The Tempting of America Quotes

“The American design of a constitutional Republic is such a “complete and self-supporting scheme.” The heresy that dislocates it is the introduction of the denial that judges are bound by law.”
― Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America

“Heresy,” Hilaire Belloc reminds us, “is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein. We”
― Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America

“A judge who announces a decision must be able to demonstrate that he began from recognized legal principles and reasoned in an intellectually coherent and politically neutral way to his result. Those who would politicize the law offer the public, and the judiciary, the temptation of results without regard to democratic legitimacy.”
― Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America

“In law, the moment of temptation is the moment of choice, when a judge realizes that in the case before him his strongly held view of justice, his political and moral imperative, is not embodied in a statute or in any provision of the Constitution. He must then choose between his version of justice and abiding by the American form of government. Yet the desire to do justice, whose nature seems to him obvious, is compelling, while the concept of constitutional process is abstract, rather arid, and the abstinence it counsels unsatisfying. To give in to temptation, this one time, solves an urgent human problem, and a faint crack appears in the American foundation. A judge has begun to rule where a legislator should.”
― Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America