Word: bork
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...ROBERT BORK spent an unprecedented five days last week pleading his case before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony revealed a lack of interest in the effects Supreme Court decisions can have on citizens who come into conflict with majorities. While Bork may be a worthy occupant of an endowed chair at one of the nation's finest law schools, or even a seat on the precedent-bound D.C. Court of Appeals, he should not be allowed to join the judicial body that has final say over what the Constitution means...
...Bork's ire is most provoked by the Supreme Court's famous decision over the past 20 years protecting what it deemed invasions of rights to privacy fundamental to, though not explicit in, the text of the Constitution. The anticontraceptive law challenged in Griswold v. Connecticut may have been "nutty," as Bork says. Worse, still, was Justice William O. Douglas' opinion in the case, which held that the statute violated individual rights that "emanated" from "penumbras" of the Constitution...
...Bork is no less clever and no less twisted when it comes to civil rights. He explains away his opposition to the Public Accommodations Bill, a forerunner of the Civil Rights Acts, as an "intellectual mistake" commited when he was under the sway of hard-core libertarianism. While Bork has corrected this flaw in his thinking, he has relaced it with a dogmatic faith in "the jurisprudence of Original Intent." This theory would bind America to the specific 18th Century values (allegedly) held by specific 18th Century gentleman. Lost in Bork's theoretical shuffle would be the broad guarantees...
...Still, Bork has never said outright that he would strike down Roe, and of late he has even paid lip service to the judicial principle that it is better to leave certain long-settled decisions in effect if reversing them would create chaos. Bork has never declared that abortion is morally wrong, and in 1981 he testified in Congress against the "human life" bill that would have defined life as beginning at conception. Says John Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee: "We're not sure Bork is against abortion. In our circles, there is substantial doubt that...
...would Justice Bork necessarily become the bellwether of an anti-Roe majority. The court still includes four staunch supporters of Roe: Harry Blackmun, the author of the decision, plus Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and John Paul Stevens. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Byron White both dissented from Roe and would probably vote against it again. Antonin Scalia is thought to be against abortion. Bork would make four firmly against. But Sandra Day O'Connor is a question mark, and may become the swing vote in any majority. While O'Connor believes the court has gone too far in preventing states...