Word: borke
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Even in clear-cut racial cases, Bork hesitates to wield the equal protection clause when it conflicts with majority wishes. He has criticized the court for striking down a provision added by referendum to the California state constitution that would have allowed discrimination in the sale or leasing of property...
Freedom of speech and the press. Some of Bork's most radical rethinking has concerned the First Amendment guarantees of free speech. In his famous 1971 law review article, he argued that the Constitution protected only "political" speech, thereby shutting out "any other form of expression, be it scientific, literary or that variety of expression we call obscene or pornographic." More recently Bork has recanted some of that position, concluding that "many other forms of discourse, such as moral and scientific debate, are central to democratic government and deserve protection." But in a conversation with Journalist Bill Moyers televised earlier...
...Bork has also said the First Amendment extends no protection to "speech that advocates . . . the violation of any law," a position at odds with the oft-invoked standard of Oliver Wendell Holmes that only speech posing a "clear and present danger" may be suppressed. Had Bork's view been accepted in the early days of the civil rights movement, it could have been used to prohibit many calls for peaceful civil disobedience...
...Bork's major statement in the free press area came in a 1984 ruling in which he concurred in the dismissal of a libel suit brought by Bertell Ollman, a Marxist college professor, against the conservative columnists Evans and Novak. In language that went beyond Supreme Court decisions on the matter (and which provoked a sharp rebuttal joined by his then colleague Antonin Scalia), Bork wrote that a "remarkable upsurge" in libel suits and damage awards "has threatened to impose a self-censorship on the press" as effective as government censorship. Because the core value of a free press...
Privacy. The "right of privacy" that the court enunciated in the Griswold contraception ruling, and that Bork has frequently disparaged, restrains government intrusion in matters bearing upon marriage, sexual activity and family life. In addition to providing a rationale for the court's pro-abortion decision, privacy has been invoked in arguments favoring gay rights. In a 1984 ruling that upheld the Navy's discharge of a petty officer for homosexual conduct, Bork aired the view that whatever the Supreme Court may have meant by privacy, it did not cover homosexual relations. Last year, a 5-to-4 court majority...