Robert H. Bork's Testimony Before The Judiciary Committee

American Politics 1 Presentation In Robert H. Bork’s Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee (1987), he was delivering testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on his judicial philosophy. He points out what he believes is his understanding of the role of the judiciary in a constitutional democracy. Judge Bork believes that a judiciary’s authority derives from applying the law and not personal values, the intentions of the lawmakers to govern whether the lawmakers are the Congress enacting a statute or those who ratified our constitution, and the precedent of those in the judiciary who enacted a law in the past. Bork points out that he wrote in an opinion for our courts, the judge’s responsibility is “to discern how the framers’ values, defined in the context of the world they knew, apply in the world we know.“ His belief is that the only legitimate way for a legislator, a president, or judge to go about finding the law is by making the attempt to discern what those who had written the law were intending to do during the time in which it was written. This means that their authority is derived entirely from the fact that they are merely applying the law, and not their personal values. The American public, in general, does accept the decisions of its courts, even …show more content…
The words in our laws are general, which is the case with some of the more profound protections of our liberties that exist in our Bill of Rights and in the Civil War Amendments; however, is more complex to him. Bork, ultimately believes it is the duty of the judiciary to remain impartial in how it legislates. To do this, it should be their prerogative to find the principle or value that was intended to be protected and to see that it is granted protection in accordance with the Bill of