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A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments
Since at least 1971, when he published a seminal article on constitutional interpretation in the Indiana Law Journal, Robert Bork has been the legal and moral conscience of America, reminding us of our founding principles and their cultural foundation.
The scourge of liberal ideologues both before and after Ronald Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork has for fifty years unwaveringly exposed—and explained—the hypocrisy and dereliction of duty endemic among our nation's elites, the politicization and adversary activism of our courts, and the consequent degradation of American society.
Now, for the first time, Judge Bork has gathered together his most important and prophetic writings in A Time to Speak , including a foreword and commentary by the author. The volume includes more than sixty vintage Bork contributions on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law. It also includes several of his judicial opinions and transcribed oral arguments. A Time to Speak is an indispensable book for all who have harkened to the truths spoken so forthrightly, in season and out, by this great American original.
The scourge of liberal ideologues both before and after Ronald Reagan nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1987, Bork has for fifty years unwaveringly exposed—and explained—the hypocrisy and dereliction of duty endemic among our nation's elites, the politicization and adversary activism of our courts, and the consequent degradation of American society.
Now, for the first time, Judge Bork has gathered together his most important and prophetic writings in A Time to Speak , including a foreword and commentary by the author. The volume includes more than sixty vintage Bork contributions on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law. It also includes several of his judicial opinions and transcribed oral arguments. A Time to Speak is an indispensable book for all who have harkened to the truths spoken so forthrightly, in season and out, by this great American original.
750 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 2008
About the author
Robert H. Bork
318 books43 followersRobert Heron Bork was an American legal scholar who advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork served as a Yale Law School professor, Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, but the Senate rejected his nomination. Bork had more success as an antitrust scholar, where his once-idiosyncratic view that antitrust law should focus on maximizing consumer welfare has come to dominate American legal thinking on the subject.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 27, 2008
A shame he isn't on the Court.
Currently Reading
January 21, 2009No need to read in order. Need to keep dictionary at hand.
October 12, 2020
Is it really a time to speak? Reading this book was a bit of a puzzling experience for me because it left Bork nearly as opaque and mysterious a figure as he was beforehand. It is hard to make heads or tails of Bork and of his thinking, and though this book is more than 700 pages long, it really does not make the author more clear as a writer and as a thinker. This is a problem, but it's not necessarily a problem that one can blame Bork for. Despite his intentions to the contrary, Bork is not really a philosopher and his views on the law and on its practice are more than a bit muddled. Not only that, he had a marked tendency to get himself involved in fierce controversies with other conservative thinkers where he talked past them and they talked past him. This is perhaps most notable in his ugly and unpleasant spat with Harry Jaffa (a thinker who I am immensely fond of, and therefore disinclined to take Bork's side [1]). Admittedly, neither Bork nor Jaffa come off at their best when they are talking about each other, since each of them views the other as being a disciple and successor of Taney and Calhoun and other historically reprehensible figures, rather than being conservatives who for a variety of reasons (including Bork's immense hostility to egalitarianism of any stripe) simply do not get on. It is regrettable that this is the case, but this sort of polemics mars this work considerably.
This book is a pretty staggering collection of work from a prolific writer, and the writing material itself is even more highly varied than one would expect. The first section of the book consists writings about constitutional law. This is composed of briefs and oral arguments for cases on capital punishment, the crimes of Spiro Agnew, and matters of homosexuality in the military, three opinions from his time in the U.S. District Court, and articles on various matters including a lot of unseemly polemical material. The second section consists of various articles and one opinion where the author presents his views on antitrust law and how it is that he views it as having been a disaster early in his career but later in his career expressed a willingness to support at least some antitrust cases, such as against Microsoft and Visa/Mastercard. The remaining sections of the book are rather brief, including writings on International Law, to which Bork is immensely skeptical, some rather pointed observations on matters of politics and public policy, appreciative of at least a very small number of people, and then ending the book with some entertaining frivolities that express his fondness of Agatha Christie's characters as well as dry martinis.
