| CONTEMPT How the Right Is Wronging American Justice Catherine Crier New York: Rugged Land Books, 2005 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-59071-064-7 | ||||
| ISBN 1-59071-064-9 | 296pp. | HC/BWI | $27.95 | |
The appearance of Catherine Crier's new book belies its quality. Although Ms Crier's well-composed photograph on the cover shows her to be both beautiful and formidable, the book's production values otherwise suggest a flawed and hasty effort.1 The Table of Contents is all in capitals, and gives no page numbers. The text is set in smallish type. There are formatting errors like a string of ten words with no spaces between them (apparently due to the publisher's proportional-spacing software), and the last line of page 30 is duplicated on the next page. The revised Bill of Rights (intended to depict the changes the Right would make in it) is done sloppily. Many tables and figures could be improved. Chapter headings match subchapter headings; the latter should be smaller. In at least two places, the sense of a passage is destroyed by an unwanted "not". Other passages are simply nonsensical. There are the typical misspellings and errors of number. There is no index.
All these defects (which are almost certainly due to the book's tight production schedule) can be set aside and ignored. For Ms Crier, herself a former judge in Texas, has caused to be assembled between these covers a remarkably thorough compendium of the depredations of the Religious Right against the federal judicial system, and of arguments to counter them. Those arguments are cogent; they draw on historic documents like the Federalist Papers and other writings of the Founding Fathers, on case law from the Supreme Court and other courts, and on the often outrageous words of the Religious Right themselves.2
What Ms Crier has come to understand, and what she wants every American to understand, is simply this: The Religious Right, having put George W. Bush in the White House, and having subsequently won control of the Congress, now seeks to get a majority of cooperative judges in place on as many federal courts as possible. If these ultraconservatives can accomplish that, they will have removed the last obstacle to their agenda. And what is that agenda? Ms Crier posits that it is a radical transformation of American society along Biblical lines — assuming the Bible advocates tort reform, freeing business from minimum-wage laws and other regulation, abolishing the estate tax, and forbidding abortion.
There's plenty of material between the covers of this book to back up her claims. She tracks the actions of many of the movers and shakers of the Right, few of whom are household names, and shows how they have pushed the agenda she describes forward. Twenty of them are profiled at the back of the book. Crier also provides a backgrounder on the workings of the federal judicial system, from the Supreme Court on down. She examines the actions of the Founding Fathers at the Continental Congress of 1787, and quotes from their writings, to show that they sought a government unentangled with religion, carefully designed to prevent just such a subversion as Ms Crier warns us about.
The book has many shortcomings. Most, as I noted, are production items and can be overlooked, especially given the need to get the book into print by an external deadline. It could have been better organized, and I think the lack of an index is a serious impediment to its usefulness. Still, I'll recommend it with a rating of 4.0. This matter of the Right's burgeoning influence affects all of us, and Contempt is the best coverage of that I've found so far.
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