Quote

When a judge assumes the power to decide which distinctions made in a statute are legitimate and which are not, he assumes the power to disapprove of any and all legislation, because all legislation makes distinctions

Robert Bork

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Bork
Age: 85 †
Born: 1927
Born: March 1
Died: 2012
Died: December 19
Former United States Solicitor General
Judge
Lawyer
Pedagogue
Politician
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Robert Heron Bork
Decide
Disapprove
Judge
Statutes
Judging
Distinctions
Makes
Assumes
Power
Legitimate
Made
Legislation
Distinction
Assuming
Statute

More quotes by Robert Bork

Image
The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.
Robert Bork
Image
If the children already born each have only two children themselves ... in twenty-seven to thirty-five years the population of the world will double.
Robert Bork
Image
An egalitarian educational system is necessarily opposed to meritocracy and reward for achievement. It is inevitably opposed to procedures that might reveal differing levels of achievement.
Robert Bork
Image
I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.
Robert Bork
Image
There is no single grand strategy. Just as the New Left abandoned an overarching program and became a series of like-minded groups advancing area by area, so it must counterattacked area by area.
Robert Bork
Image
[The current governing judicial philosophy is:] If you want something passionately enough, it is guaranteed by the Constitution. No need to fiddle around gathering votes from recalcitrant citizens.
Robert Bork
Image
In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.
Robert Bork
Image
I was thinking of resigning since I did not want to be perceived as a man who did the president's bidding to save my job. I have had some time to think about it since. I think I did the right thing
Robert Bork
Image
A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.
Robert Bork
Image
The Federalist Society has done more for the health of the law than any organization I have witnessed in my career.
Robert Bork
Image
The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.
Robert Bork
Image
The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.
Robert Bork
Image
Our country is being radically altered, step by step, by Justices who are not following any law.
Robert Bork
Image
As the courts keep pushing religion out of sight, the press either ignores it or treats it as some sort of emotional affliction. It is hardly any wonder that religion slowly loses its grip on the popular mind.
Robert Bork
Image
No activity that society thinks immoral is victimless. Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.
Robert Bork
Image
The American press is extraordinarily free and vigorous, as it should be. It should be, not because it is free of inaccuracy, oversimplification and bias, but because the alternative to that freedom is worse than those failings.
Robert Bork
Image
If conservatives come to control the White House and both Houses of Congress, there will be very little change in Hollywood, the network evening news, universities, church bureaucracies, the New York Times, or the Washington Post. Institutions that are overwhelmingly left-liberal will continue to misinform the public and distort public discourse.
Robert Bork
Image
By depriving the charged person of any defenses [the rulings] mean that sexual dalliance, however voluntarily engaged in, becomes harassment whenever an employee sees fit, after the fact, so to characterize it.
Robert Bork
Image
It is a ship with a great deal of sail but a very shallow keel.
Robert Bork
Image
No church that panders to the zeitgeist deserves respect, and very shortly it will not get respect, except from those who find it politically useful, and that is less respect than disguised contempt.
Robert Bork