“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.
America is a better and freer nation than Robert Bork thinks. Yet in the current delicate balance of the Supreme Court, his rigid ideology will tip the scales of justice against the kind of country America is and ought to be.
The damage that President Reagan will do through this nomination, if it is not rejected by the Senate, could live on far beyond the end of his presidential term. President Reagan is still our President. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate, and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and on the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.”
—From Senator Ted Kennedy’s speech on the Senate Floor on July 1, 1987, in response to President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court
Kennedy’s outrageously unfair, vicious, and hyperbolic attack on Robert Bork, then one of the most respected jurists in the country, “worked,” in the sense that it catalyzed an unprecedented assault on a Presidential nominee who was not merely qualified but spectacularly qualified for a seat on the Court, shattering all previous norms and traditions regarding the confirmation of Justices by the Senate. It would not be inaccurate to mark Kennedy’s speech as the beginning of demonization as a standard tactic in mainstream politics, in which the mere fact of being liberal or conservative justifies the characterization of an individual or a group sinister or evil. (See: Southern Poverty Law Center) In hindsight, Kennedy’s rhetorical excess was eventually acknowledged on all sides of the political spectrum to be a false characterization of Bork as a judge and as a human being, though Kennedy, as far as I know, never apologized for it….but then he never apologized for a lot of things.
But when it comes to resisting legitimate, qualified and honorable judges that Democrats find inconvenient to their goals, the ends justify the means is the default option, and misinforming the public, smearing dedicated public servants and Kennedy-esque attacks are always on the table. This is not a bipartisan habit: No Democratic President’s nominee has ever been savaged by Republicans in this fashion, while several Republican Presidential nominees to the Court have. Make of this what you will.
Savaging a nominee by alleging false characterizations that are still instantly believed by activists, hyper-partisans, the ignorant and the gullible is a disgusting strategy, indicating an ethical void. Yet this is the course Democrats have embarked on once again in their panic over the likelihood of a shift in the ideological balance on the Court. Yesterday Chuck Schumer, apparently because Democratic polling indicates that fear-mongering over abortion isn’t sufficient, told American in his remarks that Brett Kavanaugh was going to “take health care away from Americans.” Then he darkly suggested that Kavanaugh had been nominated because he was President Trump’s most likely ally should issues involving the Mueller investigation reach the Supreme Court for adjudication—the Mueller investigation that is supposedly about Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and which have yet to uncover any evidence at all linking the President of his campaign to those efforts. You know…that one.
The Democratic Party’s base and natural allies are again adopting Ted’s disgusting tactics—as I said, they worked once, so why not?…since the fact that such tactics are unethical don’t matter. At Yale Law School, Kavanaugh’s alma mater, students and faculty signed an open-letter to the Dean saying that “people will die if he is confirmed,” and calling this mainstream, hardly radical judge a “threat to our democracy,” because the attitude of progressives is that all conservatives are threats to democracy, or the peculiar progressive definition of it.
Here’s the funny part: “Since his campaign launched, Trump has repeatedly promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning that decision would endanger the lives of countless people who need or may need abortions — including many who sign this letter.” Never mind that the current state of U.S. abortion law doesn’t mere endanger but guarantees the deaths of millions of nascent human lives every year….that is not funny. What is funny is that President Trump’s word salads on the stump, continuously characterized by Trump’s opponents and critics, the news media and armies of fact checkers–often accurately—as lies, half-truths and fakery, are suddenly being characterized as trustworthy statements of unshakable intent. Trump has flip-flopped on too many things to count, and indeed many conservatives are wary of Kavanaugh’s nomination because while he has criticized the tortured legal reasoning in the Roe v. Wade opinion—and who hasn’t?—he has also said that the case is binding precedent.
The fact that Trump said he would appoint ” justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade” is also ignorant and unbelievable on its face—you would think that law professors and students would know that. Bernie Sanders made a similar bone-headed promise to appoint justices who would overturn Citizens United.
The Court doesn’t work that way. You can appoint a Justice critical of a previous decision, one who would have voted differently at the time it was decided, and one who wished a case were not settled law, but what a jurist will decide regarding the facts of a particular case is unknowable, especially before there is a case. All the statements of Bernie and Trump proves is that they are legally ignorant.
Excoriation, libel, slander, misinformation, fear-mongering, lies and personal destruction is not an ethical or honorable way to discharge the duties of national leadership, but once again, since the Democrats have nothing else in their toolkit to address the inevitable results of losing an election through their own arrogance and ineptitude, that’s what they are resorting to.
After all, it worked before.
