{"id":748,"date":"2012-12-19T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T15:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/12\/19\/bork-hearings-proved-instructive"},"modified":"2012-12-19T15:51:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T15:51:00","slug":"bork-hearings-proved-instructive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=748","title":{"rendered":"Bork hearings proved instructive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Former federal judge Robert Bork has died at age 85. He became something of a symbol back in 1987 when the U.S. Senate denied him a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. Here\u2019s how it went down, as I recall it.<\/p>\n

President Reagan nominated Bork to the court. He was a brilliant legal scholar. On paper, he seemed eminently qualified to sit on the High Court. One little problem emerged, though. It seems that Bork\u2019s writings on a whole array of social issues caused big-time grief with many senators, who were empowered by the Constitution to \u201cadvise and consent\u201d to any federal judicial nomination. Many liberals \u2013 led by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy \u2013 expressed intense loathing, for example, of Bork\u2019s views on abortion. They fought Bork tooth and nail.<\/p>\n

In the end, Bork\u2019s nomination was voted down. Indeed, the treatment he received from the Senate turned his name into a verb. To be \u201cBorked,\u201d according to conservatives, was to be treated unfairly by one\u2019s critics. What\u2019s more, the bitter tone of that fight has set the stage for many similar battles in subsequent Supreme Court nominations.<\/p>\n

Bork\u2019s nomination came to symbolize something about presidential appointments. <\/p>\n

I tend to endorse presidential picks on a single principle: the prerogative that goes with holding the highest office in the land. <\/p>\n

Reagan had been re-elected in 1984. He ran then as he did four years earlier, by pledging \u2013 among many things \u2013 to appoint conservative judges. And oh brother, he picked a doozy of a conservative in Bork. <\/p>\n

Would this judge have been my choice? No. But it wasn\u2019t my call to make.<\/p>\n

He was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, but he didn\u2019t get the nod because the same Constitution that gives appointment power to the president also gives the Senate the authority to reject an appointment whenever it sees fit.<\/p>\n

A Justice Bork could have turned out to be quite different than the federal judge whose lengthy paper trail became such an inviting target for critics. It\u2019s happened before, with presidents picking justices who built legacies no one would have expected.<\/p>\n

Robert Bork\u2019s nomination and its result has provided a graphic lesson on the complexities of our system of government. Somehow, it works.<\/p>\n\n

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Former federal judge Robert Bork has died at age 85. He became something of a symbol back in 1987 when the U.S. Senate denied him a place on the U.S. Supreme Court. Here\u2019s how it went down, as I recall it. President Reagan nominated Bork to the court. He was a brilliant legal scholar. On … Continue reading Bork hearings proved instructive<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}