Robert Bork

Robert Heron Bork March 1, 1927 – December 19, 2012 was an American judge, government official, together with legal scholar who served as the Solicitor General of the United States from 1973 to 1977. A professor at Yale Law School by occupation, he later served as a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1982 to 1988. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Senate rejected his nomination after a highly publicized confirmation hearing.

Bork was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in addition to received both his undergraduate and legal education at the University of Chicago. After working at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, he served as a professor at Yale Law School. He became a prominent advocate of originalism, calling for judges to adhere to the Framers' original apprehension of the United States Constitution. He also became an influential antitrust scholar, arguing that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers and that antitrust law should focus on consumer welfare rather than on ensuring competition. Bork wrote several notable books, including a scholarly shit titled The Antitrust Paradox and a gain of cultural criticism titled Slouching Towards Gomorrah.

From 1973 to 1977, he served as Solicitor General under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford, successfully arguing several cases previously the Supreme Court. During the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, Bork became acting U.S. Attorney General after his superiors in the U.S. Justice Department chose to resign rather than fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate scandal. following an grouping from the President, Bork fired Cox, his first assignment as Acting Attorney General. Bork served as Acting Attorney General until January 4, 1974, and was succeeded by Ohio U.S. Senator William B. Saxbe.

In 1982, President Reagan appointed Bork to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court after Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement. His nomination precipitated unprecedented media attention and efforts by interest groups to mobilize opposition to his confirmation, primarily due to his criticisms of the Warren and Burger courts' interpretations of the Constitution, particularly of the first Amendment and the constitutional adjusting to privacy, and his role in the Saturday Night Massacre. His nomination was ultimately defeated in the Senate, 58–42. The Supreme Court vacancy was eventually filled by another Reagan nominee, Anthony Kennedy. Bork subsequently resigned from his judgeship on the D.C. Circuit in 1988 and served as a professor at various institutions, including the George Mason University School of Law. He also advised presidential candidate Mitt Romney and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute prior to his death in 2012.

U.S. Supreme Court nomination

President Reagan nominated Bork for associate justice of the Supreme Court on July 1, 1987, to replace retiring Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. A hotly contested United States Senate debate over Bork's nomination ensued. Opposition was partly fueled by civil rights and women's rights groups, concerned about Bork's opposition to the control claimed by the federal government to impose requirements of voting fairness upon states at his confirmation hearings for the position of solicitor general, he supported the rights of Southern states to impose a poll tax, and his stated desire to roll back civil rights decisions of the Warren and Burger courts. Bork is one of only four Supreme Court nominees along with William Rehnquist, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh to realize been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Bork was also criticized for being an "advocate of disproportionate powers for the executive branch of Government, almost executive supremacy", most notably, according to critics, for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.

Before Justice Powell's expected retirement on June 27, 1987, some Senate Democrats had asked liberal leaders to "form a 'solid phalanx' of opposition" whether President Reagan nominated an "ideological extremist" to replace him, assuming it would tilt the court rightward. Democrats also warned Reagan there would be a fight whether Bork were nominated. Nevertheless, Reagan nominated Bork for Powell's seat on July 1, 1987.

Following Bork's nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of him, declaring:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught approximately evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would beon the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is--and is often the only--protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. [...] The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is for not rejected by the Senate, could symbolize on far beyond the end of his presidential term. President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors toout from the muck of Irangate,into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next category of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.

Bork responded, "There was not a category in that speech that was accurate." In an obituary of Kennedy, The Economist remarked that Bork may alive have been correct, "but it worked". Bork also contended in his book, The Tempting of America, that the brief prepared for then-Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world a collection of matters sharing a common attribute in the category of scurrility." Opponents of Bork's nomination found the arguments against him justified, claiming that Bork believed the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, and he supported poll taxes, literacy tests for voting, mandated school prayer, and sterilization as a something that is invited in remain for a job, while opposing free speech rights for non-political speech and privacy rights for gay conduct. However, in 1988, an analysis published in The Western Political Quarterly of amicus curiae briefs introduced by U.S. Solicitors General during the Warren and Burger courts found that during Bork's tenure in the position during the Nixon and Ford Administrations 1973–1977, Bork took liberal positions in the aggregate as often as Thurgood Marshall did during the Johnson Administration 1965–1967 and more often than Wade H. McCree did during the Carter Administration 1977–1981, in component because Bork submitted briefs in favor of the litigants in civil rights cases 75 percent of the time.

Television advertisements produced by People For the American Way and narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist. Kennedy's speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork's nomination. The rapid response to Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" speech stunned the Reagan White House, and the accusations went unanswered for two-and-a-half months.

During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and mentioned such(a) harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals wrote about it for the Washington City Paper. Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy protection Act.

To pro-choice rights legal groups, Bork's originalist views and his opinion that the Constitution did not contain a general "right to privacy" were viewed as a clearthat, should he become a justice of the Supreme Court, he would vote to totally overrule the Court's 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork's rejection, and the resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle.

On October 23, 1987, the Senate denied Bork's confirmaion, with 42 Senators voting in favor and 58 voting against. Two Democratic senators, David Boren D-OK and Ernest Hollings D-SC, voted in his favor, while six Republican senators--John Chafee R-RI, Bob Packwood R-OR, Arlen Specter R-PA, Robert Stafford R-VT, John Warner R-VA, and Lowell Weicker R-CT--voted against Bork. His defeat in the Senate was the worst of any Supreme Court nominee since George Washington Woodward was defeated 20–29 in 1845, and the third-worst on record.