Transformative Appointments

Abstract

I begin where Chief Justice Burger ended: when judged by normal personal and professional criteria, Robert Bork is among the best qualified candidates for the Supreme Court of this or any other era.1 Few nominees in our history compare with him in the range of their professional accomplishments - as public servant, private practitioner, appellate judge, legal scholar. Few compare in the seriousness of their lifelong engagement with the fundamental questions of constitutional law. Of course, Bork's answers to these questions are controversial. But who can be surprised by that? Even those, like myself, who disagree with Bork both can and should admire the way he has woven theory and practice, reason and passion, into a pattern that expresses so eloquently our deepest hopes for a life in the law. The Republic needs more people like Robert Bork. It is a tragedy that the Republic should repay him for his decades of service by publicly humiliating him.