The Judge Steps Out

Campus Report ^ | November 3, 2008 | Irene Warren

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The Judge Steps Out

by: Irene Warren, November 03, 2008

In this year’s vice-presidential debate, millions of Americans got to see U. S. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., explain what he is looking for in a Supreme Court Justice. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he gets to act on these convictions whenever a president nominates a candidate for one of the nine seats on the highest court in the land.

As a long-time member of that committee, Sen. Biden has grilled many Supreme Court nominees, such as Robert Bork, whose nomination President Ronald Reagan sent to the Senate in 1987. “Had he been on the court, I suspect there would be a lot of changes that I don’t like and the American people wouldn’t like, including everything from Roe v. Wade to issues relating to civil rights and civil liberties,” Sen. Biden said in the debate with Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. “And so that—that—that was one of the intellectual changes that took place in my career as I got a close look at it.”

“And that’s why I was the first chairman of the Judiciary Committee to forthrightly state that it matters what your judicial philosophy is,” Sen. Biden said in the televised debate. “The American people have a right to understand it and to know it.” Last month, an audience at the Heritage Foundation got to hear all about Judge Bork’s philosophy, from the retired jurist himself.

The Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at Heritage selected the Honorable Rorbert H. Bork as the inaugural speaker in October to talk about the United States Constitution and the Judiciary process in America. Robert Heron Bork, born March 1, 1927, was a circuit court judge for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals between 1982 and 1988....