Quotes by Robert Bork

“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”

“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.”

“Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew mans nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere”

“Without adherence to the original understanding, even the actual Bill of Rights could be pared or eliminated. It is asserted nonetheless, and sometimes on high authority, that the judicial philosophy of original understanding is fatally defective in any number of respects.”

“The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

“A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.”

“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.”

“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.”

“How did Taney know that slave ownership was a constitutional right? Such a right is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. He knew it because he was passionately convinced that it must be a constitutional right.”

“Modernity, the child of the Enlightenment, failed when it became apparent that the good society cannot be achieved by unaided reason.”

Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew mans nature, and it is to their ideas, rather than to the temptations of utopia, that we must ask that our judges adhere.

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.

The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.

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.

It is a ship with a great deal of sail but a very shallow keel.

A society deadened by a smothering network of laws while finding release in moral chaos is not likely to be either happy or stable.