Editing Robert Bork (section)

==Career==
===Academia===
After law school, Bork spent another year in military service. From 1954 to 1962, he was in private practice at the law firms [[Kirkland & Ellis]] and [[Willkie Farr & Gallagher]].<ref name=":0">{{cite news |last=Bronner |first=Ethan |title=A Conservative Whose Supreme Court Bid Set the Senate Afire |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/us/robert-h-bork-conservative-jurist-dies-at-85.html |work=The New York Times |date=December 19, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/nomination-robert-h-bork-be-associate-justice-supreme-court-united-states|title = Nomination of Robert H. Bork to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States}}</ref> In 1962, Bork left private practice and joined the faculty of [[Yale Law School]] as a professor. He taught at Yale from 1962 to 1981, with a four-year break from 1973 to 1977 when he served as U.S. Solicitor General. Among Bork's students at Yale Law were [[Bill Clinton]], [[Hillary Clinton]], [[Anita Hill]], [[Robert Reich]], [[Jerry Brown]], [[Linda Greenhouse]], [[John Bolton]], [[Samuel Issacharoff]], and [[Cynthia Estlund]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Special Counsel Investigation|url=http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/109864-1|work=Washington Journal|publisher=C-SPAN|date=August 11, 1998}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Frey |first=Jennifer |url=http://blogs.law.nyu.edu/magazine/uncategorized/samuel-issacharoff |title=Introducing Samuel Issacharoff |publisher=The Law School Magazine |year=2005 |access-date=December 20, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110501031026/http://blogs.law.nyu.edu/magazine/uncategorized/samuel-issacharoff |archive-date=May 1, 2011 |url-status=live}}</ref>

As a law professor, Bork was best known for his 1978 book ''[[The Antitrust Paradox]]'', in which he argued that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers, and that many contemporary readings of the [[antitrust]] laws were economically irrational and hurt consumers. He posited that the primary focus of antitrust laws should be on consumer welfare, including producer welfare and consumer welfare, rather than ensuring competition, for fostering competition of companies within an industry has a natural built-in tendency to allow, and even help, many poorly run companies with methodologies and practices that are both inefficient and expensive to continue in business simply for the sake of competition, to the detriment of both consumers and society. Bork's writings on antitrust law, with those of [[Richard Posner]] and other [[law and economics]] and [[Chicago School (economics)|Chicago School]] thinkers, have been influential in causing a shift in the Supreme Court's approach to antitrust laws since the 1970s. Bork also supports using anticompetitive practices within the text as useful business practices. (e.g. exclusive deals, mergers, price fixing, etc.) <ref>{{cite journal |last=Gerhart |first=Peter M. |title=The Supreme Court and Antitrust Analysis: The (Near) Triumph of the Chicago School |url=http://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1601&context=faculty_publications |journal=The Supreme Court Review |volume=1982 |pages=319–349 |year=1982 |jstor=3109560 |s2cid=147003503 |doi=10.1086/scr.1982.3109560}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Fox |first=Eleanor M. |title=The Battle for the Soul of Antitrust |journal=[[California Law Review]] |volume=75 |issue=3 |pages=917–923 |year=1987 |jstor=3480656 |doi=10.2307/3480656}}</ref><ref name=":1" />

===Solicitor General===
Bork served as [[Solicitor General of the United States|Solicitor General]] in the [[United States Department of Justice|U.S. Department of Justice]] from March 1973<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/21/archives/nixons-men-all-work-and-no-frills-presidents-men-all-work-and-no.html "Nixon's Men: All Work and No Frills; President's Men: All Work and No Frills"], ''The New York Times''. March 21, 1973.</ref> until 1977. As Solicitor General, he argued several high-profile cases before the Supreme Court in the 1970s, including 1974's ''[[Milliken v. Bradley]]'', where his brief in support of the [[Michigan|State of Michigan]] was influential among the justices. Chief Justice [[Warren Burger]] called Bork the most effective counsel to appear before the court during his tenure. Bork hired many young attorneys as assistants who went on to have successful careers, including judges [[Danny Boggs]] and [[Frank H. Easterbrook]] as well as [[Robert Reich]], later [[United States Secretary of Labor|Secretary of Labor]] in the Clinton administration.

