Men in Black (Levin) -- Summer Reading Challenge
In my first pass on the 300s shelf, I spotted a book by Mark Levin, a brilliant legal and Constitutional scholar, who iscurrently a talk-show host and pundit, but was chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese in the Ronald Reagan administration. (Basically, he knows what he's talking about.) Anyway, it wasn't one I was interested in reading, but since it would fill a spot on my reading challenge, I placed a hold on Men in Black, which I'd heard about years ago, but never read.
Men in Black has nothing to do with Will Smith or aliens or secret government agencies. Quite the opposite -- it has to do with the one branch of government that always comes from and center in the headlines every June when it delivers a boatload of decisions and opinions. Levin has read all the major ones going back over 200 years.
Levin goes through many of the jurists who have sat on the bench and the influence that they've had in shifting the legal system, how they've expanded rights and taken others away, how they've pushed toward statism and away from federalism. And how they sometimes perform judicial acrobatics to achieve the ends they want, regardless of the legacy it leaves and the precedence it creates.
And let's not forget about the emanations and penumbras.
You'll read about the people who have sat on the bench for decades. The ones who wore black robes during the week and white robes (with matching hoods) on the weekends. The bad decisions, which were later overturned. The bad decisions which haven't been. The good decisions which were overturned.
Surprisingly, he actually faults SCOTUS for getting involved with Bush v Gore. While he understands that it was necessary to rein in a runaway, rogue Florida Supreme Court, Levin holds that it was unnecessary. Under Florida Constitution, it would have ultimately come down to the Florida legislature, which was controlled by the Republican Party. Gore never had a chance. However, by inserting itself under whichever rationale, they have set precedence for future challenges in elections, which will play out eventually.
I wouldn't mind seeing an addendum to this book, say, 15 years later, in which Levin points out the trends he'd predicted which came to pass or are almost here, and new ones likely to occur. I don't know if he'd want to revisit the same topic, and he'd likely wait until the effects of Trump appointments are seen.
I enjoyed reading this book, and it was good for sitting in an inner tube floating in the pool in the yard for a hour or so in the afternoon sun.
Book number: 347.7314 L
Rediscovering Americanism and the Tyranny of Progressivism (Levin 2017)
At the same time I placed a hold on Men in Black, I put one on Levin's latest book, Rediscovering Americanism, a topic he's passionate about. Levin is an outspoken proponent of Federalism (state's rights), as opposed to Statism (the country as one state). While he prefers the term "statist", he uses "progressive" because that's the common vernacular.
The book became available sooner than I had expected. I enjoyed his introduction, but I had a problem getting through Chapter 2 of the book. Basically, it's sixty pages long, about one-quarter of the book. It sets up all the arguments for progressivism, from its roots to the present, and it does it using the original words from the original texts. The problem, for me was that it was just too much already. I don't mind reading history, but this wasn't the history I wanted to read -- at least not in this quantity, all at once.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I enjoyed the rest of the book if I skipped to chapter three, but I just felt like I needed a break from 100-year-old speeches and essays. Maybe I'll give it another try in the future, maybe not.
Since I didn't get through the book, I'm not including it as a summer reading challenge book, although it's another 300s book.
Comments
Post a Comment