Robert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who served as the solicitor general of the United States from 1973 until 1977.
47 Facts About Robert Bork
2.
Robert Bork was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, receiving both his undergraduate and legal education at the University of Chicago.
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Robert Bork became a prominent advocate of originalism, calling for judges to adhere to the original understanding of the United States Constitution.
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Robert Bork became an influential antitrust scholar, arguing that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers and that antitrust law should focus on consumer welfare rather than on ensuring competition.
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Robert Bork wrote several notable books, including a scholarly work titled The Antitrust Paradox and a work of cultural criticism titled Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
6.
In 1987, Reagan nominated Robert Bork to replace retiring Justice Lewis Powell.
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Robert Bork's nomination attracted unprecedented media attention and efforts by interest groups to mobilize opposition to his confirmation, primarily due to his outspoken criticism of the Warren and Burger Courts and his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.
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Robert Bork subsequently resigned from his judgeship in 1988, taking up a career as an author.
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Robert Bork served as a professor at various institutions, including the George Mason University School of Law.
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Robert Bork advised presidential candidate Mitt Romney and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute prior to his death in 2012.
11.
Robert Bork was born on March 1,1927, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Robert Bork was the only child of Harry Philip Bork Jr.
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Robert Bork's father was of German and Irish ancestry, while his mother was of Pennsylvania German descent.
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Robert Bork attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, then attended the University of Chicago.
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Robert Bork was a member of the international social fraternity Phi Gamma Delta, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1948.
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Robert Bork then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review.
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Robert Bork graduated in 1953 with a Juris Doctor and membership in Order of the Coif and Phi Beta Kappa.
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In 1962, Robert Bork left private practice and joined the faculty of Yale Law School as a professor.
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Robert Bork taught at Yale until 1981, with a four-year break from 1973 to 1977, during which he served as US Solicitor General.
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At Yale, Robert Bork was best known for writing The Antitrust Paradox, a book in which he argued that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers, and that many then-current readings of the antitrust laws were economically irrational and hurt consumers.
21.
Robert Bork served as Solicitor General in the US Department of Justice from March 1973 until 1977.
22.
On October 20,1973, Solicitor General Robert Bork was part of the "Saturday Night Massacre" when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox following Cox's request for tapes of his Oval Office conversations.
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Richardson's top deputy, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, considered the order "fundamentally wrong" and resigned, making Robert Bork Acting Attorney General.
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When Nixon reiterated his order, Robert Bork complied and fired Cox.
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Robert Bork claimed he carried out the order under pressure from Nixon's attorneys and intended to resign immediately afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department.
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Robert Bork was a circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1982 to 1988.
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Robert Bork was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on December 7,1981, was confirmed via voice vote by the Senate on February 8,1982, and received his commission on February 9,1982.
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Robert Bork is one of only four Supreme Court nominees to have been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
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Robert Bork was criticized for being an "advocate of disproportionate powers for the executive branch of Government, almost executive supremacy", most notably, according to critics, for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.
30.
Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Robert Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation.
31.
Robert Bork later served as a fellow at the Hudson Institute, a visiting professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and a professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida.
32.
In 2011, Robert Bork worked as a legal adviser for the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney.
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Robert Bork is known by American conservatives for his theory that the best way to reconcile the role of the judiciary in the US government against what he terms the "Madisonian" or "counter-majoritarian" dilemma of the judiciary making law without popular approval is for constitutional adjudication to be guided by the framers' original understanding of the United States Constitution.
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Robert Bork built on the influential critiques of the Warren Court authored by Alexander Bickel, who criticized the Supreme Court under Earl Warren, alleging shoddy and inconsistent reasoning, undue activism, and misuse of historical materials.
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Robert Bork, in turn, described adherents of natural law constitutionalism as fanatical.
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Robert Bork wrote several books, including the two best-sellers The Tempting of America, about his judicial philosophy and his nomination battle, and Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, in which he argued that the rise of the New Left in the 1960s in the US undermined the moral standards necessary for civil society, and spawned a generation of intellectuals who oppose Western civilization.
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Robert Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that the provisions within the Act which prohibited racial discrimination by public accommodations were based on a principle of "unsurpassed ugliness".
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In 1999, Robert Bork wrote an essay about Thomas More and attacked jury nullification as a "pernicious practice".
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Robert Bork advocated modifying the Constitution to allow Congressional supermajorities to override Supreme Court decisions, similar to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' notwithstanding clause.
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Robert Bork is quoted as saying that the gun lobby's interpretation of the Second Amendment was intentional deception, not "law as integrity," and that states could technically pass a ban on assault weapons.
41.
On June 6,2007, Robert Bork filed suit in federal court in New York City against the Yale Club over an incident that had occurred a year earlier.
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Robert Bork alleged that, while trying to reach the dais to speak at an event, he fell, because of the Yale Club's failure to provide any steps or handrail between the floor and the dais.
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On June 7,2007, Bork with several others authored an amicus brief on behalf of Scooter Libby arguing that there was a substantial constitutional question regarding the appointment of the prosecutor in the case, reviving the debate that had previously resulted in the Morrison v Olson decision.
44.
On December 15,2007, Robert Bork endorsed Mitt Romney for president.
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Robert Bork repeated this endorsement on August 2,2011, during Romney's second campaign for the White House.
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Robert Bork was married to Claire Davidson from 1952 until her death from cancer in 1980.
47.
Robert Bork died of complications from heart disease at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Virginia, on December 19,2012.