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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greatplains_guy who wrote (60445)	12/20/2012 2:19:20 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The Great Robert Bork The jurist had more impact than most Supreme Court Justices.. December 19, 2012, 7:18 p.m. ET The U.S. Senate has had many low, retrograde moments, but easily among the worst was its 1987 rejection of Robert Bork to sit on the Supreme Court. Bob Bork died Wednesday at age 85, having contributed far more to American law than the 58 Senators who voted against him and more than most Supreme Court Justices. It's hard to remember the passions unleashed by Ronald Reagan's nomination of Judge Bork, who was among the most famous jurists of the era. He had been Solicitor General of the U.S. and Acting Attorney General when his superiors resigned during the Watergate trauma. As a Yale law professor, he was hugely popular as a teacher and hugely influential as a scholar. His 1978 book, "The Antitrust Paradox," helped to revolutionize antitrust law by focusing less on business market share and more on whether corporate mergers benefit consumers. Reagan nominated him to the D.C. Circuit in 1981, awaiting what everyone knew would be the eventual Supreme Court selection. The Gipper overlooked him initially to select the first woman, Sandra Day O'Connor. That was his first big mistake. Then expecting two more openings in his second term, Reagan first nominated Antonin Scalia in 1986 on grounds that Bork was so distinguished he would have an easier confirmation if Democrats took over the Senate later that year. It was an historic miscalculation. Led by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden at his slimiest in charge of the Judiciary Committee, Democrats and the left ran a smear campaign for the ages. Bork wasn't helped by a Reagan White House—in particular by his supposed "sherpa" Ken Duberstein—that underestimated the ferocity of opponents and left him politically undefended until it was too late. So nasty was the campaign against Bork that his name became a verb—to bork, as in to utterly trash someone's personal and professional reputation. For younger readers who wonder when U.S. politics took on their current poisonous character, the Bork fight was the turning point. Democrats cast the first smear. Despite his nomination's defeat, Judge Bork has continued to influence current law and political debate. He was a champion of originalism, which to oversimplify means interpreting the Constitution based on the text and its original meaning. He believed in judicial restraint in the tradition of Felix Frankfurter, among others, but by the time he was nominated the judicial left had decided the law was whatever liberals say it is. This intellectual divide lives on in our law and at the current Supreme Court, with Justice Scalia perhaps closest in his views to Bork's jurisprudence. We are delighted to say Judge Bork was also a frequent contributor to these pages, and we offer a flavor of his work nearby. His legacy is the enduring Constitution and those who protect it against the legal inventions of the moment. online.wsj.com Here is a sample of one of his articles: Message 22063500