Robert Bork, focus of bitter Supreme Court nomination battle, dead at 85

CWN - December 19, 2012

Robert Bork, the noted jurist, author, and Catholic convert, died on December 19 at the age of 85.

Bork’s nomination in 1987 for a seat on the US Supreme Court provoked a series of vicious attacks by liberal opponents, led by the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Roger Kimball recalls how the ad hominem campaign changed Bork’s name into a verb. Ross Douthat of the New York Times argues that the Senate debate changed not only the balance of the Supreme Court but also the character of American liberalism.

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  • Posted by: unum - Dec. 20, 2012 8:50 AM ET USA

    Bork's career as a jurist was ended by that fine example of Catholicism, Ted Kennedy, with the support of Catholic liberal Democrats. It was not the the example of action by the Catholic laity that the USCCB should be showing our country, but they were silent as a good man was demonized by a Catholic.

  • Posted by: joancollins507161 - Dec. 19, 2012 6:31 PM ET USA

    Senator Ted Kennedy made vicious, untruthful remarks about Robert Bork during the Senate confirmation process. I wonder if Bork will be eulogized with the same adulation as Ted Kennedy was at his funeral. Somehow I doubt it, and I also doubt that Robert Bork would even want it. He was a good man.

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