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Robert Bork, RIP



The Hon. Robert Bork (1927 - 2010) passed away on December 19. He had been a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit from 1982 to 1988.

Bork had been put on the DC Circuit largely as a stepping-stone, but he never got to take the next intended step. The Reagan administration thought of him from the start as a Supreme Court candidate. And it is as such that he achieved his most intense moment in the spotlight, during the confirmation fight of 1987.

I have written of that fight, and of Bork, at some length, specifically in chapter 9 of my book, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE SUPREME COURT.

I won't repeat myself unduly here.

I'll simply say that among the various obituaries, paying tribute or otherwise, that I have read in recent days I have to give pride of place to one by Jeff Greenfield.

Who is Greenfield? He has been an [at least somewhat] left-of-center political commentator for decades. He was a speechwriter for Senator Robert Kennedy during that Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1968, and later became a sort of official sparring partner for William F. Buckley on Firing Line.

But before either of those adventures, he was a student at Yale Law, and in that context got to know Robert Bork, whom he remembers fondly as a "bracing" and "imaginative" teacher of law.

Here is his column: Click.

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