Word: bork
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...decisions Bork most frequently and vehemently has criticized as usurpative "judicial coups d'etat" are Roe v. Wade, in which the Court found a (limited) right to abortion, and Griswold v. Connecticut, in which it established the right of married couples to purchase contraceptives. But, we are told, the chances are virtually nil that the infringements upon liberty they sought to combat would return if a Bork-inspired court overturned them. America has changed, the argument goes, and even if, say, the abortion issue were thrown back to the states, few would re-enact the draconian antiabortion statutes...
...Bork's support for Brown is official (albeit, as Ronald Dworkin demonstrated in the New York Review of Books, wholly inconsistent with his judicial philosophy). He no longer sees the Civil Rights Acts as undermining the fabric of freedom in America, as he did in a 1963 article in The New Republic...
...these great issues Bork now sees clearly. At best, his "evolution" betrays a lack of vision unworthy of a Supreme Court justice. At worst, he has tailored or misrepresented his views as part of a campaign for a seat on the Court. It's not an attractive choice to be presented with in a nominee for the Supreme Court...
...assume the best. It's easy to judge a decision in retrospect. It's of only marginal honor to Bork that he is able to affirm now the success of decisions and legislation he vehemently derided when they were rendered. It's not unfair to ask of a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court where he was when it counted, when the great issues of his time were being debated and decided. What claims might Justice Bork dismiss today whose validity and utility will seem painfully clear tomorrow...
...PROBLEM is that Bork's America is an unprincipled polity, in which morality is what the majority says it is and individuals have no prior claim to rights against the state. His philosophy is informed by an astounding moral skepticism alien to American tradition and the way most Americans think about politics. To him, people only have "gratifications", "interests" and "preferences". "Every clash between a minority's freedom and a majority claiming power to regulate involved a choice between the gratification's of the two groups" and "there is no principled way to decide that one man's gratifications...