Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
1990
Publication Information
52 Rev. Politics 491 (1990) (book review).
Abstract
Robert Bork: The Tempting of America. (New York: The Free Press, 1989. Pp. xiv, 432. $22.50.)
In the last third of The Tempting of America Robert Bork relives the painful ordeal of his lost nomination to the Supreme Court. Any sentient American then alive already knows that story: the campaign against him was full of half-truths, distortions, and just plain lies. Bork adds some confirming anecdotes, and I congratulate him for telling the tale candidly but without rancor. The loss is ours. In my opinion, Bork would have been among the two or three greatest justices of the last half-century.
The first two-thirds of Tempting tell a very different story. They constitute Bork's critically guided grand tour of the Constitution's career. The first portion details its judicial travels, from Marshall (John) through Rehnquist. The second part is Bork's commentary on the "theorists," most of them legal academics. All along the way Bork details the lawmaking theories of the leading protagonists, spells out his own normative jurisprudence of "original understanding," and defends it against all rivals.
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
Probing Bork's Judicial Philosophy,
52 Rev. Politics 491 (1990) (book review)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1817