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The judge's authority derives entirely from the fact that he is applying the law and not his personal values. That is why the American public accepts the decisions of its courts, accepts even decisions that nullify the laws a majority of the electorate or their representatives voted for.

Robert Bork

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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
Even
Personal
Judge
Derives
Decision
Decisions
Electorate
Public
Judging
Applying
Law
Court
Accepts
American
Laws
Courts
Values
Majority
Voted
Fact
Authority
Representatives
Facts
Accepting
Entirely
Nullify

More quotes by Robert Bork

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The National Rifle Association is always arguing that the Second Amendment determines the right to bear arms. But I think it really is the people's right to bear arms in a militia. The NRA thinks it protects their right to have Teflon-coated bullets. But that's not the original understanding.
Robert Bork
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Our country is being radically altered, step by step, by Justices who are not following any law.
Robert Bork
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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
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The Federalist Society has done more for the health of the law than any organization I have witnessed in my career.
Robert Bork
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[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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The First Amendment is about how we govern ourselves - not about how we titillate ourselves sexually.
Robert Bork
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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
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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
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As government regulations grow slowly, we become used to the harness. Habit is a powerful force, and we no longer feel as intensely as we once would have [the] constriction of our liberties that would have been utterly intolerable a mere half century ago.
Robert Bork
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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