Editing Robert Bork (section)

===Advocacy of originalism===
[[File:Robert Heron Bork.jpg|thumb|Bork's official judicial portrait, painted by [[Peter Egeli]]]]
Bork is known by [[Conservatism in the United States|American conservatives]] for his theory that the best way to reconcile the role of the judiciary in the U.S. government against what he terms the "[[James Madison|Madisonian]]" or [[Counter-majoritarian difficulty|"counter-majoritarian" dilemma]] of the judiciary making law without popular approval is for constitutional adjudication to be guided by the framers' [[originalism|original understanding]] of the [[United States Constitution]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Mark |first1=Graber |title=Robert Bork, the original originalist |url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-bork-20121221-story.html |access-date=April 22, 2021 |work=The Baltimore Sun |date=December 24, 2012}}</ref> Reiterating that it is a court's task to adjudicate and not to "legislate from the bench," he advocated that [[judicial restraint|judges exercise restraint]] in deciding cases, emphasizing that the role of the courts is to frame "neutral principles" (a term borrowed from [[Herbert Wechsler]]) and not simply ''ad hoc'' pronouncements or subjective value judgments. Bork once said, "The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else."<ref>{{Cite book |title = The American Constitution and the Debate Over Originalism |author = Dennis J. Goldford |publisher = Cambridge University Press |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=w9lFMxRsI7AC |year = 2005 |isbn = 978-0-521-84558-8 |page = 174 |access-date = October 26, 2008 }}{{Dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Bork built on the influential critiques of the [[Warren Court]] authored by [[Alexander Bickel]], who criticized the Supreme Court under [[Earl Warren]], alleging shoddy and inconsistent reasoning, undue [[Judicial activism|activism]], and misuse of historical materials. Bork's critique was harder-edged than Bickel's, writing: "We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own." Bork's writings influenced judges such as [[Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court|Associate Justice]] [[Antonin Scalia]] and [[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief Justice]] [[William Rehnquist]] of the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]], and sparked vigorous debate within legal academia about how to [[Judicial interpretation|interpret]] the Constitution.

Some conservatives criticized Bork's approach. Conservative scholar [[Harry Jaffa]] criticized Bork (along with Rehnquist and Scalia) for failing to adhere to [[natural law]] principles, and therefore believing that the Constitution says nothing about abortion or [[gay rights]] (Jaffa believed that the Constitution ''prohibited'' these things.)<ref name=Jaffa>{{Cite news |last = Linstrum |first= Erik |title = Political scholar Jaffa defends moral foundation of government |periodical = The Daily Princetonian |date = September 30, 2003 |url = http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2003/09/30/8663/ |access-date = December 11, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090605200549/http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2003/09/30/8663/ |archive-date=June 5, 2009 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Pulliam |first1=Mark |title=Bad Originalism |url=https://misruleoflaw.com/2019/04/17/bad-originalism-harry-jaffas-toxic-constitutional-legacy/ |website=Misrule of Law}}</ref> [[Robert P. George]] explained Jaffa's critique this way: "He attacks Rehnquist and Scalia and Bork for their embrace of [[legal positivism]] that is inconsistent with the doctrine of [[natural rights]] that is embedded in the Constitution they are supposed to be interpreting."<ref name=Jaffa/> Jaffa attacked Bork as insufficiently conservative.<ref>{{cite book |last=Jaffa |first=Harry V. |title=Storm Over The Constitution |year=1999 |publisher=Lexington Books |isbn=978-0-7391-0041-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JOlUjKDiHzUC}}</ref> Bork, in turn, described adherents of natural law constitutionalism as fanatical.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Bork |first1=Robert H. |title=Constitutional Persons |url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/01/constitutional-persons-an-exchange-on-abortion |website=First Things|date=January 2003}}</ref>