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Robert Heron Bork (born March 1, 1927) is a well-known conservative legal scholar and former judge who advocates an originalist
interpretation of the United States
Constitution.
Robert Bork advocates that the Constitution should be interpreted objectively based on the Framers' original understanding of
the constitutional text. He was an activist for judicial restraint, reiterating that it was the Court's task to adjudicate, not
to legislate, from the bench. Robert Bork spells his argument as: "We are increasingly governed not by law or elected
representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own." This
view has been followed more often in the legal opinions of conservative judges such as Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William
Rehnquist.
He started in private practice in 1954 and then was a professor at Yale Law School from 1962 to 1975 and 1977 to 1981.
At Yale, he was best known as a "law and economics" scholar, writing The Antitrust Paradox, a book that argued that antitrust law
should be interpreted to favor the interests of consumers, who often benefit from mergers.
He was Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice from 1972 to 1977 and acting
Attorney General of the United States from 1973 to 1974. As acting
Attorney General, he is known for carrying out U.S. President Richard
Nixon's order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox following Cox's request of tapes of Oval Office conversations.
Nixon's Attorney General Elliot Richardson and the next man in
line, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, left the
office rather than carry out that order. The event is sometimes known as the "Saturday Night Massacre". Bork, next in line after Richardson and Ruckelshaus, was promoted by
Nixon to acting Attorney General, and promptly fired Cox on the advice of his predecessors. He subsequently resumed his duties as
Solicitor General.
Bork was a circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit from 1982 to 1988, and was nominated by
President Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court in 1987. He was strongly opposed by political groups favoring a continuation of the
liberal jurisprudence of the Warren and Burger courts. To pro-choice groups, Bork's strong views on judicial restraint, and his previous rulings
stating there was no Constitutional right to privacy, were viewed as a clear signal that if he became a Justice on the Supreme
Court, he would vote to reverse the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v.
Wade. Accordingly, a large number of politically liberal groups mobilized to pressure for Bork's rejection, and the
resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely ideological
battle. The Senate rejected Bork's confirmation with a 58-42 vote.
Republicans asserted that he had been treated unfairly in the confirmation hearings, and the fact is that the Reagan White
House had been unprepared for such an acrimonious confirmation battle, thinking that Bork's stellar credentials would immunize
him from much ideological and partisan criticism. Soon, a verb was invented from his name: to be borked is to be roughly
treated and then fail confirmation at a Congressional confirmation hearing. Many critics attacked Bork's confirmation process as
being purely ideologically based, and alleged that in the future, the only judges that would survive the confirmation process
would be judges who had never ruled on, or publicly spoken about their views on, controversial matters such as abortion.
Following his failure to be confirmed, he became a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He now
researches Constitutional law, antitrust law, and cultural issues. He has also written several books, including Slouching Towards
Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline.
Bork converted to Catholicism in 2003.
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