Even with the recent changes in its makeup, most people think the Supreme Court is roughly balanced between left and right. This is a myth. In fact the justices once considered right-wing are now the Court's moderates; those who were once centrists are now the Court's "liberals"; and the liberal element, once represented by Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, has all but disappeared.

Many people also think that judicial activism is the province of liberals. This is also a myth; since William Rehnquist was confirmed as Chief Justice in 1986, the Supreme Court has struck down decisions of Congress more than thirty times-an unprecedented record of judicial activism. Some conservatives want to return to the eighteenth-century Constitution or to restore "the Constitution in Exile," by which they mean the Constitution as it existed before the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In Radicals in Robes, Cass R. Sunstein explains what this constitutional vision would mean. It would endanger environmental regulations, campaign finance laws, and the right to privacy. It would threaten the Federal Communications Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and many other federal agencies. It might well allow states to establish official religions. It would impose sharp new limits on Congress's authority to protect rights.

Radicals in Robes pulls away the veil of rhetoric from a dangerous and radical movement and issues a strong and passionate warning about what some extremists really intend. One of the most respected legal theorists in the country, Sunstein here issues a warning of compelling concern to us all.