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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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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