Editing Robert Bork (section)

===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 />