Archive: Borkometer
Bork on Miers
Robert Bork writes in the WSJ op-ed section (subscription):With a single stroke -- the nomination of Harriet Miers -- the president has damaged the prospects for reform of a left-leaning and imperialistic Supreme Court, taken the heart out of a rising generation of constitutional scholars, and widened the fissures within the conservative movement. That's not a bad day's work -- for liberals. There is, to say the least, a heavy presumption that Ms. Miers, though undoubtedly possessed of many sterling qualities, is not qualified to be on the Supreme Court. It is not just that she has no known experience with constitutional law and no known opinions on judicial philosophy. It is worse than that. As president of the Texas Bar Association, she wrote columns for the association's journal. David Brooks of the New York Times examined those columns. He reports, with supporting examples, that the quality of her thought...
By Fred Barbash | October 19, 2005; 09:56 AM ET | Comments (26)
Roberts: The Anti-Bork
Edward Lazarus, at FindLaw, describes the lessons from the Bork hearings being applied by both sides in the Roberts nomination: The Bork hearings were a watershed event. They brought into public view the intense civil war in our legal culture - a war that rages to this day. They injected the truth-bending techniques of electioneering and interest group politics into the process for nominating and confirming judges. Most of all, they taught both sides that, when it comes to filling a seat on the Supreme Court - a seat the Justice is likely to occupy for 20, 30 years, or even 40 years, winning is everything and the ends justify the means. All this is playing out again in the run-up to the Roberts hearings, as both sides try to apply the lessons of the Bork experience in shaping their current strategies...
By Fred Barbash | August 5, 2005; 09:23 AM ET | Comments (16)
Poor Sap
"It's going to be awful. I really feel sorry for the poor sap who gets the nomination," John Danforth, a former GOP senator from Missouri who shepherded Clarence Thomas through the confirmation process, tells Knight Ridder's Todd Gilman. "I think the members of the Judiciary Committee would just as soon be left alone," says Danforth. "But there are these very well-organized, well-financed groups out there that are highly energetic and just exceedingly mean."...
By Fred Barbash | July 12, 2005; 05:36 AM ET | Comments (12)
Bork on Borking
Peter Baker in this morning's Washington Post:The lessons of Robert Bork's failed nomination are shaping the Bush White House deliberations in other ways, presidential aides said. Rather than allow his nominee to twist for many weeks waiting for hearings that will not start until after the August recess, Bush has delayed announcing his selection to truncate the window of vulnerability. And already Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Bush's top political strategist, has called for limiting the scope of confirmation hearings, saying ideology should not be a subject of senators' questions as it was 18 years ago. In an interview last week, Bork, 78, offered this advice to the nominee: "Tell them you're not going to say how you're going to vote because that's not proper interrogation. If you can't get away with that, I think you have to not say how you're going to vote...
By Fred Barbash | July 12, 2005; 03:55 AM ET | Comments (3)
