Bork's Shadow Looms Over Court Opening

Bork did not follow this advice himself. His replacement as Reagan's nominee, Anthony M. Kennedy, did -- and cast numerous votes that were counter to Bork's views on issues such as abortion.

"A lot of conservatives are convinced that things would have been different if I had been confirmed," Bork said in the interview. "A lot of liberals think it would have been different, too, and they don't like it."

While conservatives still nurse grievances, liberals hold up the Block Bork campaign as a heroic moment in modern politics. "Keeping him off the Court ranks among the most important achievements of the progressive coalition over the past seven decades," Ralph G. Neas, who led the anti-Bork battle, wrote in an essay on the Web site of his group, People for the American Way. Bork's crusading style since his defeat has only reinforced their sense of vindication. "Since then, Bork's own words have confirmed that if we who opposed his confirmation were guilty of anything, it was understatement," Neas said.

The battle over Bork began July 1, 1987, when Reagan nominated him to succeed retiring Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. Bork was already well known for his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre"; as solicitor general, he carried out President Richard M. Nixon's order to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox after two higher-ranking Justice Department officials refused and quit. Bork subsequently served as a federal appeals judge, making a mark as an "originalist" who believed in interpreting the Constitution as its framers intended rather than extrapolating it to fit changing circumstances.

Within 45 minutes of Bork's nomination, Kennedy delivered a blistering floor speech that set the tone for the battle to come. "Robert Bork's America," Kennedy declared, "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 government."

More than 300 liberal groups joined together in a public campaign that dominated the dialogue during the Senate's August recess. Bork was accused of such things as favoring poll taxes to keep blacks from voting and allowing industrial companies to sterilize child-bearing women. "By the time we got back at Labor Day, Bork was a dead letter," recalled Paul M. Weyrich, a conservative leader.

Bork and his supporters tried to rebut the charges as distortions, but his lecture-style performance at televised hearings probably hurt rather than helped, and the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected him 58 to 42. In a subsequent book explaining himself and his philosophy, "The Tempting of America," Bork predicted that the vote would not end the fight.

"That battle is over but the war in both our legal and general culture goes on," he wrote. "There will be more blood at the crossroads where law and politics meet."

His words now appear prescient. On the same day O'Connor stepped down this month, conservatives instantly invoked Bork and cast the coming battle for her successor as the sequel to his saga.

In a commentary posted on the Internet that day, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, described Oct. 23, 1987 -- the date of the Bork vote -- as "a day that lives in conservative infamy" and said, "Now 18 years later, George W. Bush has the chance to reverse this defeat, and to begin to fulfill what has always been one of the core themes of modern American conservatism: the relinking of constitutional law and constitutional jurisprudence to the Constitution."

Two days later, the Bork battle was replayed on Sunday talk shows. "Can we imagine what this country would be like today if Judge Bork had gone onto the Supreme Court with his views about civil rights and other issues?" Kennedy asked on ABC. On CNN, Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), a Republican who opposed Bork, said: "If his 'original intent' stood, we'd still be segregating the United States Senate with African Americans on one side and Caucasians on the other side."

Bork shot back on CNN the same day: "I know Specter, and the truth is not in him."

Today Bork has become a symbol and his name is used as a verb, as in "to bork" a political opponent. "It's a form of immortality," he said with dour mirth.

He serves as a scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington, giving speeches and writing books. He professes to have recovered from the bruising battle, but the old sentiments seem close to the surface. "The memories are always there," he said. "I don't dwell on them." Yet, at moments like these, when the battle plays fresh again echoed in the Washington political surround sound, he thinks about it with unvarnished antipathy.

"There was a massive political campaign against me and there was no political campaign on my behalf," he said. "I'm sure I did some things wrong, but to say the ultimate outcome would have changed because of those things is like blaming the Johnstown flood on a leaky faucet." Nor has he retreated from the positions that fueled the flames. "I haven't had any radical revisions of my views," he said.

Bork has eagerly joined the fray over O'Connor's successor. In a column in the Wall Street Journal last week, he castigated the current Supreme Court, writing that it has "denigrated marriage," protected pornography, guaranteed "abortion virtually on demand," "whittled down capital punishment," "mounted a campaign to normalize homosexuality," allowed "discrimination at the expense of white males" and created a justice system "tipping the balance in favor of criminals."

And then he wrote perhaps the only thing both sides agree on. "The struggle over the Supreme Court is not just about law: it is about the future of our culture."