====Saturday Night Massacre====
{{main|Saturday Night Massacre}}
[[File:Ford A5022 NLGRF photo contact sheet (1975-06-12)(Gerald Ford Library) (cropped).jpg|thumb|Bork greeting President [[Gerald Ford]] in the [[Oval Office]] in June 1975]]
On October 20, 1973, Solicitor General Bork was part of the "[[Saturday Night Massacre]]" when President [[Richard Nixon]] ordered the firing of [[Watergate scandal|Watergate]] Special Prosecutor [[Archibald Cox]] following Cox's request for tapes of his [[Oval Office]] conversations. Nixon initially ordered [[U.S. Attorney General]] [[Elliot Richardson]] to fire Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order. Richardson's top deputy, [[United States Deputy Attorney General|Deputy Attorney General]] [[William Ruckelshaus]], also considered the order "fundamentally wrong"<ref name="query.nytimes.com">{{cite news |last=Noble |first=Kenneth B. |author-link=Kenneth B. Noble |title=New Views Emerge of Bork's Role in Watergate Dismissals |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE2DE163FF935A15754C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150524213506/http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/26/us/new-views-emerge-of-bork-s-role-in-watergate-dismissals.html |archive-date=May 24, 2015 |work=The New York Times |date=July 26, 1987 |access-date=June 4, 2012}}</ref> and resigned, making Bork Acting Attorney General. 

When Nixon reiterated his order, Bork complied and fired Cox. Bork claimed he carried out the order under pressure from Nixon's attorneys and intended to resign immediately afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department.<ref name="Yahoo" /> Bork remained Acting Attorney General until the appointment of [[William B. Saxbe]] on January 4, 1974.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/ag/aghistpage.php?id=69 |title=William Bart Saxbe |publisher=The United States Department of Justice |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100407080247/http://www.justice.gov/ag/aghistpage.php?id=69 |archive-date=April 7, 2010}}</ref> In his posthumously published memoirs, Bork claimed that after he carried out the order, Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court,<ref name="Yahoo">{{cite news|url=https://news.yahoo.com/bork-nixon-offered-next-high-court-vacancy-73-215747517.html |title=Bork: Nixon Offered Next High Court Vacancy in '73 |date=February 25, 2013 |work=Yahoo News |agency=[[ABC News (United States)|ABC News]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130301231021/http://news.yahoo.com/bork-nixon-offered-next-high-court-vacancy-73-215747517.html |archive-date=March 1, 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref> though Bork did not take the offer seriously as he believed Watergate had left Nixon too politically compromised to appoint another justice. Nixon never had the chance to carry out his promise, as the next Supreme Court vacancy came after [[Resignation of Richard Nixon|Nixon resigned]] and [[Gerald Ford]] [[Inauguration of Gerald Ford|assumed the presidency]], with Ford instead appointing [[John Paul Stevens]] following the 1975 retirement of [[William O. Douglas]]. Ford considered nominating Bork to replace [[William Colby]] as [[Director of the Central Intelligence Agency|CIA Director]], but his advisors convinced him to turn first to [[Edward Bennett Williams]] and then [[George H. W. Bush]] instead due to Bork's unpopularity and lack of experience in intelligence.<ref>Wilentz, Sean (2008). ''The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008'' (1st ed.). New York: Harper. {{ISBN|978-0-06-074480-9}}. {{OCLC|182779124}}.</ref>

===United States Circuit Judge===
Bork was a circuit judge for the [[United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]] from 1982 to 1988. He was nominated by President [[Ronald Reagan]] on December 7, 1981, was confirmed via voice vote by the Senate on February 8, 1982,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.congress.gov/nomination/97th-congress/891 |title= PN891 – Robert H. Bork – The Judiciary |access-date=February 15, 2016|year= 1982 }}</ref> and received his commission on February 9, 1982.

