The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, With a New Preface Reprint Edition by Robert Levy (Author), William Mellor (Author) (Cato Institute)

Americans have long looked to the Supreme Court as the last bastion of their liberties and as the one institution that stands as a check against the encroachments of an Executive Branch eager to expand its power and and a Legislative Branch intent on satisfying the whims of a grasping majority. As Robert Levy and William Mellor demonstrate in their must-read book The Dirty Dozen: How Twelve Supreme Court Cases Radically Expanded Government and Eroded Freedom, that is far from the truth. In reality, and especially in the 3/4 of a century since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has essentially stood by while the Federal Government, and the states, whittle away at long cherished American liberties.

Though they deals with at-times complex legal issues, Levy and Mellor have done a great job in this book of making those issues understandable even to someone without legal training. For each case selected, they set forth the facts of the case, their position on where the Court got it wrong, and the consequences that have developed from that decision. They also deal separately with two of the most controversial Supreme Court cases of the past 30-odd years; Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore. For different reasons, they fail to include either case in their "Dirty Dozen" list largely because they believe that the Court at least got the result right even if one could find problems with the way they got there.

In each case, Levy and Mellor clearly explain how the Court ignored the plain text of the Constitution, precedent, and quite often common sense, to reach it's decision and how those decisions have increased the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty. Oe may disagree with the author's choice of cases;it would have been interesting, for example, for them to discuss "Dirty Dozen" cases from the era prior to 1937 (and there are certainly enough of them) and how those decisions lead to the judicial ideology that created the case law they rightly decry. However, it's fairly clear that they've selected a dozen pretty bad cases, and the book provides an object lesson of what happens when one of the branches of government ignores it's Constitutional responsibilities.