A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values

by Robert H. Bork

During the past forty years, activists have repeatedly used the court system to accomplish substantive policy results that could not otherwise be obtained through the ordinary political processes of government, both in the United States and abroad. In five insightful essays, the contributors to this volume show how these legal decisions have undermined America's sovereignty and values. They reveal how international law challenges American beliefs and interests and exposes U.S. citizens to legal and economic risks, how the "right to privacy" poses a serious threat to constitutional self-government, how the Supreme Court's religion decisions have done serious damage to our religious freedom, and more.

Genres: Law, History

232 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2005

About the author

Robert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork served as a Yale Law School professor, Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, but the Senate rejected his nomination. Bork had more success as an antitrust scholar, where his once-idiosyncratic view that antitrust law should focus on maximizing consumer welfare has come to dominate American legal thinking on the subject.

Reviews

[Ron Wroblewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned much

The US is an experiment in self government. 3 branches of government to provide checks & balances. The judicial branch should not be making the laws, that is the Legislature job. We must have conservative judges who do not make the rules or we loose self government by the people.

[Zee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Hoover Institute usually publishes two types of resources: more measured, traditionally conservative works with intellectual humility and acknowledgement of the other sides of the issue, and unashamedly partisan, blinkered ones with hardly even a concession and an occasional haughty laughing away of other perspectives. This is much closer to the latter.

The main fault of the book is its abundance of sweeping one-sided claims with logical holes ignorant of their plausible application to the authors’ own views, many of which reflect intellectual aloofness present in the stances and briefs they criticize. Virtually every argument made lacks any concession of the establishment’s or the US’s own complicity and culpability in issues the authors accuse global organizations and the liberal order of doing. Apart from these problems, there are better arguments out there not just on the addressed issues but on the judicial angles discussed as well. I would recommend this book not as a beacon of judicial or logical insight but rather as a political thermometer of nationalistic conservative ideology with some good points but many bad ones.

To make things worse, the book has not aged well due to 1) many of the statistical claims of public support having swung gradually but solidly against the authors’ aims since writing, and 2) its use of questionable phrasing with respect to issues of oppressed populations, including gay people, and other issues. Having been written in this millennium, cringeworthy framing and phrasing is without excuse and further elucidates the book’s emotionally- and ideologically-driven goals. If you want a competent, well-rounded and logically cohesive conservative perspective on judicial issues over the past several decades, look elsewhere.

[Andrew McHenry · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction by Bork and the first two chapters set the tone for this one: these are grumpy older men, all of them white, who are bemoaning a perceived out-of-control Supreme Court bent on usurping legislative functions through judiciary power. They make some good arguments, though a lot of it sounds strange in an era where the Supreme Court now has a conservative super-majority. They make intelligent arguments for their traditionalist approach; certainly the court has interpreted the Constitution in ways the founding fathers could never have imagined. But it would be a lot more compelling if the cases they were targeting weren't so consistently the ones of their pet conservative political causes (e.g. abortion, sodomy laws, affirmative action, etc.) As it is it sounds like a lot of creative reasoning to justify their own political ends from the bench.

An ironic note, though: The title itself would have been a good exception to this if Bork (or any of the other contributors) had chosen to focus some attention on it. It comes from one of Scalia's dissents on a case from a Kansas county that I used to live in. It involved a Kansas garbage collector who sued over free speech rights (and a fellow who has a lot of affinity with Scalia, at least as I understand him). Thomas joined Scalia's dissent where they both asserted the privilege of patronage over free speech, in this case. But I had to look this up to find the details; Bork only mentions the line and footnotes the case but goes no further with it.

So it takes on a predictable tone, but as a compilation piece the different writers/topics make for a good shift. The third chapter, in particular, is a very useful historical (though mildly cynical) survey of Supreme Court cases involving religion and religious freedom. The final two chapters are critiques of international law; the authors are concerned that it compromises U.S. sovereignty. I'm sure to some highly astute legal minds their focus on the minutiae is compelling, but the fact that they're always on the wrong side of some of the most egregious human rights' violators does not make their perspective endearing to me.

[Avril Oridove · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that has interesting theories and facts but...

A conservative viewpoint mars the book down. It definitely presents some valid points, especially in the last part regarding the ICC and ICJ...however the beginning of the book is nothing but racist and homophobic language masking under legal language...and very poorly at that.

I feel like this book could have been an amazing legal reference point, but it gets stuck in the very thing it claims to be pushing against: Politicial Bias.

[Ed Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originalist Views

A series of academic oriented articles on topics ranging from Federalism to the establishment clause and international law. The segments on international law and universal jurisdiction were excellent. A good thought provoking read.

[Ronald]

Published in 2005 by the Hoover Institution and edited by Robert Bork, this 183 page book is a collection of five essays on the legal decisions over the last 50 years that have undermined our nation's values, sovereignty, and core founding principles. The title of the book comes from Justice Scalia's opinion in one of his dissents that day by day the Supreme Court is "busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize." If you still believe in self-government, read it.