Ethics Alarms 
Scared me there. Reading the headline to this post I thought Ted had been brought back from the dead by Chuck Schumer to address the problem presented by an aged Democratic leadership. No problem, Dem leaders are immortal! They have not only solved all of society’s problems, they have conquered death itself! Who needs Christ? Who needs religion?
Other than his recognition of the solemnity of the chamber the Senate sits in restraining him, Bork, recognizing that that cur, Kennedy, had already and utterly violated the chamber with his rant, should have stood up immediately, given the Senator a piece of his mind and walked out.
As should have Thomas, when Democrats allowed a bitter old flame to serve as surprise hit-woman on his confirmation.
Ooops. I guess I completely assumed the context. For some reason I read the context as Kennedy rambling off a tirade *at* Bork during the confirmation hearings.
I see now it was as Kennedy merely rambling dishonestly *about* Bork.
Wait, hold on…was Bork present when Kennedy rambled on?
Justice Thomas actually did give them a tongue-lashing, stating that he felt the assassination of his character was tantamount to a lynching.
jvb
Which was a very deft playing of the race card, from a man who derides playing the race card.
Yep. It was a beautiful turn of a phrase. It put the racebaiters on their heels.
jvb
Also call hoisting the hypocrites on their own petard.
Hospitals nationwide need to be preparing contingency plans to deal with the influx of stroke victims and heart attack victims in the event that Ginsberg shuffles off in the next few years.
Absurdly, Allahpundit wrote the other day that there is “no reason” to assume that Justice Ruth won’t last through Trump’s first term. NO reason? The woman is 85 years old! An 85 year old can drop dead any time, and many do every day.Her age is a very good reason to assume she woun’t last to 87.
I heard someone refer to Justice Ginsburg as “Darth Vader Ginsburg” today. Rude. Funny, but still rude.
jvb
This is actually a meme from some time ago
So, I didn’t realize that Napolitano is nicknamed “Judge Nap”. I guess I’m culturally disconnected in that regard…I know they refer to him as “Judge”, I just didn’t know they called him “Judge Nap”.
Quite alot of humor has flown across the internet referring to “Judge Nap” regarding the Supreme Court and I actually thought Judge Nap was a derogatory reference to Ginsberg…
I think that, in the entirely plausible event that Trump outlasts Ginsburg, that would be a prime opportunity for Trump to make a classy move: nominate Merrick Garland. I knew he wouldn’t do it to replace Kennedy; his base would never have forgiven him for moving the court to the left in his best chance to secure a reliable conservative majority. But replacing Ginsburg with Garland would move the overall court to the right, while at the same time presenting a candidate Democrats in the Senate could not argue against, even if they gain control of that chamber in the midterms, all while righting a past wrong and demonstrating a level of principle that ought to put all of Congress to shame.
Unfortunately, I know better than to expect grand gestures of principle and class from Trump. But I can always hope. The man does have a way of defying prognostication.
Preposterous. But if he did nominate Garland, the Dems would oppose it.
Or he might flap his arms and fly to Neptune….
I don’t know why he would do that or why it would be a grand gesture of principle and class. He wasn’t elected to nominate Garland to the Supreme Court.
No he was not.
Garland is no more special than any other candidate, and is owed… nothing. He was used by Obama as a political pawn, nothing more.
Democrats started this slippery slope, and now have to live with it.
As James Taranto of WSJ used to write, “Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.”
“ ‘Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.’ ”
C’mon, the Lyin’ Of The Senate was even co-sponsor of a…um…Grinder named after him and Chris “Countrywide” Dodd:
http://sonsoftherepublic.blogspot.com/2005/08/kennedy-dodd-waitress-sandwich.html
Teddy Kennedy’s attack on Bork was effective precisely because it was unprecedented. It is like the first time the boy cries wolf and everyone who does not know better is genuinely scarred. Maybe Democrats have the votes to stop this, but if they can, it won’t be because of the freak out.
Apparently, Justice Kavanaugh doesn’t like Hillary Clinton. According to David Brock, “I saw one of Ken Starr’s deputies, Brett Kavanaugh, who was sitting across from me, mouth the word b***h when the camera panned to Hillary,” Brock wrote in his 2002 book Blinded by the Right, Law and Crime reported.
jvb
As already noted before, this is a bullshit smear by a partisan hack from years ago.
The left is desperate.
Agreed. I must be running a world behind. I thought the Justice Ginsburg comment was funny even though it may be a few years old.
jvb
That’s Monkey See, Monkey Do Hive Mindedness.
Thankfully Ted is now (D-HELL) so he can’t pollute the discussion this time.