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Title: The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice
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Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
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| The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press Excellent overview of how the Constitution is being subverted by bureaucrats and legislators | The basic theme of this book is that the rule of law is being subverted by legislators who grant far too much authority to regulators who are beyond reach of the voter. The result is that the essence of Constitutional law is lost. One grievous example, which is not mentioned in the book, but serves as an illustration is Roe v. Wade. This Supreme Court decision removed a highly contentious argument from the people, acting through their various state legislators, and created judge made law. Judges who are not elected by the people.
"The Tyranny Of Good Intentions" sticks to lower ground. For example, the Housing and Urban Affairs Department attempted to suppress the First Amendment rights of people protesting the creation of a taxpayer-funded homeless shelter in their neighborhood. HUD didn't want any opposition - and sought to silence its critics. Another example is how Netscape Corporation, unable to succeed in the marketplace, was able to sic the law on its more able competitor, Microsoft Corporation. Thus the law was perverted to serve private desires under the flag of public interest.
The authors maintain that "[t]he Constitution has been lost in poor teaching and the legal profession's accomomodation to unaccountable power". Constitutional law, the authors say, has been trivialized - and they provide many examples to support their contention. They claim that the United States today is ruled by bureaucrats who make law under broadly delegated powers and by judges who legislate an tax from the bench. The original American Republic they say is lost - and if the people don't reclaim their power - worse is to come.
The book is essentially non-partisan and any American who reveres the Constitution and its promises should take notice.
[...] | | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press A Pathetic Polemic | Great title. I sought this book as potential source material for one I'm writing about documented cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct.
Unfortunately, this book's content commits the worst crimes attributed to its targets: broadbrush accusations and biased conclusions without evidence, half-truths, mis-statements of facts and outright lies.
In short, these authors have committed a frame-up almost as egregious as instances where authorities have actually railroaded an innocent citizen into prison.
The sad fact is, with a little hard work and honest research, these academic fellows could have written a book that used facts to make it credible.
Since they didn't, I will.
| | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press Excellent exposition of the problem | This book discusses the tyranny of big government. Although some of the reviewers argue that tyranny is not a left-right issue, the fact remains that bigger government usually creates greater potential for abuse. Both the so-called Republicans and Democrats are both pretty much statists these days in favor of big government and this book exposes the rampant abuses of the system that has been slowly put into place here in the U.S.
For example, they call attention to the drug war as a chief source of lost liberties for Americans. The drug war led to asset forfeiture laws which deprive people of property interests without due process of the law. Many of the people who lose property are never even convicted of any drug-related crime. The whole concept of asset forfeiture is a sham whereby, the state can proceed against the property instead of the person and therefore claim that the issue is a civil matter instead of a criminal one. This is important because many of the important rights afforded to criminals do not apply in this case because the proceeding is characterized as a civil action against the property or thing that offends. Yet, the property against which the action is filed belongs to someone and that someone stands to lose a property right or interest but because of legal trickery they are afforded no protections afforded to criminals such as the right to an attorney, the right to a jury trial, and many others.
Also, the civil forfeiture laws lead to police corruption because the police have an interest in seizing property since they get the proceeds from whatever is seized. This book does a good job of exposing how government is everyday infringing more of our individual rights in the name of good causes -- the drug war and all the rest. But, as the maxim states, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I wonder if some of the other readers even read the book because they claim that the authors attempt to defend the elite and to me it seems they are doing just the opposite: exposing how the elite has stripped the average citizen of his or her rights in the pursuit of material gain. The book also speaks to the torture of prisoners and other issues that seem to come up repeatedly with the current administration. | | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press Mr. Roberts, the Liar | It's difficult to take anything Mr. Roberst writes seriously as he is on all sides of almost every issure depending on his audience. He likes to be "confrontational" which, for him, amounts to attacking politicians and groups from the left for doing one thing and those on the right for doing what he told the left they should do. I guess he believes that makes him "balanced" but it's a lie, he's simply someone who likes to stir the pot regardless whether he actually believes or doesn't believe in the postion he's taking. And that's the trouble, he really doesn't have any beliefs.
Good reading if you like sociopathic writers. | | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press An Indictment of the Current Legal State of Affairs | ~The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice~ is a solid critique of our nation's criminal justice system, which has strayed egregiously from its fundamentals and is continuously assailing the Rights of the Englishmen and the constitutional protections of our citizenry. "Good intentions have transformed law," note the authors, "from a shield for the innocent to a weapon used by the police. Having lost the law, we have acquired tyranny." With increasing lawlessness, the nefarious tactics of law enforcement are increasingly becoming indistinguishable from those of the "criminal underworld." The Anglo-American common law tradition is losing ground to zealous prosecutors, insensitive regulators, and overly ambitious law enforcement. They are increasingly blinded by ambition and lacking any ethical sense of fairness and integrity as many seldom afford dignity or concern for those they investigate.
