The Great Judge Robert Bork Dies At Age 84

The great judge Robert Bork died today at age 84. He was a leading light calling for (and bringing the debate to the forefront) Constitutional adjudication to be guided by the original understanding of the Constitution. One of the few Americans to have his name turned into a verb after he was unfairly maligned and blocked from a seat on the Supreme Court because he would not abandon or compromise his abiding belief in the proper role of a judge in Constitutional interpretation, let us now remember and fight for the increasing vibrancy of his message: 

"If the Constitution is law, then presumably its meaning, like that of all other law, is the meaning the lawmakers were understood to have intended. If the Constitution is law, then presumably, like all other law, the meaning the lawmakers intended is as binding upon judges as it is upon legislatures and executives. There is no other sense in which the Constitution can be what article VI proclaims it to be: 'Law....' This means, of course, that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones. Any time he does so, he violates not only the limits to his own authority but, and for that reason, also violates the rights of the legislature and the people....the philosophy of original understanding is thus a necessary inference from the structure of government apparent on the face of the Constitution." Tweet