The American public first met Robert Bork during the 1987 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that considered his nomination to the Supreme Court. Compared with more recent judicial confirmations, the Bork hearing was highly dramatic. Most are aware of its outcome, which led to an addition to the English language: "bork"--meaning to "[d]efame or vilify (a person) ... esp[ecially] with the aim of making it difficult for him or her to hold public office." (1) Few are familiar, however, with Judge Bork's distinguished career before that contentious and transformative hearing. Robert Bork had been a tenured professor at Yale Law School, authored a watershed book that shifted the paradigm of antitrust law and helped make possible our comfortable standard of living, (2) served as Solicitor General of the United States, and worked as a federal appellate judge on the D.C. Circuit, the court on which I now sit. I am reminded of Judge Bork's legacy every time I don my robe. My locker in the robing room is across a narrow aisle from his, which is marked by a brass plate that bears his name. Once robed, I enter a courtroom in which his portrait--a Rembrandt-like rendition of the Judge in which he appears broodingly omnipresent--hangs. He is watching, and that is fine by me.
