Talk:Robert Bork

message: Kennedy's criticism is dismissed without addressing his specific claims, for example: "Mr. Bork should also be rejected by the Senate because he stands for an extremist view of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court that would have placed him outside the mainstream of American constitutional jurisprudence in the 1960s, let alone the 1980s. He opposed the Public Accommodations Civil Rights Act of 1964. He opposed the one-man one-vote decision of the Supreme Court the same year. He has said that the First Amendment applies only to political speech, not literature or works of art or scientific expression."   In fact, this criticism was confirmed during the hearings.  --Forrest Johnson (talk) 23:27, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Kennedy Unfairly Dismissed

message: He's obviously used as the basis for one of the judges in the Simpsons.
Are we allowed to put a Simpsons reference in here if it's properly cited?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.124.184 (talk) 04:57, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Simpsons

message: --The politics of Judge Bork's rejection for Supreme Court justice are also described from an ideological point of view, as I see it. There was unusually intense, unusually widespread public opposition to the nomination--not (or at least not primarily) because of liberal pressure groups, but primarily because the nominee's clearly stated views on major Constitutional issues were seen by millions of Americans as extreme and potentially threatening to fundamental American liberties. The article effectively characterizes the American public and an unusually large majority of the U.S. Senate as followers of liberal pressure groups. But such groups don't have the independent power to determine the outcome of a Senate vote. The contrary insinuation is, I think, part of the Right's phony representation of itself as some kind of persecuted minority--as if in some way, Bork had an inherent right to be on the Supreme Court, which was denied to him unfairly.
Apart from giving the Right an excuse for a lasting resentment, the major effect of the failed Bork nomination has been that prospective nominees for high court positions are now "vetted" more carefully, to make sure that no one can hold them responsible for their positions on any politically sensitive issues. That trend makes the hearing process go more smoothly, but it is not at all clear that the people's interests are being well served by it.
How the politics of the Bork nomination led to the debacle of Clarence Thomas' nomination and confirmation should certainly be discussed somewhere--perhaps on Clarence Thomas' page--though to do that without ideological slant would require a degree of detachment which I can scarcely imagine.
DSatz 22:42, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)
: On revisiting the page six months later, it looks considerably better to me from an NPOV standpoint. Many thanks to those who have worked on it. DSatz 22:25, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
: : The question was always whether having a strict interpretation of law should be considered an extremist viewpoint. The function of 'liberal pressure groups' was in being alarmist and claiming that if the courts acted more strictly, we'd lose all of our rights, while the legislature always has the ability to pass new laws and establish rights that way. There was also the insinuation that people who supported Bork must have been racist, because of the effect of some of his viewpoints. I don't consider myself as on 'the right', but I respect conservative attitude towards the courts. Their view on the judiciary should have never been considered 'extreme', so Bork was a victim of political fashion. Your view that conservatives were playing victims is based on your POV that their opinions are extreme. But what if they aren't?
I am a conservative and this page, at least on first blush, seems fair to me. But, give me a little time...I'm sure I'll find SOMETHING wrong with it! lol!
Big Daddy
Ps So far...so good. I guess one point that could be made was that Bork was...er...Bork'd during the 'bad old days' of the news media, before Fox news and even before Limbaugh gained much of his clout.
So, in essence the PR job done on him by the left was not scrutinized as carefully in the media as it would be today.
Thus, the "unusually widespread public opposition" of the man, as described above by DSatz, may be more a function of the effectiveness of a left-leaning press unhindered by the countervaling efforts of Bill O'Reilly etc, than any actual nation wide concensus.
Big Daddy 05:03, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: NPOV

message: The description of the joke leaves one with the impression that Robert Bork had fired Archibald Cox for an illegitimate reason when he did so upon Richard Nixon's order and only after Elliot Richardson convinced him not to resign in protest as Richardson had done.  The encyclopedia gets it right on the "Saturday Night Massacre" page, it ought to get it right here.
People usually apologize for being wrong, so at least DSatz is honest about that. I doubt he is honest about remembering the Bork joke regarding the Saturday Night Massacre, but even if his memory is accurate it is irrelevant. Find a serious contemporaneous citation or leave it out. 
Actually, just plain leave it out. Maybe such a reference would belong in a comprehensive history, but it not a significant fact about the subject, and the punch line is biased as pointed out in the comment “Bork” as verb above.
:This alternative verb meaning has crept back in.  I have never heard of this "original meaning."  Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to a citation?  Otherwise, it should go.Rkevins82 06:00, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: "Saturday Night Massacre"  

message: Ironically, Robert H. Bork arguably borked judicial nominee Harriet Mier in an October 19, 2005 Wall Street Journal editorial where he states she lacks "the basic skills of persuasive argument and clear writing", is without "philosophy of judging", and "demonstrates absolutely no ability to write clearly and argue incisively." [3]  14:56, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bork borking? 

message: This section added to see examples and articles discussing its use. Also started off with some examples. 69.109.241.185 21:08, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: These articles actually prove my point about the descriptive definition of "borking": if "borking" weren't being used to describe unfair attacks, there wouldn't need to be an extensive David Brock campaign to defend the attacks on Bork as not unfair. -- FRCP11 00:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links to Usage Examples and Articles 

message: Articles discussing the use of the term "Bork" as a verb .
Article links from mediamatters.org added without distinguishing if they can or should be listed under examples section above. (No time at the moment).   69.109.241.185 00:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: These articles actually prove my point about the descriptive definition of "borking": if "borking" weren't being used to describe unfair attacks, there wouldn't need to be an extensive David Brock campaign to defend the attacks on Bork as not unfair. -- FRCP11 00:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles 

message: I was not aware of this as the origin of the terms 'bork' (and it's past participle 'borked') Instead I was under the impression that it related to something being broken or non-functional possibly as a result of action from a separate party - e.g. "That latest upgrade totally borked my PC!", so does the term in that context have a connection to this topic, or it is perhaps an anagram of the almost word "broked"? SlySven (talk) 23:27, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other uses? 

message: Does anyone have a link to the Bork confirmation hearing transcripts? Mirror Vax 14:19, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! Mirror Vax 13:30, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confirmation transcripts link 

message: The article suggests that Bork intended to refuse Nixon's order to fire Cox, and intended to resign, but was persuaded by Richardson to stay on for the good of the department. That's not quite was Sussman wrote in the  Great Cover-Up: "Bork... had told them that someone would certainly eventually be found to fire Cox, so he would do it and then resign. Richardson suggested that Bork fire Cox and stay on, as someone was needed to run the shop." And that's hardly the only diverging opinion on what exactly Bork said and thought at the time. I'd like to suggest that a little more work be put into that one.
21:24, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saturday Night Massacre 

message: According to Saturday Night Massacre Bork was "Solicitor General" when firing Cox. But according to this article he was "acting Attorney General". Can someone clarify?
At the time Cox was a special counsel, whose duties fell under the jurisdiction of the Dept. of Justice.
As far as I know only the Attorney General-or in Bork's case, the acting Attorney General-had the capacity to fire him, although I could be mistaken.
Here's a link, which might clarify the details of that evening's events:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm
Ruthfulbarbarity 10:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saturday Night Massacre - Part 2

message: I am an employee at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, MI and it appears that Bork now is a faculty member here.
I was a student at the University of Richmond School of Law in Richmond, Virginia. I can confirm he visited in fall of 2004. He co-taught a constitutional law course I was enrolled in with the dean of the law school. Erechtheus 23:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Current Bork Activities

message: The National Review article, at least the excerpt quoted at Reason magazine, advocates not just that the Supreme Court should allow censorship, but that legislatures should enact it.  Unless User:Rkevins82 has access to the text of the article and can cite a quote to the opposite effect, I suggest we revert the first sentence to what it was before: In December 2005, Bork wrote an article in the periodical National Review calling for government censorship of popular culture, including television, film and music.  since it's a stronger claim. Grover cleveland 08:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know why we would desire the stronger claim, a priori, when it doesn't seem as though you've read the article.  I have access and have quoted from it.  If more is desired I will find a way to share it. Rkevins82 22:52, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Trying to keep in line with copyright law, I present the closing paragraph: " Much, perhaps most, of this is caused by the Supreme Court’s embrace of the liberationist philosophy. As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent, “Day by day, case by case, [the Supreme Court] is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.” It is past time that a Court be selected that will allow the re-erection of the walls that make liberty possible. " Rkevins82 02:30, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: ''[[National Review]]'' article

