Mark R. Levin grew up in Cheltenham Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Levin graduated from Cheltenham High School and holds a B.A. from Temple University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. Levin also earned a Juris Doctor from Temple University Beasley School of Law.

Beginning in 1981, Levin served as advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet, eventually becoming Associate Director of Presidential Personnel and ultimately Chief of Staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese; Levin also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and Deputy Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

He has practiced law in the private sector, and is president of Landmark Legal Foundation, a conservative public interest law firm founded in 1976 and based in Leesburg, Virginia.

Levin has participated in the Freedom Concerts, an annual benefit concert to aid the families of fallen soldiers, and he uses his radio program to promote the concerts. Levin is also involved with Troopathon, a charity which sends care packages to soldiers serving overseas.

In 2001, the American Conservative Union awarded Levin its Ronald Reagan Award.

Levin began his broadcast career as a guest on conservative talk radio programs. For many years he was a frequent contributor of legal opinions to The Rush Limbaugh Show, where Limbaugh referred to him on-air as "F. Lee Levin," a tongue-in-cheek reference to the famous defense attorney F. Lee Bailey. He was also a contributor to The Sean Hannity Show and eventually got a radio slot of his own on WABC, following Sean Hannity's program. Hannity has nicknamed Mark Levin "The Great One." Levin and Hannity remain frequent contributors to each other's programs.

The Mark Levin Show

Levin began his radio hosting career in 2002 as a Sunday afternoon host on WABC. His radio show, a mix of political and social commentary from a conservative point of view, covers legal issues in some detail, including decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Levin follows the traditional talk radio model of taking listener calls throughout the show. In the fall of 2003, his show filled the 6-8 p.m. (ET) time slot. As of February 2, 2009, his show was expanded to three hours, namely, 6-9 p.m.

As of 2006, his show is syndicated by Citadel Media (formerly known as ABC Radio Networks) on over 150 stations and the SIRIUS XM Patriot channel. Levin's show has been rated number one in its time slot in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas — Fort Worth and Washington, D.C.. According to Talkers Magazine, The Mark Levin Show is one of the most-listened to radio talk shows, with more than 8.5 million listeners weekly.

Levin's show has garnered some criticism, including from New York Times columnist David Brooks and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, for being too aggressive and negative in his analysis.

Levin is known for punning the names of liberal politicians and liberal newspapers. Such puns include "Anthony's Weiner" for Rep. Anthony Weiner and the "Washington Compost" for the Washington Post.

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto

Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto was released on March 24, 2009, and became a No. 1 New York Times best seller for eleven of twelve weeks, as well as No. 1 on Nielsen's BookScan. It comes in at No. 2 on Amazon.com's list of bestselling books of 2009. The book includes discussion of a variety of issues that, according to Levin, need to be addressed in the United States. Liberty and Tyranny has sold over one million copies according to Threshold Editions, the book's publisher. Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy wrote of Liberty and Tyranny in The New Criterion:

We are in the high tide of America’s Leftist ascendancy: the Obama evisceration of individual freedom and installation of authoritarian collectivism...at warp speed, driven by an ambition that would have made Woodrow Wilson and FDR blush. Against this tidal wave, Levin offers not so much a defense as a plan of attack, a clarion call to roll back the seas of Change.

Taking a contrary view, Steve Almond of Salon wrote that

the tantalizing beauty of a Mark Levin's text resides precisely in this ability to attribute any crisis of State to its nefarious indulgences. The current economic meltdown, for instance, should not be blamed on the psychotic greed of Wall Street, but on the State's deranged need to throw money at the poor and undeserving.

Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish

In 2007, Levin released a book about his dogs, Pepsi and Sprite. Specifically, the book was about Sprite, a Spaniel mix that his wife and son persuaded him to adopt from the local shelter in 2004. The book was titled Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover's Story of Joy and Anguish. Rescuing Sprite chronicles Sprite’s health deterioration in 2006 and how Levin and his family dealt with their loss.

Men In Black: How The Supreme Court is Destroying America

Levin authored the bestselling book, Men In Black: How The Supreme Court Is Destroying America in 2005, in which Levin advanced his thesis that activist judge on the Supreme Court (from all parts of the political spectrum) have "legislated from the bench." In her review of Men in Black, Slate magazine's legal correspondent and Canadian journalist Dahlia Lithwick wrote that "no serious scholar of the court or the Constitution, on the ideological left or right, is going to waste their time engaging Levin's arguments once they've read this book." In contrast, a review in the Defense Counsel Journal described Men in Black as “a forceful indictment of what Levin identifies as an increasingly 'activist' court for amending our national Constitution in the guise of construing it.”