There are at least a few good reasons why this book did not greatly clear up my thinking about Bork and my opinions on him. I think that it was, in retrospect, a great shame that he was not confirmed by the Senate, but in looking at his writings there are definitely ways that he could have been confirmed that he did not take advantage of, including expressing an understanding of the ways that rights to privacy exist in the penumbras/implications of amendments, as a way of minimizing the hostility that has been shown to Bork because of a belief that he is hostile to rights to privacy in general, even if Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade are both abominable decisions. Despite the fact that Bork does not come off as poorly as one would think, his strange hostility to the protection of the rights of unborn children and his inconsistent opinions regarding natural law, and his fateful divide between seeking to be a moral philosopher of the sad state of the West and his pragmatic approach to trying to defend conservative and traditional values in a way that is sustainable by electoral majorities as well as the legal philosophy of the Court makes him a muddled and inconsistent figure. If he and his supporters would like to view him as a prophet crying out in the wilderness, he strikes this reader as more of an uncertain trumpet who is not quite as bold in defense of virtue as one would hope. And 700 pages of mostly polemical material written by and about him does not clear up what is an essentially muddled and inconsistent personal and legal philosophy, even if much of the material here is deeply interesting on its own.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
This book is a pretty staggering collection of work from a prolific writer, and the writing material itself is even more highly varied than one would expect. The first section of the book consists writings about constitutional law. This is composed of briefs and oral arguments for cases on capital punishment, the crimes of Spiro Agnew, and matters of homosexuality in the military, three opinions from his time in the U.S. District Court, and articles on various matters including a lot of unseemly polemical material. The second section consists of various articles and one opinion where the author presents his views on antitrust law and how it is that he views it as having been a disaster early in his career but later in his career expressed a willingness to support at least some antitrust cases, such as against Microsoft and Visa/Mastercard. The remaining sections of the book are rather brief, including writings on International Law, to which Bork is immensely skeptical, some rather pointed observations on matters of politics and public policy, appreciative of at least a very small number of people, and then ending the book with some entertaining frivolities that express his fondness of Agatha Christie's characters as well as dry martinis.
There are at least a few good reasons why this book did not greatly clear up my thinking about Bork and my opinions on him. I think that it was, in retrospect, a great shame that he was not confirmed by the Senate, but in looking at his writings there are definitely ways that he could have been confirmed that he did not take advantage of, including expressing an understanding of the ways that rights to privacy exist in the penumbras/implications of amendments, as a way of minimizing the hostility that has been shown to Bork because of a belief that he is hostile to rights to privacy in general, even if Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade are both abominable decisions. Despite the fact that Bork does not come off as poorly as one would think, his strange hostility to the protection of the rights of unborn children and his inconsistent opinions regarding natural law, and his fateful divide between seeking to be a moral philosopher of the sad state of the West and his pragmatic approach to trying to defend conservative and traditional values in a way that is sustainable by electoral majorities as well as the legal philosophy of the Court makes him a muddled and inconsistent figure. If he and his supporters would like to view him as a prophet crying out in the wilderness, he strikes this reader as more of an uncertain trumpet who is not quite as bold in defense of virtue as one would hope. And 700 pages of mostly polemical material written by and about him does not clear up what is an essentially muddled and inconsistent personal and legal philosophy, even if much of the material here is deeply interesting on its own.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2020...
February 11, 2010
"Once we fall into the habit of sacrificing the integrity of law in the service of moral passions bad things are certain to follow, as our history abundantly demonstrates." -RHB
Like most anthologies, uneven (and with a startling number of typographical errors). However, the best of it is so good that it deserves the five star rating of "amazing." Long, but very worthwhile.
Like most anthologies, uneven (and with a startling number of typographical errors). However, the best of it is so good that it deserves the five star rating of "amazing." Long, but very worthwhile.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews