Robert Bork does not have high hopes for the future of the judiciary under President Barack Obama:
Former Supreme Court Justice nominee Robert Bork predicts that President-elect Barack Obama’s judicial nominees will orchestrate a profound sea change in U.S. jurisprudence, legalizing same-sex marriage, restricting or eliminating the death penalty, and tying the hands of the military so severely that “commanders in the field will have to be gathering evidence while they’re fighting.”
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax, Bork, who currently serves as a distinguished legal scholar at the Hudson Institute, criticized Obama’s view of the role of judges … Bork’s expectations for the future of American jurisprudence, once Obama’s nominees are seated?
“I would think that same-sex marriage, homosexual marriage, is one that’s likely to be ordered by the courts,” he says. “Roe v. Wade abortion will not change.
“They’ve been whittling away at the death penalty, although the death penalty is mentioned about four times in the Constitution as allowed if certain procedures are followed,” Bork adds. “It’s up to the people whether they want it or not. But this court has been whittling away at it without any warrant from the Constitution and without any warrant from the people. And I think they may just outlaw the death penalty altogether -- which I think is not only bad judicial interpretation, but may endanger lives.”
We, of course, take Bork's angst as a good sign since it is not as if he is any sort of moderate, middle-of-the-road observer – in fact, he’s a right-wing ideologue whose radical views sunk his own Supreme Court nomination twenty-plus years ago. And since then, he’s only become increasingly radical and militant, as we pointed out in a piece we wrote a few years ago about the rantings that have defined his post-judiciary career:
It appears as if almost everything within contemporary culture possesses the capacity to offend Bork. He attacks movies for featuring “sex, violence and vile language.” He faults television for taking “a neutral attitude toward adultery, prostitution, and pornography” and for portraying homosexuals as “social victims.” As for the art world, most of what is produced is “meaningless, uninspired, untalented or perverse.” He frets that the “pornographic video industry is now doing billions of dollars worth of business” and the invention of the Internet will merely result in the further indulgence of “salacious and perverted tastes.” When it comes to music, “rock and rap are utterly impoverished … emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually.”
More to the point, Bork is not content merely to criticize; he wants the government to do something about it. “Sooner or later,” he claims “censorship is going to have to be considered as popular culture continues plunging to ever more sickening lows.” So committed is he to this cause that he dedicated an entire chapter in his 1996 book Slouching Toward Gomorrah to making “The Case for Censorship.” In it, he advocates censoring “the most violent and sexually explicit material now on offer, starting with obscene prose and pictures available on the Internet, motion pictures that are mere rhapsodies to violence, and the more degenerate lyrics of rap music.”
When asked by Christianity Today about how he would decide what should and should not be censored, Bork announced: “I don’t make any fine distinctions; I’m just advocating censorship.” He went on to argue that the United States has a long history of censorship, and that such censorship “didn’t suppress any good art, it didn’t eliminate any ideas.” He goes on to state that, were individuals to decry such censorship as inhibiting their individual liberty or right to express themselves, he would reply “… yes, that is precisely what we are after.”
