Damon Root: When Judicial Activists Switched Sides
On July 1, 1987, President Ronald Reagan introduced the American people to the man he had selected to replace retiring Justice Lewis Powell on the U.S. Supreme Court. Robert Bork "is recognized as a premier constitutional authority," Reagan announced, with the nominee standing by his side. A former solicitor general of the United States, a distinguished former professor of law at Yale University, and a sitting judge on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Bork did indeed come well qualified for the position. Furthermore, Reagan continued, Bork is "widely regarded as the most prominent and intellectually powerful advocate of judicial restraint," the idea that judges should defer to the will of the majority and refrain from striking down most democratically enacted laws. As a justice, Reagan concluded, Robert Bork "will bring credit to the Court and his colleagues, as well as to his country and the Constitution."
Less than an hour later, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, a prominent liberal Democrat, took to the floor of the Senate to offer a very different take on Reagan's pick. "Robert Bork's America," Kennedy declared, "is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters…and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
Hide Comments (0)
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post commentsMute this user?
Ban this user?
Un-ban this user?
Nuke this user?
Un-nuke this user?
Flag this comment?
Un-flag this comment?