Why Robert Bork Didn't Belong on the Supreme Court, in 85 Words

Any jurist so ready to gut the First Amendment's protections couldn't be trusted to safeguard the balance of the Bill of Rights.

Any jurist so ready to gut the First Amendment's protections couldn't be trusted to safeguard the balance of the Bill of Rights.

Associated Press

Conservative legal scholar Robert Bork, famous for the heated hearings that eventually led to his failure to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, died this week. Passions still run high over those hearings. But this passage from his 1996 book Slouching Toward Gomorrah sums up why he had no place on the court charged with safeguarding the Constitution:

I am suggesting that censorship be considered for the most violent and sexually explicit material now on offer, starting with the obscene prose and pictures available on the Internet, motion pictures that are mere rhapsodies to violence, and the more degenerate lyrics of rap music. Censorship is a subject that few people want to discuss, not because it has been tried and found dangerous or oppressive but because the ethos of modern liberalism has made any interference with the individual's self-gratification seem shamefully reactionary.