Judge Robert Bork with President Ronald Reagan (Wikimedia Commons)[Editor's Note: In this interview with CNSNews.com in 2009, Judge Robert Bork warned that just "one judge"--Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy--effectively had the power to decide "the moral life of the nation.” Bork made the assertion after warning: "But we are going to see in the near future a terrible conflict between claimed rights of homosexuals and religious freedom. You are going to get Catholic hospitals that are going to be required as a matter of law to perform abortions. You are going to get Catholic or other groups’ relief services that are going to be required to allow adoption of a child by homosexual couples. We are going to have a real conflict that goes right to the heart of the society.”]
(CNSNews.com) - “Now, it’s a funny situation in which the moral life of a nation is in effect decided by one judge, because you have four solid liberal votes, four solid originalist votes, and one vote you can’t predict too accurately in advance,” said Judge Robert Bork, reflecting on the balance of the U.S. Supreme Court, in an interview with CNSNews.com.
Bork was pondering what the outcome might be if the court at some future point were to answer the question of whether the government has the constitutional authority to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.
It is Justice Anthony Kennedy whom Bork believes holds the court’s deciding vote on such issues.
The judge spoke with CNSNews.com Editor in Chief Terry Jeffrey in a videotaped interview Jan. 8, 2009. Here is a transcript of the conversation.
Jeffrey: Welcome to “Online with Terry Jeffrey.” Our guest on this program is Judge Robert Bork. Judge Bork was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received both his bachelor’s degree and law degree from the University of Chicago. He was a law professor at the Yale University Law School. He served as solicitor general of the United States, and as acting attorney general of the United States. He was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan.
He has written several books, including “The Tempting of America” and “Slouching Towards Gomorrah.” His latest book is “A Time to Speak.” It is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, where I also happen to be a visiting fellow.
Judge Bork, thanks for agreeing to this interview and inviting us into your home.
Bork: Well, I am glad and I intend to enjoy it.
Jeffrey: Me too, sir. One of the essays published in the book is “Olympians on the March: The Court and the Culture Wars,” which you published back in 2004. I want to read you a passage that you wrote.
Bork: Oh my.
Jeffrey: I am going to hold you accountable. You said: “Only a draconian response to unconstitutional court decisions remains. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ordered the state’s legislature to amend its statutory law to permit homosexual marriage. It is, or should seem, extraordinary that a court should order a legislature to amend and enact laws. The underlying decision is so self-evidently an act of judicial usurpation of the legislative function, and so wrong as a matter of constitutional interpretation that it might seem that any self-respecting legislature would simply refuse to comply, and if it did comply, that the governor would veto the bill. So accustomed have we become to judicial supremacy, however, that such a course sounds revolutionary. Yet there must be some means of standing up to a court that itself is behaving unconstitutionally in very serious matters.”
You have these issues—this is the issue of marriage—there’s not too many other issues I can think of that would go more fundamentally to what a culture and society is about. It is being redefined by judges. What can the people do to respond to that kind of judicial usurpation?
Bork: Well, one thing they can do is amend the constitution, amend the state constitution. Of course, that doesn’t always work because the judges then--right now Jerry Brown in California is arguing, he’s the attorney general, he’s arguing that an amendment to the California constitution is unconstitutional.
Jeffrey: Right, this is Proposition 8.
Bork: Yeah. There’s no end to the gall of some of these folks. But amending the constitution is the clearest route. Beyond that, the cures are longer term. They would involve replacing these judges with other judges. If it’s an elective system, when they come up for reelection, vote them out and get new judges. If it’s not, wait until they retire or die, and then get new judges. But as long as we insist upon treating judges as the final word no matter what they say, we’re in trouble.
Via: CNS News
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