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| Constitutional Chaos | | Date Created: Apr 28, 2005, 06:45 AM |
 I've had Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks It's Own Laws by Judge Andrew Napolitano on my nightstand for months. I knew the author (not personally) from college days, plus there was a nice interview of Andy in Reason Magazine, so I thought I knew what the book was about. I did, but the book was worth reading anyway.
At Princeton in the late 60's and early 70's, Andy Napolitano stood out as an arch conservative at a time when they were as rare as female undergraduates. Napolitano graduated a year ahead of me and the number of women at Princeton had increased dramatically. The number of conservatives hadn't.
Catholic, Italian, very well spoken but clearly headed to a career as a pundit on Fox News (had we known what such a thing was then), Napolitano went on to the Notre Dame law school and became a conservative Republican judge in New Jersey -- another rarity. This book details what he learned while on the bench, and like John Stossel '69, how he came to view the government as the problem.
I doubt Andy would describe himself as a libertarian, but that's what he's become. Well, not entirely. He still has a strong dose of Catholic moral authority. He views abortion as murder for example, but I would bet that he would stand by the law regarding it rather than break the law for its own purposes as the federal government does routinely.
He also talks of Natural Law and Positivism. I'm sure he's still a bit conflicted about being a conservative and fighting the government as he does now.
"...being an American means having certain rights, liberties, and personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That's what is has always meant, and that's what it will continue to mean in these troubled times before us. Most of us take these guaranteed rights and liberties for granted. Most of us live comfortable lives that never bring us into conflict with the criminal justice system. But in many ways, that's a bad thing, for if you had seen that system as I did, you would never take your guaranteed rights for granted again."
"Amazingly, infuriatingly, incredibly, the government will lie cheat, and steal in order to enforce its own laws. And the courts continually give law enforcement a free pass to engage in these practices."
Andy goes on to detail his contention in numerous cases and areas of the law. He takes apart Janet Reno just as he does John Ashcroft. Although he clearly paints the picture of the problem being government, he doesn't quite get to the realization that the problem is Big Government. It's inherent in a system that has too much power and too much money to play with. Clearly it's not just the party in power.
As you might expect, he's a little light on suggestions of what to do about it. His ending chapter on "What Can We Do?" is effectively four pages long and consists of three areas: "Apply the law to everyone", "Sue the bastards", and "Defend the Constitution". In the latter section he acknowledges that, "The only judicial activism we condemn is that with which we disagree. One man's judicial activism is another man's heroic defense of the Constitution." He concludes that, "when judicial activism merely enforces the Constitution, it is a very good concept."
Judge Napolitano left the bench in '98 to join Fox News. The book came out last year. It would be interesting to hear what he thinks about the Republican/Democrat fight over judges and what he thought of the Schiavo case.
But now it's time to move on to One Nation Under Therapy.
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