message: An article in the GWU student newspaper Hatchet, claimed Robert Bork delivered a remarkably good imitation of Darth Vader at a Project for a New American Century dinner in October 2005 at Signatures restaurant in DC. The article claims a student working as a waiter heard the self-effacing Bork say "Luke, I am your father" to Lewis "Scooter'" Libby and received applause from Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Zalmay Khalilzad. Robert Bork has a warm and funny side, I'd love to see this article reflect at least a little of that. 207.180.184.211 23:06, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Bork Darth Vadar impersonation story was on NPR last winter. Pretty funny. Probably not needed on his wiki aticle though.  CApitol3 18:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "'Luke, I'm your father" imitation at Signatures restaurant

message: I was surprised to see no reference to a list of Supreme Court nominees whose appointments were subsequently rejected by the Senate or, further, whose nominations were withdrawn in the face of obvious issues of disqualifications or lack of qualifications.
Maybe we need to start a list of those S.C. rejects, perhaps including a list of nominees whose appointments were confirmed but who, in retrospect, were mistakes. (A nominally subjective assessment, admittedly.) To me, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and perhaps Antonin Kennedy would qualify 
Ahh, but there's the rub. To lefties like YOU, Thomas, Alito, etc. qualify as SC mistakes...but to many others, like ME, radical socialist judges like Ruth B. Ginsburg and David Souter were/are abominations to the court, preaching an outdated, anti-Constitutional and activist-statist view on the courts and worsening America for it. A list of "worst SC appointees" would, by it's very definition, be NPOV, and therefore completely unsuitable to Wikipedia.
-TROY
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.13.122.21 (talk) 08:20, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree.  A list of rejected SC nominees is an interesting idea, but there is no way we can have a list of "mistakes on the Court" without it being someone's POV. 68.40.64.186 21:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Supreme Court nominees who were never confirmed to the seat 

message: No one is going to remember the Yale Club lawsuit a dozen years from now.  The discussion is decidedly unencyclopedic, of questionable notability, and violates WP:WEIGHT.  I'd remove it myself, but whichever editor added the paragraph quoted me on the subject, so I raise on the talk page first pursuant to WP:SCOIC.  THF 14:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Possibly. However Bloomberg has some interesting quotes from earlier in his career .  If you are concerned you could try a content RFC or request for third opinion. Thatcher131 03:06, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's completely relevant, received a good deal of media coverage, and it's not up to us to look into our CRYSTAL ball and decide what will be remembered in 12 years.  Should never have been removed.  --David Shankbone 03:18, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yale Club lawsuit 

message: The article misrepresents Bork's reasoning in Dronenburg. 38.100.43.50 (talk) 19:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: I just want to correct an error - My name is Cricket Farnsworth and I have nothing to do with the Yale Club - the article says I am the office manager there. i in fact work for the magazine that was holding the event. (i have no idea how to edit the page, or the time to learn how right now)Cricketfar (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  yale case 

message: A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Robert Heron Bork was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 16:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Bot-created subpage

message: I added this section to explain why people like the National Organization for Women or other groups who opposed Bork's nomination would object.  Also wanted to shed light on the fact that originalism or what conservatives would call "judicial activism" are choices that judges make.  There are serious constitutional conflicts that stem from which interpretive rubrics the justices use to resolve constitutional questions.  Some do believe that the extra-textual searching that originalists do is more legitimate than other approaches.  This really opens a can of worms, however.  It is possible that certain founders intended something that is completely at odds with the texts as written.  One has to ask what the purpose of drafting and ratifying is.  If the text itself doesn't have some elevated status above the separate thoughts and feelings of the drafters, then actually what we have is a constitution that is the combined works and recorded thoughts of the founders on the Constitution and all of its amendments.  And one has no guidance about where to stop.  In interpreting the First Amendment, do Madison's pre-war views on newspapers come into play?  Views five years before the drafting?  One year?  If taken in its broadest sense, originalists could be combing through any recorded record of any of the drafters to determine their attitudes towards rights and constitutional provisions.  And what if a drafter changed views several times?  The Founders surely could not have intended that judges be required to dig through mountains of public and private writings to interpret the Constitution.  If that were the case, the founders would have passed no constitution at all, but instead judges would infer everything the constitution represents through the collected writings and speeches of a select group of all-important people (the founders).
The actual words of the Constitution are only a tiny fraction of what originalists consider, and are only relevant to the extent that some founder or other talked about them separately.  Practically speaking, that is what originalism represents.  Any originalist has to grapple with these issues, and that is why a section on the problems with originalism is apropos here. --MoebiusFlip (talk) 11:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems with Bork's Originalism

