I'm interested to hear what our resident lawyers have to say on the matter: how much of Kennedy's criticism of Bork can be considered legitimate or accurate? How much was just politics? And how much was unfair?
Hmmm....no takers so far? Are you talking about Kennedy's "In Robert Bork's America..." speech? If so, short answer is that Kennedy's criticism was rooted in Bork's actual constitutional views but, no doubt, was a very hyperbolic take on them. As for whether it was just politics.....I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. Yeah, it was political theatre.....great political theatre, in fact. It was one of the few times that the Reagan admin got beat on a "conveying the message" issue. Kennedy launched a pre-emptive strike that caught the admin off guard and they didn't even respond for nearly a month. However, I'm sure that Kennedy truly believed that Bork's appointment would threaten some of his strongly held political/constitutional values like abortion rights, speech rights, and Fourth Amendment rights (specifically the exclusionary rule as a curb to illegal police searches). A review of Bork's writings certainly wouldn't have given Kennedy comfort as to these concerns. So I guess, in a sense, it comes down to whether one believes that the Senate should just look at a Supreme Court appointee's qualifications or also their judicial beliefs. If one thinks going after the latter is dirty pool, which I don't by the way...as I've said before, then I guess one could argue that Kennedy was just playing politics.
Kennedy was one of many to opppose Bork. Many religious-freedom activists also opposed Bork because of his approval of government endorsements of religion. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNaasFvvFlE"]YouTube - Flashback: Ted Kennedy 'Borking' Bork (1987)[/ame]
Thanks. This is kind of what I expected. For a layperson, these are difficult waters to tread, as so many persons had an investment in Bork's approval/rejection that it's difficult to determine how much of Kennedy's statement reflected the truth, how much was hyperbole, and how much was simply "death panels."
It depends on what side of the fence you sit really. Bork WAS controversial. Remember, Bork was Nixon's guy. The same Solicitor General/acting AG that backed up Nixon's much talked about claim (by the media) that as President, he basically had very little limitation to his powers. And if you read some of Bork's later work from the bench, Bork CLEARLY was a guy who felt that if the President said it, that's the way it is. If I have some time next week (I'm leaving town in a few minutes) I'll try to find this one particular case that I remember from law school, in which Bork from the Federal Court of Appeals writes a BRILLIANT dissenting opinion which summed to its essence states exactly that ..... Courts shouldn't be in the business of overturning programs that the White House/executive branch have deemed to be constitutional, because it goes against separation of powers. I remember reading his logic and being in amazement, then getting to the conclusion and saying to myself, "WTF, NO WAY!!!!" Brilliant guy, Bork. Dangerous guy, Bork. Having said that, I haven't read or seen any of the TK vs. Bork stuff, so I don't know what Kennedy said to make a judgement on that.
It's not showing up for me either, but if you quote his post, he attempted to post an image called "preaching_to_the_choir.jpg". This is typically where one would post a "fail" image, but I don't want to take the chance that it doesn't show up, because that would be really ironic.
The big problem is that ever since Bork's rejection, each political party has made a big deal over every SC nominee up to Sotomayor.
A NY Times blog on this very topic. Pretty good, imho, covering the positive and negative aspects of that political moment. I'm not a lawyer, but I have to side with Jeffery Toobin:
Bork fired Archibald Cox. Don't need to be a lawyer to understand why Bork appointment was beyond the pale. Spineless worm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre
