R.I.P. Robert Bork

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Robert Bork has passed away:

ARLINGTON, Va. — Robert H. Bork, whose failed 1980s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, has died. He was 85.


Son Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed the death Wednesday. His father had a long career in politics and the law that took him from respected academic to a totem of conservative grievance.


Bork's defeat during the 1987 Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.


Bork also was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for President Richard Nixon when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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As the Watergate participants fade away...

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if President Reagan had successfully nominated Bork for the Supreme Court in 1987 instead of Anthony Kennedy.
 

blacbird

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I don't celebrate his passing, for any reason. That said:

He's been out of public life for more than two decades now, and I'm old enough to have experience of his major newsmaking over his long career. He's a frustrating guy to assess. On one hand, he unquestionably had high-level intellectual and legal skills. On the other, he had a major career-defining moment of decision, and made the wrong choice (the probably illegal firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Watergate mess), in a manner that cast him as a callow, sycophantic opportunist. That, in turn, is what ultimately cost him his Supreme Court nomination.

A couple of other high officials in Nixon's Administration resigned rather than agree to fire Cox, notably William Ruckelshaus. If Bork had done the same, his subsequent history might have been different.

In the end, he comes across as a more crotchety Antonin Scalia with a bad beard.

But it's that Watergate moment he will always be remembered for. A moment, as it turned out not long later, of complete failure. He put perceived personal self-interest, in the guise of personal loyalty, above principle, and it wound up biting him in the ass.

We should all take a deep breath of relief that Robert Bork never became a United States Supreme Court Justice.

caw
 

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What I wonder is how big of a bullet we dodged by swapping out a hardcore right-winger like Bob Bork on The Supreme Court for a mushy, middle-of the-road, moderate-to-conservative Anthony Kennedy?

A mighty big one I think.

I don't exactly mourn Bork. He was no hero of mine, but there may be something to the belief the process Bork went through during his confirmation hearings went a long way in contributing to the way presidential nominees get roughed up and dragged through the mud.

Who would have thought the practice of "Borking" a nominee would endure to this day?
 

rugcat

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He's a frustrating guy to assess.
I don't think he was difficult to assess at all. He was a man who used his intellectual skills to promote his own personal agendas. Any commitment to principle was totally lacking, until later in life wen he resigned from the bench and became a conservative icon.

The Public Citizen Litigation Group found this:
The authors could find no “consistent application of judicial restraint or any other judicial philosophy” in Bork’s work on the Court.8 Rather, by focusing on split decisions, where judicial ideology is made most plain, Public Citizen found that “one can predict [Bork’s] vote with almost complete accuracy simply by identifying the parties in the case.”9 When the government litigated against a business corporation, Judge Bork voted for the business interest 100% of the time. But when government was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers, Bork voted nearly 100% of the time for the government.

His most famous ruling was this:
Judge Bork found that the Occupational Safety and Health Act did not protect women at work in a manufacturing plant from a company policy that forced them to be sterilized— or else lose their jobs— because of high levels of lead in the air. The Secretary of Labor had decided that the Act’s requirement that employers must provide workers “employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards” meant that American Cyanamid had to “fix the workplace” through industrial clean-up rather than “fix the employees” by sterilizing or removing all women workers of child-bearing age. But Judge Bork strongly disagreed. He wrote an opinion for his colleagues apparently endorsing the view that other clean-up measures were not necessary or possible and that the sterilization policy was, in any event, a “realistic and clearly lawful” way to prevent harm to the women’s fetuses.

http://www.pfaw.org/media-center/publications/borking-america-20

It wasn't just Watergate that sunk him. It was his record. (Read the link)

It's common after an icon dies to rehabilitate them and treat them more kindly than in life. But make no mistake -- Bork was an extremist and a frightening abuser of judicial power. It's a shameful thing that such a man could have even been considered for the Supreme Court -- thanks to good old St. Ronnie.

Oh, and he was Romney's chief judicial adviser on constitutional matters. Talk about dodging a bullet.
 

Cricket18

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Judge Bork found that the Occupational Safety and Health Act did not protect women at work in a manufacturing plant from a company policy that forced them to be sterilized— or else lose their jobs— because of high levels of lead in the air. The Secretary of Labor had decided that the Act’s requirement that employers must provide workers “employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards” meant that American Cyanamid had to “fix the workplace” through industrial clean-up rather than “fix the employees” by sterilizing or removing all women workers of child-bearing age. But Judge Bork strongly disagreed. He wrote an opinion for his colleagues apparently endorsing the view that other clean-up measures were not necessary or possible and that the sterilization policy was, in any event, a “realistic and clearly lawful” way to prevent harm to the women’s fetuses.

Rachel Maddow did a whole piece on this tonight. http://video.ca.msn.com/watch/video/robert-bork-conservative-icon-dead-at-85/17y2fh7jd
Disgusting. R.I.H. (Rot In Hell) is more appropriate.
 
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Alessandra Kelley

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... there may be something to the belief the process Bork went through during his confirmation hearings went a long way in contributing to the way presidential nominees get roughed up and dragged through the mud.

Who would have thought the practice of "Borking" a nominee would endure to this day?

Vicious supreme court appointment hearings did not start with Bork's treatment.

Thurgood Marshall's confirmation hearings in 1967 were particularly nasty.

Ten of the eleven votes against Marshall's appointment were from committed white racists from the solid south who made some pretty vile statements.