One of Bork's opinions while on the D.C. Circuit was ''Dronenburg v. Zech'', 741 F.2d 1388,<ref name="Dronenburg">{{cite court |litigants=Dronenburg v. Zech   |vol=741 |reporter=F.2d |opinion=1388 |court=D.C. Cir. |date=August 17, 1984 |url=http://openjurist.org/741/f2d/1388/dronenburg-v-zech |access-date=March 2, 2016}}</ref> decided in 1984. The case involved James L. Dronenburg, a sailor who had been administratively discharged from the [[United States Navy]] for engaging in [[Sexual orientation and gender identity in the United States military|homosexual conduct]]. Dronenburg argued that his discharge violated his [[right to privacy]]. His argument was rejected in an opinion written by Bork and joined by [[Antonin Scalia]], in which Bork critiqued the line of Supreme Court cases upholding a right to privacy.<ref name="Dronenburg"/>

In rejecting Dronenburg's suggestion for a rehearing ''[[en banc]]'', the D.C. Circuit issued four separate opinions, including one by Bork (again joined by Scalia), who wrote that "no principle had been articulated [by the Supreme Court] that enabled us to determine whether appellant's case fell within or without that principle."<ref>{{cite court |litigants=Dronenburg  v. Zech  |vol=746 |reporter=F.2d |opinion=1579 |court=D.C. Cir. |date=November 15, 1984 |url=http://openjurist.org/746/f2d/1579/dronenburg-v-zech |access-date=March 2, 2016}}</ref>

In 1986, President Reagan considered nominating Bork to the Supreme Court after [[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief Justice]] [[Warren E. Burger]] retired. Reagan ultimately nominated then-[[Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court|Associate Justice]] [[William Rehnquist]] to be the next Chief Justice and Bork's D.C. Circuit colleague, [[Antonin Scalia]], for Rehnquist's Associate Justice seat. Some journalists and correspondents believed that if Reagan nominated Bork in 1986, Bork would have likely made the Supreme Court, as the Senate at that time was controlled by the Republicans. However, the Senate Democrats might still have fought to defeat Bork in 1986, and the Republicans' Senate majority at the time was narrow (53–47), which implies that maybe Bork still would have been defeated in 1986, especially when the six Republicans<ref>[[John Chafee]], [[Bob Packwood]], [[Arlen Specter]], [[Robert Stafford]], [[John Warner]], and [[Lowell Weicker]].</ref> who voted against Bork's 1987 nomination were not first elected in the [[1986 United States Senate elections|November 1986 Senate elections]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Somin |first=Ilya |title=The Volokh Conspiracy |access-date=December 20, 2012 |url=https://volokh.com/2012/12/20/what-if-robert-bork-had-been-nominated-in-1986-instead-of-scalia/ |date=December 20, 2012}}</ref>

===U.S. Supreme Court nomination===
{{main|Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination}}
{{see also|Bork tapes}}
[[File:President Ronald Reagan Meeting with Judge Robert Bork in The Oval Office.jpg|thumb|Bork (right) with President [[Ronald Reagan]] in the [[Oval Office]] in July 1987|left]]
{{Conservatism US|jurists}}
President Reagan nominated Bork for associate justice of the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] on July 1, 1987, to replace retiring Associate Justice [[Lewis F. Powell Jr.]] A hotly contested [[United States Senate]] debate over Bork's nomination ensued. Opposition was partly fueled by civil rights and women's rights groups, concerned about Bork's opposition to the authority claimed by the [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]] to impose standards of voting fairness upon states (at his confirmation hearings for the position of solicitor general, he supported the rights of Southern states to impose a [[Poll taxes in the United States|poll tax]]),<ref>{{cite news |last1=Buchanan |first1=John H. |last2=Kropp |first2=Arthur J. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/23/opinion/l-bork-hearings-showed-how-democracy-works-a-very-small-poll-tax-174787.html |title=Bork Hearings Showed How Democracy Works; A Very Small Poll Tax |work=The New York Times |date=October 23, 1987 |access-date=December 20, 2012}}</ref> and his stated desire to roll back civil rights decisions of the [[Earl Warren|Warren]] and [[Warren Burger|Burger]] courts. Bork is one of four Supreme Court nominees (along with [[William Rehnquist]], [[Samuel Alito]], and [[Brett Kavanaugh]]) to have been opposed by the [[American Civil Liberties Union]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.aclu.org/scotus/alito/ |title=ACLU Opposes Nomination of Judge Alito |access-date=August 17, 2007 |work=American Civil Liberties Union |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070406173742/http://www.aclu.org/scotus/alito/ <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date=April 6, 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=ACLU spending more than $1M to oppose Kavanaugh |url=https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/01/aclu-kavanaugh-ad-buy-854859 |publisher=Politico |date=October 2018 |access-date=October 1, 2018}}</ref> Bork was criticized for being an "advocate of disproportionate powers for the executive branch of Government, almost executive supremacy",<ref name="query.nytimes.com"/> most notably, according to critics, for his role in the [[Saturday Night Massacre]].

