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Institutional
Affiliations
American
Enterprise Institute: Resident scholar
Yale
Law School: Professor, 1962-1975, 1977-1981 (1)
Federalist
Society: Co-Chair, with Orrin Hatch, Board of Visitors;
Co-Founder (2), (3)
Government
Service
U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit: Circuit
Judge, 1982-1988 (1)
U.S.
Supreme Court: Nominee, 1987
U.S.
Department of Justice: Solicitor General, 1972-1977 (1)
Acting
Attorney General of the United States: 1973-1974 (1)
Corporate
Connections/Business Interests
Kirkland
& Ellis (Chicago law firm): Former
Partner (1), (2)
Education
University
of Chicago: J.D. (1)
University
of Chicago: B.A.
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Highlights
& Quotes
Robert
Bork, the conservative icon and former New Deal liberal who moved
to the right while a student at the University of Chicago in the
1950s, was nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1987.
The confirmation battle, which he eventually lost, is regarded as
one of the most bitter fights ever witnessed on the Senate floor.
Bork's connections to a passel of hard right conservatives--such
as Irving Kristol, Antonin Scalia, and Caspar Weinberger--as well
as his strong ties to the Federalist Society (which he helped found
in the early 1980s) and the American Enterprise Institute helped
get him the nomination. But his hard right positions also led to
bitter protest when his nomination was announced. According to the
scholar Philip Burch, "Bork's nomination ... ran into a storm
of protest [from such groups as] the Alliance for Justice, the American
Civil Liberties Union, ... the National Abortion Rights Action League,
and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella organization
of 30 groups which had helped secure the passage of many of the
civil rights acts of the 1960s. ... As one informed source put it,
Bork had opposed virtually every civil rights measure on which he
had taken a public stance.” (2)
Bork
got himself knee deep in controversy early on in his political career.
In 1973, when he was solicitor general in the Nixon administration,
Bork “took the highly controversial action of firing the government’s
recently picked Independent Prosecutor, Archibald Cox [who was
charged with investigating the Watergate scandal], following the
refusal to do so by both the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney
General, both of whom resigned rather than follow Nixon’s order.”
(2)
Bork's
books include Slouching towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and
American Decline, 1996, and The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War
with Itself, revised edition, 1993.
Bork
is the father of Ellen Bork, the deputy director of the Project
for the New American Century.
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