Robert Bork

Robert H. Bork is a conservative legal scholar.

He is best known for his willingness to carry out U.S. President Richard Nixon's order to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Elliot Richardson following Richardson's request of tapes of Oval Office conversations. Nixon's Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General left office rather than carry out that order: Robert Bork was made Acting Attorney General in order to fire Richardson. Ultimately, Nixon's coverup failed when the Supreme Court ordered the tapes be reviewed.

Bork became a U.S. Appeals Court Judge, and was nominated by President Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court. A review of his qualifications uncovered various troubling aspects of his thinking: he had attacked, on the basis that there was no Constitutional right to privacy, a 1965 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Connecticut law which banned the use of contraceptives, even by married couples. After a contentious battle in the Senate, Bork was not confirmed.

Republicans, asserting he had been treated unfairly, invented a verb from his name: to be borked is to be roughly treated at a congressional hearing.

Following his rejection, he became a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institution for Public Policy Research.