Before Justice Powell's expected retirement on June 27, 1987, some Senate Democrats had asked liberal leaders to "form a 'solid phalanx' of opposition" if President Reagan nominated an "ideological extremist" to replace him, assuming it would tilt the court rightward.<ref>{{cite news |last=Fuerbringer |first=Jonathan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/30/us/byrd-says-bork-nomination-would-face-senate-trouble.html |title=Byrd Says Bork Nomination Would Face Senate Trouble |newspaper=The New York Times |date=June 30, 1987 |access-date=February 14, 2016}}</ref> Democrats warned Reagan there would be a fight if Bork were nominated.<ref>{{cite news |title=The Original Borking |author=Manuel Miranda |work=The Wall Street Journal |date=August 24, 2005 |access-date=August 10, 2007 |url=http://www.opinionjournal.com/nextjustice/?id=110007149 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051028035123/http://www.opinionjournal.com/nextjustice/?id=110007149 |archive-date=October 28, 2005}}</ref> Nevertheless, Reagan nominated Bork for Powell's seat on July 1, 1987.

Following Bork's nomination, Senator [[Ted Kennedy]] took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of him, declaring:

<blockquote>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. ... The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term. 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=34. The Bork Nomination |url=http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id320.htm |url-status=live |publisher=Eightiesclub.tripod.com |access-date=June 20, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060106063313/http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id320.htm |archive-date=2006-01-06}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Broder |first=John M. |title=Edward M. Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Is Dead at 77 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/politics/27kennedy.html |url-status=live |work=The New York Times |date=August 27, 2009 |access-date=April 10, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150105205707/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/us/politics/27kennedy.html |archive-date=2015-01-05}}</ref></blockquote>

