Word: bork
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According to Judge Bork and the administration which nominated him, judges should heed the original intent of the Founders of the Constitution and should "find" rather than "make" law. Rights not specifically enumerated in the text of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, they argue, were not intended by the Founders and therefore do not exist; only the rights they mentioned really count. A good judge, consequently, must resist the temptation to create new ones...
...Thus Bork criticizes Griswold v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court decision which held that a law banning birth control violated a constitutional right to privacy. Since privacy is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, how can a judge find such a right without subjecting the Constitution to a never-ending spiral of subjectity based more on personal views than on the Constitution's text? Only the most niggardly construction, Bork feels, can be based on truly neutral principles...
...construing the Bill of Rights so strictly, however, Bork does a disservice to the very Founding Fathers he purports to honor, reading the Bill of Rights precisely as they feared future generations might. Seen in light of Madison's and Hamilton's original worries over the effects of a bill of rights upon liberty and justice, Bork's neutral principles emerge as no principles...
...positive declaration of some of the most essential rights," he felt, "could not be obtained in the requisite lattitude." Far better to avoid specific guarantees and let rights evolve with the passage of time. For a bill of rights would in essence be cannon fodder for people such as Bork, who could use it to restrict the scope of the people's rights...
...Judge Bork and his proponents in the Reagan Administration now pretend to look to history, only to destroy its promise. Although the Bill of Rights has in general performed admirably, the fact that it is neither entirely broad and general (like the preamble) nor entirely specific and detailed, subjects it to misuse by those such as Bork. Our only recourse now, almost 200 years after the Bill of Right's ratification, is to deny those who would misuse it the chance to sit on Dike's throne...