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It ought to be a major intellectual event in constitutional law when a Justice of the Supreme Court comes forward publicly to explain his theory of judging. Explanation is needed, for by now nobody familiar with the work of the Court believes it confines its rulings to the principles of the historic Constitution. There have always been instances when the Court voted its sympathies rather than anything resembling the Constitution, but over the last half century the divergence between the document and the decisions has sharply increased. Indeed, the criticism that the Court routinely departs from the Constitution’s principles, as...

Democrats — at least those seeking the Democratic nomination for president and those who are desperate for money from extremist Left deep pockets — are trying to "out-Liberal" each other on the Alito nomination, even when it is clear a bipartisan majority of senators intend to make the Judge Alito "Justice Alito" in just a few days. John Kerry, after launching the first international filibuster from the slopes of the Swiss Alps with the help of Ted Kennedy, gave a speech earlier on the Senate floor that rivals Kennedy’s 1987 smear of Judge Bork. Kennedy claimed that in “Judge Bork’s...

With at least 52 Senators already on record in support, it's clear that--short of some smear ex machina--liberal Democrats can't stop Samuel Alito from being confirmed to a seat on the Supreme Court. So it's a good moment to consider what this says about our politics and what it means for the Court as it enters a new era. One conclusion is that the confirmation of both Chief Justice John Roberts and Judge Alito marks the most important domestic success for President Bush since his 2003 tax cuts. These look like legacy picks. Despite the Harriet Miers misstep, Mr. Bush...

A year after Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination was scuttled by the Senate, federal prosecutor Samuel Alito called Bork "one of the most outstanding nominees of the century.'' Eighteen years later, the comment must have seemed like a godsend to Democrats hoping to paint Alito as a reactionary unsuited for the high court. But when a senator confronted him with his words, Alito said he had only been expressing admiration for Bork, and loyalty to the administration that appointed them both. He insisted he wasn't endorsing Bork's views on topics such as abortion, voting rights and presidential power. It was...

With the battle over the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court set to take center stage on Monday, the American people have undoubtedly become familiar in past weeks with his critics -- along with their criticisms, attacks and mischaracterizations. If the best predictor of future behavior is past performance, then it is reasonable to expect that a host of rather predictable, knee-jerk criticisms -- which have already been refuted with fact -- will be leveled against this fine nominee in a misguided effort to discredit his qualifications. As a preview of the coming debate, here...

The lesson of Reagan's nominee is: Say just as little as you possibly canMedia critic Danny Schechter was referring to television when he titled one of his books "The More You Watch, the Less You Know.'' But he just as well might have been describing the trend in Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Consider Robert Bork, President Ronald Reagan's nominee for a seat on the court in 1987, and the last nominee to be defeated on the Senate floor. There's still bitterness among Bork's supporters -- who coined the term "Borking'' for the destruction of a Supreme Court candidacy -- but...

The following is an email that I received from a friend regarding Judge Robert Bork's letter to the Wall Street Journal... "Eric Felten's essay on the dry martini is itself near-perfect ('Don't Forget the Vermouth,' Leisure & Arts, Pursuits, Dec. 10). His allusion to constitutional jurisprudence is faulty, however, since neither in law nor martinis can we know the subjective 'original intent' of the Founding Fathers. As to martinis, the intent may have been to ease man's passage through this vale of tears or, less admirably, to employ the tactic of 'candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.' What counts...

It is premature to pronounce the job completed, but with the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for a seat on the Supreme Court, George Bush has substantially narrowed the rift with his conservative base he created with his nomination of Harriet Miers. Ms. Miers, a woman of many fine qualities, was perceived as simply lacking the constitutional sophistication to withstand the pressures of a liberal Court majority and its allies in the academy and the media sufficiently to help bring the Court back from its self-assumed role as a political rather than...

Ten days ago I wrote about the Miers nomination in light of Judge Bork's introduction to a new book of essays on SCOTUS. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, Judge Bork weighs in with a denunciation of the Miers nomination, which includes the fairly astonishing sentence: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative (amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while maintaining its unconstitutionality). This is the same as arguing that "Except for opposing Hitler and later warning of...

Is "miered" the new "borked"? Robert Bork's failed nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987 spawned the verb "borked," defined loosely as getting rejected in an unseemly, even unfair, manner. Now there is talk online about whether Harriet Miers' withdrawal of her nomination to the high court will give rise to the term "miered." While liberals led to the opposition to Bork, it was conservatives who brought down Miers' nomination. A contributor to The Reform Club, a right-leaning blog, wrote that to get "borked" was "to be unscrupulously torpedoed by an opponent," while to get "miered" was to be "unscrupulously...

