerful tool, and anyone that wishes to ignore the fundamental meanings of the constitution in headlong pursuit of political agendas will always have this book looking over his shoulder.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone in law school should read this book before con law
Review: How I wish I had read this book before I took con law. Not only would it have been good preparation, but it would also have given me the ammunition to argue positions that I felt where intuitively correct. Even at my school, the Constitution is presented to students loaded with assumptions the framers never had in mind. And although I think that, given the political reality of the world, our professors would be doing us a disservice if they didn't present it so, it is still hard to reconcile the discrepancies that surface while staying within the parameters of modern constitutional thought. Robert Bork masterfully and eloquently blows away all the false assumptions and everything begins to make sense. This book is truly a classic of American legal thought. It is the best argument for an original intent understanding of the Constitution that I have ever read. Bork also illustrates the politicization of our law in vivid detail by recounting his nomination for a seat on the Supreme Court and his defeat in the Senate. Still, though I understand the the slippery slope concomitant with looking beyond the four corners of the Constitution, Bork couldn't convince me that the Ninth Amendment is superfluous. Everyone in law school should read this; especially before taking con law. You'll thank me for the tip!
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: 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.
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