The onset of the book highlights the cherished Rights of the Englishmen and offers a little legal history and some jurisprudence lessons. Innocent people are increasingly caught up in a bureaucratic web where vindictive prosecutors and uncaring bureaucrats destroy lives and livelihoods. As the authors make clear, the reason for abuses which are prevalent perhaps owes to a loss of the sense of justice. "The function of justice is to serve truth." When the quest for truth is lost, the focus on justice is dispensed with, and ambition of bureaucrats and prosecutors runs roughshod over the rights of the accused. In earlier times, the honor of the legal profession compelled prosecutors to have the utmost respect for the individual: "They respected people's reputations, and English judges wanted no innocent blood on their conscience... Their abhorrence of convicting the innocent was reinforced by religious beliefs of the age, such as accountability before God and the afterlife, and bad experiences with arbitrary judicial practices, such as Star Chamber proceedings in which due process and evidentiary standards were absent." In more recent times, prosecutors "will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted," notes Robert Jackson in 1940. This U.S. Attorney General and later Supreme Court Justice offered a ubiquitous warning of the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: "With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least some technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime... it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm-in which prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of prosecuting power lies." The "real crime becomes that of being unpopular... being attached to the wrong political views" or just simply being "obnoxious" to the prosecutor. The authors too make it clear the task of the prosecutors is not to go on "fishing expeditions" or of drawing family, friends and colleagues of the accused into a web of harassment and accusations or charges. The foremost aim of the justice system was the search for truth, and it was pursued alongside the sacrosanct notion of protecting at all times the rights and dignity of the accused or the suspect of an investigation. Those that stand accused should always be given the presumption of innocence. Though, naive people in custodial interrogation are often compelled to incriminate themselves by zealous investigators who deceptively make their case appear so ironclad as if they have no other choice. Today, as Jackson and Stratton make clear, many prosecutors and investigators are not above evidence tampering or planting, instigating instead of investigating, crafting circumstantial evidence by continual manipulation of a suspect, egregious psychological intimidation and setting up stings to entrap suspects. For the capricious prosecutor who cares only about racking up statistics, the ends justify the means. Thus, using Stalinist tactics such as those used in the case of Nicholas Bukarin is not out of the question.
Capricious asset forfeiture laws and arbitrary regulatory takings in some states encroach upon property rights. It allows police seizure of property in some cases with mere probable cause and destroying any semblance of due process. Many asset forfeiture pursuits pay little regard to the guilt or innocence of parties. Forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to utilize and divvy up seized assets. Horrendous abuses where drug stings or busts transpire with third parties on someone's property have been used to justify seizure of that property even in such cases, where the owner has no involvement whatsoever or perhaps he merely reported it to authorities. The spoils of forfeited assets are often used to finance law enforcement and regulatory agencies. Budget cuts, spending freezes, and imprudent lawmakers compel some agencies to financially sustain more of their activities not only by fines but also heavy forfeitures. This only acts as an incentive for more abuse. In California, for example, luxurious mansions have been forfeited and turned into posh police precincts. The incentives for forfeiture abuse are omnipresent.
Roberts and Stratton make light of Crimes without Intent where the mens rea (intent) requirement is being vanquished. "Foremost among the rights of Englishmen is the requirement that no one can be prosecuted for a crime without evidence that a crime has occurred and evidence that links the accused to the crime" beyond a reasonable doubt. These protections serve to guard against unintended or accidental crimes. Oliver Wendell Holmes observed "even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked." Accidents are now being criminalized by zealous regulators and prosecutors. The authors cite the Exxon Valdez tanker spill case where the rule of law is trumped. In this case, a liability for a civil wrong is criminalized effectively blurring the line between civil and criminal law. This is a most dangerous precedent and any negligence on the part of Exxon should not be maligned as a criminal act since there was no intent to deliberately pollute the waters. Exxon didn't self-consciously set out to destroy its own ship and had nothing to gain by such an act. A non-existent conspiracy on the part of Exxon to pollute the Prince William Sound was contrived. Many other startling cases are cited. Bills of attainder and ex post facto laws are banned explicitly in our Constitution, but it hasn't stopped the government from utilizing such odious devices in indictments.
A chapter on Retroactive Law makes light of laws passed after the fact that criminalize or make civil liabilities out of actions that transpired long before they were illegal. Other chapters surmise the attack on cherished legal protection, the demise of attorney-client privilege where the government seeks to turn defense counsels into government spies. Francis Bacon declared that "the greatest trust between men is the trust of giving counsel." If this unassailable right is lost, defense counsels will be scarcely discernible from impotent Soviet public defenders who were little more than handmaids of the prosecutors. Forfeiting Justice is another ominous chapter; and it recants a tale of greedy government officials seeking to foreclose on a desirable private beachfront property surrounded by a national park. The owner objected to selling his property. Trying to implicate a multimillionaire beach property owner, they contrived probable cause and lead to a multi-agency no-knock SWAT operation into Donald Scott's house. Alarmed by the noise, Scott arose with a gun in hand in self-defense and was promptly shot dead. That warrant was his death warrant. A chapter entitled Ambition over Justice cites numerous examples of prosecutorial and police misconduct. It also makes light of how ethics are frequently lost today. J. Edgar Hoover found sting operations to be morally repugnant particularly those that sought to set snares and entrapments for people (especially hapless innocents with no prior history of involvement in such crimes.) His concern was that law enforcement making use of the nefarious methods of the underworld would only act to corrupt the law and hurt the innocent. Attempting to entrap or entice a suspect to commit an unrelated crime is common. Efforts to pile charges on a suspect through sting operations can give zealous prosecutors ammunition to intimidate suspect and elicit a trumped up plea bargain. The use of the testimony of police informants and ruses who may themselves be seeking to avoid prosecution presents credibility problems as well. Some informants are driven by sense of self-importance and those that simply want to be utilized again by police may act deceptively to incriminate suspects.
