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

During the past forty years, activists have repeatedly used the court system to achieve social and political change. On both the domestic and international fronts, they have accomplished 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 seriously undermined America's sovereignty and values.

The first essay details how the Supreme Court has taken the law out of the hands of the people and their elected representatives and used it to overthrow or undermine traditional values, customs, and practices through judge-made constitutional law that is divorced from the Constitution.

The second contribution examines the legal principle of "universal jurisdiction"-which suggests that any state can define, proscribe, prosecute, and punish certain "international" criminal offenses, regardless of where the relevant conduct took place, or the nationality of the perpetrators or victims--and shows how it challenges the American people's authority over their own destiny.

A third contribution looks at how the "new diplomacy" promoted by nongovernmental organizations worldwide seeks to alter the world's political power structure in a way that presents real threats to American sovereignty and values. Another essay takes on the current legal interpretation of a contrived "right to privacy" and reveals how it poses a serious threat to constitutional self-government.

The book's final contribution looks at the Supreme Court's religion decisions and asserts that they have done serious damage to our religious freedom and helped make our country a far more secular society than ever before.

Robert H. Bork has served as solicitor general, acting attorney general of the United States, and a United States Court of Appeals judge. He is also a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute and the Tad and Dianne Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has been a partner in a major law firm and taught constitutional law at Yale Law School, and is the author of the best-selling The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law.