Robert Bork: In His Own Words

On February. 18, 1988, Congress approved unanimously the nomination of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy 97-0. However, Kennedy would never have become a Justice if President Reagan's first nomination Robert Bork hadn't been rejected after a fiery speech from Senator Ted Kennedy.

Senator Kennedy took to the floor to condemn Bork. He accused Bork by saying:

'Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ... President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.'

Bork replied to the accusation with one sentence,  "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate."

The Reagan administration was shocked by the speech. 

Here are Bork's views in his own words during an interview with CSPAN





About the Author

Robert H. Bork
was an American judge, government official, and legal scholar. He is known for his advocacy of the judicial philosophy of Originalism. He is the author of many books among them his bestseller Slouching Towards Gomorrah