Bork was on the wrong side of every major post WWII legal issue. Everyone wants to focus on his failed nomination because it allows him to play the martyr, but it conveniently overlooks the fact that the outrage many Senators had regarding his nomination (both left and right) was based on his public record. Let’s not forget:
[ul]
[li]Bork publically denounced the Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional.[/li][li]He publically stated that the decision in Roe v. Wade was as bad or worse than Dred Scott(!)[/li][li]During his confirmation hearings for Solicitor General, he supported the rights of southern states to institute a poll tax.[/li][li]He fired Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre, after his two superiors resigned instead of complying with Nixon’s unlawful order.[/li][li]Bork, in Dronenburg v. Zech, opposed the constitutionality of a right to privacy and supported the discharge of homosexuals from the military.[/li][/ul]
Even his supposed contributions to Anti-Trust law looks suspect in the light of his advocacy for Netscape in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit. This did help reveal “originalism” to be the conservative opportunism it really is, but I think we have another Supreme Court nominee to thank for its modern definition as “whatever Antonin Scalia happens to like today”.
So was O.J. Simpson, and look how that turned out.
I agree with all of that.
I thought about that a lot as I considered the Griswold case (with which I was not familiar). Is it really crazy to say there’s no right to privacy, or am I just too flabbergasted to think that the constitution allows laws against contraception?
Imagine the implications of the supreme court saying there is no right to privacy in the constitution. That basically makes the 4th amendment meaningless, doesn’t it, in addition to due process in the 14th? Why require a warrant when you don’t have a right to privacy in the first place?
So, yeah, denying the right to privacy is nutso.
What makes you say that Roger Taney was “highly qualified”?
A mild yawn.
An intense yawn, boiling with barely suppressed rage and fury!
And they know it, which is why when they have controlled all three branches of the gov’t, they’ve forgotten to do anything at all about Roe v. Wade. It’s like they all got amnesia. “Roe v What? I..can’t… I can’t hear.. the helicopter is so loud!”
That’s not a coincidence.
They also forgot to do anything about flag burning and a few other topics good for fund raising until they are removed as an issue by actually doing something about it.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
That was when he was alive.
If we make it to a time of permanent world peace, it will be largely despite the efforts of the Borks of the world.
A man like Bork, born in a place like Saudi Arabia…I shudder to think what kind of injustices he would gladly defend.
Pretty solid credentials by Antebellum-America standards, anyway.
That misstates the position. The opposition to Griswold is based on the idea that there is no GENERAL undefined right to privacy in the Constitution. Of course the 4th protects your persons, papers, houses, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. But beyond that, so the theory goes, the general police power of the state can outlaw things like contraception, sodomy, and abortion. Even if it’s behind closed doors and seemingly not harming anyone, the government can enact morals based legislation.
It seems silly today, but it really wasn’t questioned until the Warren Court invented it out of whole cloth.
Potter Stewart and Clarence Thomas have both said that laws against contraception and sodomy (respectively) are “uncommonly silly” but have no constitutional bar against their passage.
I’m not ignoring you, I’m grudgingly, slowly, absorbing this position.
Can I still dislike him for being against civil rights legislation?
Sure. Knock yourself out. But, opposition to civil rights legislation does not NECESSARILY have to mean that you approve of racism. It may mean that you:
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Value the private property rights of the owners of businesses more than the “right” of a protected group to do business at those places OR
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You think it’s good that racists are out there in the open so that protected groups and others can vote with their wallets by not frequenting those businesses.
I’ll admit that is a hard libertarian position that I’ve come to disagree with, but it isn’t necessarily a horrible position, nor is it inconsistent with originalism or textualism.
It’s inconsistent with the very reason this country was founded, i.e, “no taxation without representation.”
Minorities pay the same Federal income tax rates that whites do. Their dollars should buy the same protection that white dollars buy.
But that’s not in the constitution. Felons are taxes, and they often can’t vote.
We’re not talking about protection as in police protection. We’re talking about whether private businesses should be forced to not discriminate. That’s a different matter.
Don’t be confused by the term “protected group”. That’s not even the correct legal term-- it’s “Suspect Classification”.
It’s bordering on racism to compare minorities with felons.
And private businesses being able to discriminate is NOT a different matter.
There used to be a book back in Jim Crow days that was sold to middle-class black families. It was a guide to which hotels, gas stations, restaurants, etc. they could expect to be allowed to patronize while vacationing/travelling outside their home area. The book covered the CONUS, and maybe Hawaii as well.
It becomes coercion when the only gas station for 50 miles around won’t serve black customers. The same for hotels. Libertarianism’s guiding principle is, or should be, freedom to the degree that you aren’t causing harm or coercing others.
This illustrates the moral bankruptcy of libertarianism. Real world dwellers know that if you’re open to the public, then you have a moral and legal obligation to serve all the public. Jim Crow had its day. It’s over.
Back to Bork, his legacy is in adding luster to Ted Kennedy’s star. Teddy saved the nation from a Bork court, which by itself is enough to add a spot on Mt. Rushmore for him.
Dollars don’t buy that; votes do.
That begs the question doesn’t it? Does a business have to be “open to the public” or can it say that it is “open to the white public”? That was the debate on the '64 Civil Rights Act.
And even if an owner has a moral obligation to serve the public, should the government enforce morality? How about morality like abortion and sodomy laws?
Racism is, at its heart, an issue of public safety.
The Rodney King race riots, anti-Jewish pogroms, lynchings in the South, etc., etc., etc…these all are outgrowths of racism. They are also detrimental to public safety and public order. Even if I don’t like my black neighbor, it still makes me less safe, indirectly, if the Klan drags him out of his home and lynches him.
Allowing institutionalized racism, even on a relatively small scale, can lead to worse things down the road.
The fact is, people are pretty ignorant about race, by and large. The average person is NOT a multiple degree-holder in the areas of science necessary to have a good grasp on exactly what race does and does NOT define.
Humans, by nature, tend to form groups, hate the other groups, and eventually try to KILL the other groups. Government’s job is to keep this from happening without good reason, because violence generally causes more problems than it solves.
Since it’s not realistic to expect people to get the multiple degrees necessary to understand what race really IS/ISN’T, the next best thing is to prohibit institutionalized racism, even on small scales. This produces the occasional grumbling, but ultimately, people accept it.