After the American Century
Robert Bork |
Romney might have chosen any number of reputable conservative thinkers who are less controversial. Making Bork the head of his "Justice Advisory Committee" suggests that Romney agrees with Bork's extreme views. It also suggests the kind of nominees he might try to send to the Supreme Court.
What, then, does Bork stand for? A great many things, but here are a few of them:
(1) Chicago School style economics applied to the law. He famously argued that mergers and near monopolies should not be opposed by law, because they in fact benefit consumers. (I am not making this up.)
(2) He has opposed the Supreme Court's decision (in a series of cases) to acknowledge and defend a right to privacy. (See Dronenburg v. Zech, 741 F.2d 1388, decided in 1984.) At issue in this case was a gay man's right to privacy, not at all incidentally.
(3) Despite his general advocacy of something much like strict-construction of the Constitution (adhering to the ideas of the authors of that document in the late eighteenth century), Bork supports a new amendment to the Constitution that would allow large Congressional majorities to override Supreme Court decisions.
The late Senator Ted Kennedy vehemently (and successfully) opposed Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, and his words are worth repeating here:
"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 could be censored at the whim of
the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the
fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the
only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy ...
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 the next
generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice."
Bork now provides Romney with advice on justice? Presumably this is part of his outreach to the Republican Right, but it will only confirm Romney's unpopularity with women and minorities.