Bork responded, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate."<ref name=econ>{{cite news|title=A hell of a senator|url=http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14327160|newspaper=The Economist|date=August 29, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090830041146/http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14327160|archive-date=August 30, 2009}}</ref> In an obituary of Kennedy, ''[[The Economist]]'' remarked that Bork may well have been correct, "but it worked".<ref name=econ/> Bork contended in his book, ''The Tempting of America'', that the brief prepared for then-Senator [[Joe Biden]], Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility."<ref>{{cite news |title=Straight Talk Slowdown |author=Damon W. Root |work=Reason|date=September 9, 2008 |access-date=October 26, 2008 |url=http://www.reason.com/news/show/128686.html}}</ref> Opponents of Bork's nomination found the arguments against him justified, claiming that Bork believed the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, and he supported poll taxes, literacy tests for voting, mandated school prayer, and sterilization as a requirement for a job, while opposing free speech rights for non-political speech and privacy rights for gay conduct.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17896126/bork-kavanaugh-supreme-court-conservatives-republicans|title='Borking', explained: why a failed Supreme Court nomination in 1987 matters|publisher=Vox.com|access-date=July 20, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190708203536/https://www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17896126/bork-kavanaugh-supreme-court-conservatives-republicans |archive-date=July 8, 2019 |url-status=live|date=September 26, 2018}}</ref>[[Image:President Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork.jpg|thumb|Bork (right) with President Reagan in the [[White House]] residence in October 1987|left]]In 1988, an analysis published in ''[[Political Research Quarterly|The Western Political Quarterly]]'' of ''[[amicus curiae]]'' briefs filed by [[U.S. Solicitors General]] during the [[Warren Court|Warren]] and [[Burger Court|Burger]] courts found that during Bork's tenure in the position during the [[Presidency of Richard Nixon|Nixon]] and [[Presidency of Gerald Ford|Ford Administrations]] (1973–1977), Bork took liberal positions in the aggregate as often as [[Thurgood Marshall]] did during the [[Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson Administration]] (1965–1967) and more often than [[Wade H. McCree]] did during the [[Presidency of Jimmy Carter|Carter Administration]] (1977–1981), in part because Bork filed briefs in favor of the litigants in civil rights cases 75 percent of the time.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Segal|first=Jeffrey A.|title=Amicus Curiae Briefs by the Solicitor General during the Warren and Burger Courts: A Research Note|year=1988|journal=[[Political Research Quarterly|The Western Political Quarterly]]|volume=41|issue=1|pages=135–144|publisher=[[SAGE Publishing|Sage Publications]]|doi=10.2307/448461|jstor=448461}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=O'Connor|first=Karen|title=The Amicus Curiae Role of the U.S. Solicitor General in Supreme Court Litigation|year=1983|journal=Judicature|volume=66|pages=256–264|url=https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/judica66&div=48&id=&page=|access-date=August 30, 2019}}</ref>

Television advertisements produced by [[People For the American Way]] and narrated by [[Gregory Peck]] attacked Bork as an extremist. Kennedy's speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork's nomination. The rapid response to Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" speech stunned the Reagan White House, and the accusations went unanswered for {{frac|2|1|2}} months.<ref>{{cite web |title=Court nominees will trigger rapid response |work=[[The Christian Science Monitor]] |date=July 7, 2005 |access-date=August 10, 2007 |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0707/p02s01-uspo.html |author=Gail Russell Chaddock}}</ref>

During debate over his nomination, [[Bork tapes|Bork's video rental history]] was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as ''[[A Day at the Races (film)|A Day at the Races]]'', ''[[Ruthless People]]'', and ''[[The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 film)|The Man Who Knew Too Much]]''. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals wrote about it for the ''[[Washington City Paper]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theamericanporch.com/bork2.htm |title=The Bork Tapes Saga |access-date=August 17, 2007 |work=The American Porch |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009144531/http://www.theamericanporch.com/bork2.htm |archive-date=October 9, 2007 }}</ref> Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 [[Video Privacy Protection Act]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Video Privacy Protection Act |url=http://epic.org/privacy/vppa/}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Peterson |first=Andrea |title=How Washington's last remaining video rental store changed the course of privacy law |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/04/28/how-washingtons-last-remaining-video-rental-store-changed-the-course-of-privacy-law/ |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=April 28, 2014 |access-date=January 8, 2018}}</ref>

To pro-choice rights legal groups, Bork's [[originalism|originalist]] views and his belief that the Constitution did not contain a general "right to privacy" were viewed as a clear signal that, should he become a justice of the Supreme Court, he would vote to completely overrule the Court's 1973 decision in ''[[Roe v. Wade]]''. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork's rejection, and the 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle.