During the hearings, Senator Strom "Obscene nickname related to his mistreatment of women" Thurmond demanded that Marshall name the members of the committee who drafted the fourteenth amendment, then called him "stupid" when he couldn't. Thurmond was subsequently unable to name them when questioned.

The only reason people think it started with Bork seems to be because the Bork hearings were televised.
 

LAgrunion

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First of all, I'll admit my own bias - I'm judicial conservative.

I don't know much about Mr. Bork's career. I was a teenager when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, so I wasn't that informed back then. However, based on the little I know about his jurisprudence, I find much of his legal reasoning to be admirable and appealing. I like the logic of judicial conservatism, though I'll admit I often hate the results.

I think the biggest impact of the Bork hearings is on the subsequent nominees. Everyone learned from Bork's mistake of having the integrity to explain his views, which were both intellectual and nuanced. Much of the attack from the Left sounded like unfair demagoguery (Yes, it's not only the Right who engages in such tactics), like "Oh, look at his conclusions, he's so heartless and mean." The attacks were more often based on a distaste for his conclusions, and less on a critique of his reasoning.

Since then, nominees (both on the Right and the Left) have largely disgusted me in the utter phoniness of their responses during confirmation hearings - dodging questions, pretending to be neutral, disavowing anything controversial in their past writings. ("Oh, Roe v. Wade? I've never given it much thought.") Because now everyone knows how to play the game. You pretend to be bland. You get confirmed. Then you do whatever the hell you want. If you're a liar, you win. If you're honest, you get punished.

Ugh.
 

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I like the logic of judicial conservatism, though I'll admit I often hate the results.

Shouldn't a major principle of the highest judicial body in the land be to render decisions that improve things, rather than make them worse. Seems to me the Constitution was based on this principle.

caw
 

Alessandra Kelley

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I like the logic of judicial conservatism, though I'll admit I often hate the results.

Bork does not seem to have actually followed that logic, regardless of what he preached.

In 1987 the Public Citizen Litigation Group published an exhaustive report on Judge Bork’s judicial record:

The authors could find no “consistent application of judicial restraint or any other judicial philosophy” in Bork’s work on the Court. Rather, by focusing on split decisions, where judicial ideology is made most plain, Public Citizen found that “one can predict [Bork’s] vote with almost complete accuracy simply by identifying the parties in the case.” When the government litigated against a business corporation, Judge Bork voted for the business interest 100% of the time. But when government was challenged by workers, environmentalists and consumers, Bork voted nearly 100% of the time for the government.

...

"His vote favored the executive in every one of the seven split decisions in which public interest organizations challenged regulations issued by federal agencies.”

...

Yet, in the eight split decisions where a business interest challenged the government, Judge Bork voted straight down the line for business every time.
 

LAgrunion

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Bork does not seem to have actually followed that logic, regardless of what he preached.

In 1987 the Public Citizen Litigation Group published an exhaustive report on Judge Bork’s judicial record:

I’m ignorant about PCLG, so I’m not sure about its biases.

But it’s possible PCLG is right. I haven’t examined Bork’s entire record, so I can’t say with confidence. But having read a few of his decisions a long time ago, I got the impression of judicial conservatism.

The Right on SCOTUS certainly is capable of hypocrisy. See Bush v Gore – not a model of judicial restraint.

Shouldn't a major principle of the highest judicial body in the land be to render decisions that improve things, rather than make them worse. Seems to me the Constitution was based on this principle.

This is probably a ten-hour conversation. :) But I’ll try to distill my thoughts down.

It’s the job of government at large to improve things. SCOTUS is a component of government. The issue is how SCOTUS should function within that leviathan.

The Left prefers wise philosopher-kings on SCOTUS. The justices will dispense just, humane decisions based on what they feel is right. If necessary, be willing to deviate from legislative intent. I see the appeal. If you like right X, you’ll love it if a justice goes freelance and invents right X in the Constitution. But what if a justice invents right Y, which you detest? Without standards, SCOTUS jurisprudence becomes arbitrary rules subject to the whims of the five-justice majority.

The Right prefers a narrower function. As Justice Roberts says, he is there is call balls and strikes. Do the results suck sometimes. Yup. But being principled means you don't get to start with what you like and work backwards. The Constitution is an old document with good and bad ideas, and fails to provide rights that should be there. But I like a republican democracy. If we need a right, we should vote through the legislature, not find five people who will impose that right by fiat. In the long run, churning our controversies through the legislature is a healthier, stabler process for society to work out its conflicts and reach consensus.

That said, Keynes says we’re all dead in the long run. As I get older, I get a better appreciation of wanting to fix shit now, not later. Sometimes, I too want to chuck principles and simply go for results. I get it. I’m selfish and impatient. So, yeah, I can see why some prefer realpolitk pragmatism over philosophical ideals.

A quick story before I go. Years ago, I interviewed for a job as a law clerk with a Federal District Court judge. She said to me that she'd tell me how she wanted to rule on a motion. My job was to research and find the support for her decision. I thought, uh, isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Of course, I wanted the job and, being a chicken shit, didn't argue with her.

That experience has disillusioned me to this day.

(Full disclosure: I didn't get the job. So maybe I'm just bitter.)

ETA: Damn, it took me about two hours to write this. I know, I'm the slowest writer in the universe. I had intended to edit my novel. AW's PCE forum is the mob that keeps pulling me back, even though I'm trying to wean myself from it. I thought I was doing pretty good for a while...
 
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clintl

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Quite apart from his judicial philosophy, his role as Nixon hatchetman during the Watergate investigate disqualified him ethically for the position. That alone was reason enough to reject him.