http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/12/19/remembering-judge-bork/
Like Roger Kimball and Michael Ledeen, I was privileged to get to know Judge Robert Bork over the years. That was a thrill because he was a hero of mine long before I met him. I was struck not only by the dignity with which he endured the slanders by which the Left’s lapdogs denied him the Supreme Court seat he so richly deserved, but also by the trenchant books he wrote after the ordeal — in particular, The Tempting of America and Slouching Towards Gomorrah. These are not merely towering works of legal philosophy but essential commentaries on our culture by one of its most refined observers — and, for sheer enjoyment purposes, books as witty as they are wise.
Along with Justice Scalia and Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese, Bob was among the trailblazers of “originalism,” the theory holding that judges must construe the law, particularly the Constitution, in accordance with what it was understood to mean at the time of its adoption. But he was a legend in many areas of the law, notably antitrust and international law. The latter occasioned the first conversation I ever had with him — he sought me out, when we both happened to be at a function in Washington, with praise for an essay I’d written for Commentary. As a writer, I’ve never had a prouder moment. Remembering it still softens the blow from the time I deeply disappointed him, apres one of Roger’s conferences, by ordering a vodka martini. As the Judge — an expert on this as on so many things — was known to instruct, there is only one kind of martini — gin (as it should not be necessary to specify), straight up but with the barest trace of vermouth … and “olives are to be eschewed, except by people who think a martini is a type of salad.”
I was thrilled back in 2009 when Roger asked me to review A Time To Speak — an anthology drawn from a half-century of Bob’s copious, brilliant writings — for The New Criterion. Rereading the review today, I was again struck by the enduring wisdom of an essay the Judge wrote long before the Age of Obama. I ended the review by discussing it:
Of all the wisdom that overflows from A Time to Speak, it is a thirty-year-old essay, “The Impossibility of Finding Welfare Rights in the Constitution,” that readers may find most relevant. In the waning weeks of last year’s presidential campaign, it emerged that Barack Obama, as an Illinois state legislator, had lamented that the Warren Court “wasn’t that radical” after all. It had, to his mind, failed to take on “the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.” Obama, whose ardor for the “living” Constitution is no secret and who opined throughout the campaign that his judicial nominees’ most important attribute would be “empathy,” faulted the high court for declining to “break free from the essential constraints” he acknowledged were “placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.” Our fundamental law thus remained “a charter of negative liberties”—one that says only what government “can’t do to you.” For the President, economic justice cries out for the positive case: what government “must do on your behalf” (emphasis added).
