Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges

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About Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule Of Judges

Product Description In general, courts have been activist in opposing majority views on such matters as sexual practices, secularism versus religion, rights of speech and expression and feminism. This judicial activism appears to impinge on the legitimate domains of the executive and legislative branches of government and constitutes the judicialization of politics and morals. According to Bork, a number of courts tend to act in this activist fashion. As well, international tribunals appear to exceed their jurisdiction, posing a threat to national sovereignty just as the national courts threaten democratic government. This activism is more than a threat; Bork argues that both sovereignty and self-government have already been seriously damaged. Coercing Virtue attempts to account for the phenomenon of why so may courts in democratic nations behave in an imperialistic manner and why the results almost always appear to advance the liberal political and cultural agenda. From Booklist It may not reach the best-seller lists, as the much bigger Slouching towards Gomorrah (1996) did, but this concentrated and cogent statement on the preeminent object of his concern--the state of the judiciary--may be Bork's most important book for nonspecialist readers. Throughout the world, Bork says, judges rather than legislators are making and repealing laws, and internationalizing law as they do. Getting to particulars, he discusses the U.S., Canadian, and Israeli supreme courts, adducing evidence of each deciding cases partisanly and ideologically rather than according to the letter and documented intent of constitutional law. Such judicial subjectiveness begins early-- Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the practice of judicial review, brazenly favored Chief Justice Marshall's Federalist Party against President Jefferson's Democratic Republican administration--but reaches its present peak in the Israeli court's self-appointment of new members and assumption that all behavior of whatever kind falls within its purview, regardless of whether any suits have been filed. Of course, what Bork finds alarming, others hail as liberating. Fine argument, though. Ray Olson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved About the Author Robert H. Bork is the author of The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law and Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, and The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War With Itself. He served as Solicitor General and Acting Attorney General of the United States and was a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. Bork is a senior fellow at AEI. He and his wife live in McLean, Virginia.