Operation Rescue renews its call for Miers’ withdrawalWashington, DC – The highly esteemed Judge Robert Bork weighed in yesterday on the controversial Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers. Miers has been under scrutiny in the past week for having no paper trail or judicial experience.Former Federal Judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in an historically contentious battle in 1987, described the choice of Miers as “a disaster on every level.”Bork, considered the perhaps finest intellectual mind in the legal community, joins a growing number of conservatives expressing concern over the Miers nomination and...

"I am convinced, as I think almost all constitutional scholars are, that Roe v. Wade is an unconstitutional decision, a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority. I also think that Roe v. Wade is by no means the only example of such unconstitutional behavior by the Supreme Court." This bit of public truth-telling was committed by Robert Bork, then a professor at Yale Law School, when he testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on June 1, 1981. Ironically, Bork made this statement about Roe in the midst of testimony in which he explained why he opposed...

TO BORK VS. TO MIER [Kathryn Jean Lopez] Yesterday on air Hugh Hewitt suggested to me that we here were trying to Bork Miers. No. This is new SCOTUS verb time. Andrew Breitbart just came up with over IM: to MIER: to put your own allies in the most untenable position possible based upon exceptionally bad decsion making. Secondary defintion: While steadlily going in reverse in the driveway of your own home, intentionally abruptly pressing gas pedal as to crash into garage door for no apparent reason. They'll be teaching this in AP Government classes before long. Posted at 02:26...

RE: OUCH [Rod Dreher] But Kathryn, I fully expect that if Justice Stevens retires, President Bush will nominate his dog Barney to fill that vacant seat. After all, who can a man trust to be loyal more than his dog? I reckon the president knows Barney's heart as well as anybody's, and certainly Barney has no paper trail, unless you count stuff he chewed up when he was a puppy. Besides, if Caligula can put his horse in the Senate... Posted at 06:16 PM http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_10_02_corner-archive.asp#078596

Some afternoon observations on Miers and "Borking." October 12, 2005 12:45 PM PST The verb "to Bork" has an origin in the 1987 treatment of Robert Bork by his opponents on the left. It was a dishonorable episode in American political history. From Wikipedia: According to the New York Times, the verb to bork might be defined as "to destroy a judicial nominee through a concerted attack on his character, background and philosophy." [1] The most famous (or infamous) use of the verb to bork occurred in July 1991 at a conference of the National Organization for Women in New...

RUSH: Jim Dobson recorded his radio show for today and tomorrow yesterday; the transcripts for that show are out. Now as you know, one of the things that irked Senator Specter is that Dobson admitted that maybe Karl Rove told him some things he "shouldn't know" – everybody assumed – when he called him to give him a heads-up on the nomination of Harriet Miers, the US Supreme Court. Well, everybody ran and rushed to judgment on that and said, "A-ha! A-ha! Rove told Dobson that she's a definite vote against Roe vs. Wade," which of course if that were...

I have in the past proudly called myself a "bushbot" on this forum. Initially I was disappointed, but supportive of this nomination. However, as time has gone by, enough has leaked out about Ms. Miers to make me seriously doubt that we can afford to take a chance on a woman who not only has no background in Constitutional Law whatsoever, but - and this is the key - has, according to reliable reports about her stint on the Dallas City Council, shown herself to be very vulnerable to the kind of "go along to get along" attitude that doomed...

Bork speaks out on CNN w/ Wolf Blitzer. Video below 1. Click on link below, then look for the "FREE" button, click on it. 2. Wait for download ticket counter to expire, click on filename (BorkOnCNN.rm) Click here to download video (Real Player)

Legendary conservative jurist Robert Bork is "borking" Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, trashing her nomination as a complete and total "disaster." Asked by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson Friday night if he was impressed by Ms. Miers, Bork replied: "Not a bit. I think it's a disaster on every level." The Yale-trained judge said he didn't like the Texas attorney because she hadn't developed a "constitutional philosophy." "It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already," he told Carlson. "I'm afraid she's likely to be influenced by factors,...

Who’d have known that Harriet Miers would have caused such a ruckus just by saying “yes”? At first blush, President Bush’s nomination of Miers as the successor to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor looked like a welcome indication that he wasn’t going to shoot a flamethrower at the neighbor’s parched lawn and laugh maniacally at the ensuing pandemonium. He could, after all, have poked the Democrats in the eye once again with Priscilla Owen, whom he obstinately wrestled onto the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Instead, he chose a trusted adviser who under other circumstances would have been considered an...