Out of the Question

No nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court has ever been scrutinized as thoroughly by the Senate Judiciary Committee as Judge Robert H. Bork of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. None has ever talked so candidly about his own beliefs, past and present; none has drawn so much attention from supporters and opponents alike.

Bork is learned in the law--indeed distinguished as a legal scholar, and a provocative one at that.

Yet what has emerged from these unprecedented hearings is a nominee whose views, especially on civil rights and privacy, are so profoundly and personally offensive to so many Americans that to seat him would now be unthinkably divisive and insulting.

Judge Bork said that on matters of civil rights, he has changed some of his views, and would respect judicial precedent. You do not have to disbelieve his promises now to be made extremely uneasy about the views he expressed over a long and prolific life. And in any case he has aroused such deep suspicions that his confirmation now would be unacceptable.

President Reagan has been vocal about his hope to mold the federal bench at all levels in his own image. A conservative justice on the model of retired Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., whose seat Bork was nominated to fill and who stood at the center of the court, would no doubt win easy confirmation by the Senate and still give the President the justice he wants.

In rejecting Bork, the Senate would not be passing judgment on Bork’s intellectual acumen, which is substantial, or on his integrity. It would, however, be affirming, powerfully and clearly, the nation’s commitment to continue in the course of social and personal justice on which it embarked several decades ago.