message: This article should definitely mention Bork's 1971 article in the Indiana Law Review titled "Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems".  The Nation magazine picked up on this several years before Bork was nominated, and a pre-existing distaste for the conclusions of this article by a number of influential liberals was one of the main reasons why an instant firestorm of disapproval sprung up as soon as his name was revealed for the court nomination.  While casting aspersions on Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe vs. Wade certainly didn't score any points with lefties, there was also a more basic disquiet with Bork's views on the first amendment revealed in the 1971 article.  His statements that there was no right to freedom of artistic speech, only to 
freedom of speech for political purposes convinced many that Bork was eagerly itching to destroy significant parts of commonly-understood 1st amendment rights and protections.  If Bork had firmly repudiated and apologized for the 1971 law journal article, then there was a significant chance that he might have been confirmed... AnonMoos (talk) 19:39, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The Nation article by Jamie Kalven was published October 1, 1983, almost four years before his Supreme Court nomination: ,   .  This link seems to be the text of the article (though not labelled as such):  -- AnonMoos (talk) 14:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: 1971 Indiana Law Review article

message: Why does this article not include any mention of his flippant (inkblot) view of the Ninth Amendment?  That was one of his most controversial statements.  It belongs here.--222.152.93.87 (talk) 11:35, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Ninth Amendment

message: I removed Bork from the University of Chicago alumni category.  The University of Chicago Law School alumni category is a subcategory, therefore he should only be there and not in the parent category.  The fact that he also is an undergrad alumni of the University of Chicago is not relevant.
People should be placed in the most relvenant category, and not in multiple ones.  Thus, we put a person in American Roman Catholic priests and not also in American Roman Catholics.  In virtually all cases they were an American Roman Catholic before they were a priest, and some may have been notable Catholics before they were priests, but we only put people in the most relevant categories.
If Bork had got his bachelors degree from the University of Chicago College of Social Sicences, and if there was a category for alumni of this college, we could put him in both that category and the Law School category, but as long as one category is the sub-category of another category used the article should be placed in only the most specific category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:29, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories 

message: Why doesn't this article mention that he was a socialist in his youth?  It seems to me that at one time it did, but evidently someone with a POV removed it because maybe they found it embarassing?  Here's a decent source   (I believe) if anyone wishes to work this into the article. Shanoman (talk) 07:56, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why isn't there a mention of his leftist politics in his youth? 

message: I know he endorsed him the first time around, but it still needs a citation, and it also needs one if he reiterated his endorsement. J390 (talk) 00:41, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Romney endorsements need a citation 

message: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/12/19/robert-h-bork-1927-2012/ 108.18.242.227 (talk) 14:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead? 

message: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Heron_Bork.jpg I am starting to upload a portrait collection for the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, including that one of Bork. Linking it here in case anybody cares to use it in the article. Safiel (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bork Portrait that may be of use for this article 

message: The article asserts that Justice Powell was a “moderate.”  He most certainly was not.  He once expressed the view that a woman who had been raped by a burglar while her husband was in the house had not “sustained serious or lasting injury.”  See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584, 601 (1977) (Powell, J., concurring and dissenting).John Paul Parks (talk) 18:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: He was relatively moderate, certainly compared to Bork. My recollection is that even Kennedy was seen as a step to the right at the time. Powell would have been the most conservative member of the Warren court, perhaps, but he was more or less in the middle on the Burger court (at the time of his retirement, Scalia, Rehnquist, and O'Connor were seen as being to his right, and Marshall, Brennan, Blackmun, and Stevens to his left, with White to his right on some issues and to his left on others. john k (talk) 00:48, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: Justice Powell No "Moderate"

message: Why is this the only judgment on the accuracy of Kennedy's comments? I mean, it's a judgment call, but Kennedy wasn't just pulling that stuff out of nowhere - they were uncharitable characterizations based on Bork's actual record. Here's Dave Weigel (who is not particularly liberal) on the subject from around the same time. john k (talk) 00:45, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bork "may well have been correct" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The second sentence in the lead says  – what on earth is that supposed to mean? One can train to be many things (lawyer, surgeon, fighter pilot, probably lion tamer for all I know), but whether you interpret 'professor' as an academic rank, or in the looser American sense of someone who provides tertiary tuition, I've never heard of anyone training or being trained for either role. -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 12:00, 27 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "A professor by training"?