President Joe Biden has reacted to the leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade this week by citing his own role in blocking Judge Robert Bork from the Court in 1987, a notorious episode that launched the nation’s judicial wars.
Bork, widely considered one of the finest legal minds of his generation, was a conservative jurist nominated by President Ronald Reagan to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Until then, Supreme Court nominees were approved or rejected on the basis of qualifications; Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the most iconic conservative jurists of the era, had been confirmed by a unanimous vote in the U.S. Senate just the year before.
Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, set about trying to block Bork’s ascent to the nation’s highest court by focusing on his philosophical views. Together with Sen. Edward Kennedy…