On October 23, 1987, the Senate denied Bork's confirmation, with 42 senators voting in favor and 58 senators voting against. Two Democratic senators ([[David Boren]] of [[Oklahoma]], and [[Fritz Hollings]] of [[South Carolina]]) voted in favor of his nomination, while six Republican senators ([[John Chafee]] of [[Rhode Island]], [[Bob Packwood]] of [[Oregon]], [[Arlen Specter]] of [[Pennsylvania]], [[Robert Stafford]] of [[Vermont]], [[John Warner]] of [[Virginia]], and [[Lowell Weicker]] of [[Connecticut]]) voted against it.<ref>{{cite news |title=Senate's Roll-Call On the Bork Vote |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/24/us/senate-s-roll-call-on-the-bork-vote.html |work=The New York Times |date=October 24, 1987 |agency=Associated Press}}</ref> His defeat in the Senate was the worst of any Supreme Court nominee since [[George Washington Woodward]] was defeated 20–29 in 1845, and the third-worst on record.

The seat to which Bork had been nominated went to Judge [[Anthony Kennedy]], who was unanimously approved by the Senate, 97–0.<ref>Greenhouse, Linda. ''Becoming Justice Blackmun''. Times Books. 2005. Page 189.</ref> Bork, unhappy with his treatment in the nomination process, resigned his appellate court judgeship in 1988.<ref name=washpost />

=== "Bork" as a verb ===
<!--If renaming section, please update redirects-->
According to columnist [[William Safire]], the first published use of "bork" as a verb was possibly in ''[[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]]'' of August 20, 1987, two months prior to the final vote: "Let's just hope something enduring results for the justice-to-be, like a new verb: Borked."<ref>{{cite news |first=William |last=Safire |title=On Language: The End of Minority |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/27/magazine/the-way-we-live-now-5-27-01-on-language-judge-fights.html |work=The New York Times Magazine |id=Document ID 383739671, ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2004) database |page=12 |date=May 27, 2001|quote=judge fights 'borking' needed to stop court-packing?}}</ref> A well known use of the verb "to bork" occurred in July 1991 at a conference of the [[National Organization for Women]] in New York City. Feminist [[Florynce Kennedy]] addressed the conference on the importance of defeating the [[Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination|nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court]], saying: "We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically. This little creep, where did he come from?"<ref>{{cite web |last=Fund |first=John |title=The Borking Begins |url=http://opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=85000412 |work=The Wall Street Journal |date=January 8, 2001 |access-date=August 17, 2007}}</ref> Thomas was confirmed after the most divisive confirmation hearing in Supreme Court history to that point.

In March 2002, the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' added an entry for the verb "bork" as U.S. political slang, with this definition: "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually to prevent his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way."<ref>v. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bork {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170827140430/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bork |date=August 27, 2017}}</ref> Supreme Court Justice [[Brett Kavanaugh]], who occupies the seat Bork was nominated to, used the term during his own [[Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination|contentious Senate confirmation]] hearing testimony, when he stated: "The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment. But at least it was just a good old-fashioned attempt at borking."<ref>{{cite web |title=Kavanaugh hearing: Transcript |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript |publisher=Bloomberg Government |access-date=October 17, 2018}}</ref>

===Later work===
Following his failure to be confirmed, Bork resigned his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and was for several years both a professor at [[George Mason University School of Law]] and a senior fellow at the [[American Enterprise Institute|American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research]]. He consulted for [[Netscape]] in the [[Microsoft litigation]].

Bork later served as a fellow at the [[Hudson Institute]], a visiting professor at the [[University of Richmond School of Law]] and a professor at [[Ave Maria School of Law]] in [[Naples, Florida]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.avemarialaw.edu/page-section/history-timeline/|title=History Timeline |website=Ave Maria School of Law|language=en-US|access-date=March 11, 2016|archive-date=March 12, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312034127/http://www.avemarialaw.edu/page-section/history-timeline/|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2011, he worked as a legal adviser for the [[Mitt Romney 2012 presidential campaign|presidential campaign]] of Republican [[Mitt Romney]].<ref>{{cite web|author=Grove, Lloyd |url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/robert-bork-on-romney-obama-and-biden.html |title=Robert Bork's Romney Connection |work=Newsweek |date=October 17, 2011 |access-date=December 20, 2012 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20111103232028/http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/16/robert-bork-on-romney-obama-and-biden.html |archive-date = November 3, 2011}}</ref>

===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>