Open and Shut

Last week I wrote of the deep injustice perpetrated by liberal Democrats against the just-deceased Judge Robert Bork during his 1987 Supreme Court candidacy. But the travesty of that episode is even greater in light of something that Jeffrey Rosen legal affairs editor for the liberal New Republic notes.

In 1987 Rosen was a young intern for Senator Joseph Biden whose Judiciary Committee voted to disapprove Bork’s nomination. He recalls “feeling that the nominee was being treated unfairly.… [his] record was distorted beyond recognition…. The Borking of Bork was the beginning of the polarization of the confirmation process that has turned our courts into partisan war zones.” Rosen continues:

Robert Bork had been renowned at Yale Law School where he taught for nearly two decades not only for his influence on antitrust and constitutional law but for his ideological open-mindedness: many students of his era fondly remember the seminar he co-taught with his closest friend on the faculty the liberal constitutional scholar … Alexander Bickel which featured affectionate bipartisan debates.… The New Republic was said to be Bork’s favorite journal at the time.…

Then came the Borking of Clarence Thomas with a similarly sad result: The transformation of another convivial conservative appellate judge who had a record of friendly interactions with liberal colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit into an angry partisan determined to seek ideological revenge for decades to come.