Volume 34, Number 13 · August 13, 1987
The Bork Nomination
By Ronald Dworkin
President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork to succeed Justice Lewis Powell on the Supreme Court presents the Senate with an unusual problem. For Bork's views do not lie within the scope of the longstanding debate between liberals and conservatives about the proper role of the Supreme Court. Bork is a constitutional radical who rejects a requirement of the rule of law that all sides in that debate had previously accepted. He rejects the view that the Supreme Court must test its interpretations of the Constitution against the principles latent in its own past decisions as well as other aspects of the nation's constitutional history. He regards central parts of settled constitutional doctrine as mistakes now open to repeal by a right-wing court; and conservative as well as liberal senators should be troubled by the fact that, as I shall argue here, he has so far offered no coherent justifications for this radical, antilegal position.
Feature, 4454 words
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