Abdicating Legislative Power makes light of stunning abrogation of Congressional responsibility in recent decades. The authors bear out that Congress should not be able to delegate away its powers, with "all legislative powers" vested in elected representatives. The ancient Anglo-Saxon legal maxim Delegata potestas non potest delagari ("a delegated power cannot itself be delegated") is violated in such instances. The purpose is to maintain accountability amongst lawmakers and keep them amenable to the people. Yet the federal regulatory state has countless unaccountable agencies that create laws, execute them, and adjudicate over violations. Having an agency that is judge, jury and executioner is against every principle of free constitutional government, separation of powers and federalism. Administrative courts are little more than kangaroo courts of the bureaucracies. A convicted defendant can defer a judgment to the independent federal judiciary, but most federal judges sustain the administrative judgments ostensibly since they lack "expertise."
There are still more chapters. I've sketched a cursory synopsis of this book in hopes of capturing the gravity of the current crisis and the breadth of this work that Stratton and Roberts have produced. This book is succinct, yet multi-faceted, and highly recommended not just for aspiring jurists but anyone interested in preserving our Anglo-American common law tradition. Our cherished constitutional protections may be egregiously imperiled and vanquished if abuses go unabated and reforms are not put in place. This book is a summons for concerned citizens, legislators, and yes even government attorneys of integrity to act to uphold and restore our cherished legal protections to their proper standing. This book is more a diagnosis only offers a few solutions without much detail. As an aside, Charles Colson has offered prescriptive wisdom on possible legal reforms, establishing restorative justice, and doing away with our modern Pharisaic system of justice.
Roberts is a journalist, economist, and a former official with the Reagan administration. He is a member of the Virginia and D.C. bar and has taught at Georgetown Law. Stratton and Roberts offer meaningful prospects for reform-with a sigh at the perils of ignoring the tyranny of good intentions that has crept upon us. Moreover, preserving a fair, judicious and equitable system of criminal justice is not a conservative, liberal or even libertarian cause. This book has not surprisingly educed praise from all corners of the political spectrum from right to left-including that of G. Gordon Liddy, Milton Friedman, and Alan Dershowitz.
"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master." -George Washington | | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press Product Description | | In this updated and expanded edition of The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton renew their valiant campaign to reclaim that which is rightly ours–liberty protected by the rule of law. They show how crusading legislators and unfair prosecutors are remaking American law into a weapon wielded by the government and how the erosion of the legal principles we hold dear–such as habeas corpus and the prohibition against self-incrimination–is destroying the presumption of innocence. A new introduction and new chapters cover recent marquee cases and make this provocative book essential reading for anyone who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power and sees our civil liberties slowly slipping away in the name of the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, and the War on Terror. | | The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Law Enforcement Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Three Rivers Press Amazon.com | | The authors of The New Color Line return with another libertarian polemic, this time taking aim at a justice system that has lost sight of its most important goals. Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton warn of a "police state that is creeping up on us from many directions." There's the war on drugs, which makes it possible for federal agents to investigate people simply for carrying large amounts of cash. There's the crusade against white-collar crime, which has turned the plea bargain into an enemy of the truth. And there's outright misconduct, abetted by prosecutors more interested in compiling long lists of indictments than ensuring the fair treatment of all suspects. The Tyranny of Good Intentions is replete with examples of how government treads on freedom through ill-willed prosecution and faceless bureaucracy. The book's overpowering sense of disaffection sometimes leads to alarmist prose: "We the People have vanished. Our place has been taken by wise men and anointed elites." The authors are swift to suggest that America, barring "an intellectual rebirth," may yet go the way of "German Nazis and Soviet communists." Yet The Tyranny of Good Intentions is nothing if not well intended; it is full of passion and always on the attack, whether the writers are taking on racial quotas, wetland regulations, or any number of policies they find objectionable. In a jacket blurb, libertarian icon Milton Friedman calls it "a devastating indictment of our current system of justice." Roberts and Stratton, although right-leaning in many of their political sympathies, will probably find plenty of fans on ACLU-left--and anybody who cringes at the thought of unbridled state power. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, consider this book an atlas. --John J. Miller |
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