On July 1, 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to succeed Lewis F. Powell Jr., who had earlier announced his retirement. At the time of his nomination, Bork was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position to which he had been appointed by President Reagan in 1982.

Quick Facts Nominee, Nominated by ...

Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination
President Ronald Reagan announces from the White House Press Room Bork's nomination on July 1, 1987
Nominee	Robert Bork
Nominated by	Ronald Reagan (President of the United States)
Succeeding	Lewis F. Powell Jr. (Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States)
Date nominated	July 1, 1987
Date rejected	October 23, 1987
Outcome	Rejected by the U.S. Senate
Senate Judiciary Committee motion to report favorably
Votes in favor	5
Votes against	9
Result	Rejected
Senate Judiciary Committee motion to report unfavorably
Votes in favor	9
Votes against	5
Result	Approved
Senate confirmation vote
Votes in favor	42
Votes against	58
Result	Rejected

Close

Bork's nomination precipitated contentious debate. Opposition to his nomination centered on his perceived willingness to roll back the civil rights rulings of the Warren and Burger courts, and his role in the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal. On October 23, 1987, the United States Senate rejected Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by a roll-call vote of 42–58. This is the most recent Supreme Court nomination to be rejected by vote of the Senate.^[1]

Reagan subsequently announced his intention to nominate Douglas H. Ginsburg to succeed Powell, but Ginsburg withdrew from consideration following revelations of his earlier marijuana use. Instead, Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy, who was viewed as a mainstream conservative Republican. Kennedy was unanimously confirmed in February 1988.^[2]

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., was considered a conservative/​moderate, but referred to as the "swing vote" in close decisions at the time. After he announced his retirement on June 26, 1987,^[3] Senate Democrats asked liberal leaders to form a "solid phalanx" to oppose an "ideological extremist" replacement for Powell. Democrats warned Reagan there would be a fight over the nomination if Bork became the nominee.^[4]

President Reagan nominated Bork for Powell's seat on July 1, 1987.^[5] Bork had long been interested in the position; President Richard Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court, following Bork's compliance in firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox during the controversial "Saturday Night Massacre" of October 1973. Nixon was unable to carry out the promise before his resignation on August 9, 1974.^[6] When the next Supreme Court vacancy occurred under President Gerald Ford, due to the retirement of William O. Douglas in 1975, civil rights groups expressed deep opposition to Bork being nominated, and Douglas' seat went to John Paul Stevens.^[7] Bork was also a finalist to be nominated in 1986 after Reagan nominated then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice of the United States after the resignation of Warren Burger, but Reagan nominated Antonin Scalia for Rehnquist's associate justice seat. Some journalists and correspondents believed that if Reagan had nominated Bork in 1986, Bork would have likely made the Supreme Court as the Senate was led by the Republicans. However, the Senate Democrats may still have fought to defeat Bork in 1986, and Republicans' Senate majority at the time was very narrow (53–47) which implies that maybe Bork still would have been defeated in 1986, especially given that the six Republicans^[8] who voted against Bork's 1987 nomination were also serving in 1986.^[9]

Within 45 minutes of Bork's nomination to the Court, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork in a nationally televised speech, declaring:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.^[10]

Bork responded, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate."^[11] In 1988, an analysis published in the Western Political Quarterly of amicus curiae briefs filed by U.S. Solicitors General during the Warren and Burger Courts found that during Bork's tenure in the position during the Nixon and Ford Administrations (1973–1977), Bork took liberal positions in the aggregate as often as Thurgood Marshall did during the Johnson Administration (1965–1967), and more often than Wade H. McCree did during the Carter Administration (1977–1981), in part because Bork filed briefs in favor of the litigants in civil rights cases 75 percent of the time (contradicting a previous review of his civil rights record published in 1983).^[12][13]

On July 5, 1987, NAACP executive director Benjamin Hooks described their position on the Bork nomination: "We will fight it all the way – until hell freezes over, and then we'll skate across on the ice."^[14] A brief was prepared for Joe Biden, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the Biden Report. Bork later said in his book The Tempting of America that the report "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility".^[15] TV ads produced by People For the American Way, and narrated by Gregory Peck, attacked Bork as an extremist. Along with Kennedy's speech, these ads successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork's nomination. The rapid response of Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" speech stunned the Reagan White House; though conservatives considered Kennedy's accusations slanderous,^[16] the attacks went unanswered for two and a half months.^[17]

On October 23, 1987, the Senate rejected Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court by a vote of 42–58.^[28] Altogether, two Democrats and 40 Republicans voted in favor of confirmation, whereas 52 Democrats and six Republicans voted against.^[30][31]

The following month, President Reagan nominated Judge Anthony Kennedy for the position on the Court (after the name of a second nominee, Douglas H. Ginsburg, was withdrawn).^[32] He was subsequently confirmed by the Senate by a 97–0 vote.^[33]

The Bork confirmation vote was one of the most controversial votes on a Supreme Court nominee in Senate history.^[2] Unhappy with his treatment during the nomination process, Bork resigned his appellate court judgeship the following year.

In 2011, New York Times columnist Joe Nocera claimed that "[t]he Bork fight, in some ways, was the beginning of the end of civil discourse in politics. The anger between Democrats and Republicans, the unwillingness to work together, the profound mistrust – the line from Bork to today's ugly politics is a straight one." Nocera cited Democratic activist Ann Lewis, who wrote that if Bork's nomination "were carried out as an internal Senate debate, we would have deep and thoughtful discussions about the Constitution, and then we would lose."^[34]

Decades later, the failure of Bork's nomination is seen through a deeply partisan lens:

The Republicans claimed, with not a little justification, that this was the first time a jurist was rejected for his views, rather than a lack of qualifications; the Democrats claimed, with not a little justification, that it was precisely those inflammatory views that attracted Ronald Reagan to him in the first place – that Bork's nomination itself was a provocation.^[35]