Judge Bork shares a personal account of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on his nomination as well as his view on politics versus the law. In The Tempting of America, one of our most distinguished legal minds offers a brilliant argument for the wisdom and necessity of interpreting the Constitution according to the “original understanding” of the Framers and the people for whom it was written. Widely hailed as the most important critique of the nation’s intellectual climate since The Closing of the American Mind, The Tempting of America illuminates the history of the Supreme Court and the underlying meaning of constitutional controversy. Essential to understanding the relationship between values and the law, it concludes with a personal account of Judge Bork’s chillingly emblematic experiences during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on his Supreme Court nomination.

Rule of law and constitutionalist ideals are understood by many, if not most, as necessary to create a just political order. Defying the traditional division between normative and positive theoretical approaches, this book explores how political reality on the one hand, and constitutional ideals on the other, mutually inform and influence each other. Seventeen chapters from leading international scholars cover a diverse range of topics and case studies to test the hypothesis that the best normative theories, including those regarding the role of constitutions, constitutionalism and the rule of law, conceive of the ideal and the real as mutually regulating.

In this New York Times bestselling book, Robert H. Bork, our country's most distinguished conservative scholar, offers a prophetic and unprecedented view of a culture in decline, a nation in such serious moral trouble that its very foundation is crumbling: a nation that slouches not towards the Bethlehem envisioned by the poet Yeats in 1919, but towards Gomorrah. Slouching Towards Gomorrah is a penetrating, devastatingly insightful exposé of a country in crisis at the end of the millennium, where the rise of modern liberalism, which stresses the dual forces of radical egalitarianism (the equality of outcomes rather than opportunities) and radical individualism (the drastic reduction of limits to personal gratification), has undermined our culture, our intellect, and our morality. In a new Afterword, the author highlights recent disturbing trends in our laws and society, with special attention to matters of sex and censorship, race relations, and the relentless erosion of American moral values. The alarm he sounds is more sobering than ever: we can accept our fate and try to insulate ourselves from the effects of a degenerating culture, or we can choose to halt the beast, to oppose modern liberalism in every arena. The will to resist, he warns, remains our only hope.

Judge Robert H. Bork will deliver the Barbara Frum Historical Lecture at the University of Toronto in March 2002. This annual lecture “on a subject of contemporary history in historical perspective” was established in memory of Barbara Frum and will be broadcast on the CBC Radio program Ideas. In Coercing Virtue, former US solicitor general Robert H. Bork examines judicial activism and the practice of many courts as they consider and decide matters that are not committed to their authority. In his opinion, this practice infringes on the legitimate domains of the executive and legislative branches of government and constitutes a judicialization of politics and morals. Should courts be used as a vehicle of social change even if the majority view weighs against the court’s ruling? And if we allow courts to make law, especially in a country like Canada where our Supreme Court judges aren’t even elected, then what does this mean for democratic government? “The nations of the West have long been afraid of catching the “American disease” — the seizure by judges of authority properly belonging to the people and their elected representatives. Those nations are learning, perhaps too late, that this imperialism is not an American disease; it is a judicial disease, one that knows no boundaries.” — Robert H. Bork, from Coercing Virtue

Judge Bork has gathered together his most important and prophetic writings in this volume that features more than 60 of the legal scholar's contributions on topics ranging from President Nixon to St. Thomas More, from abortion to antitrust policy, and from civil liberties to natural law.

When President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, it was the spark that fueled a months-long firestorm during which liberals and conservatives battled fiercely over Reagan’s choice, each trying to gain control of the nation’s judicial future. The American public, captivated by this struggle for power, weighed in with an unprecedented outpouring of mail and telephone calls to the United States Senate arguing both pro- and con- positions. Based on scores of interviews with key figures and a shrewd analysis of the issues, then-Boston Globe reporter Ethan Bronner chronicles this engrossing story of a titanic struggle for political power. It features key players such as Senators Joseph Biden and Edward Kennedy, with the latter leading the fight against the appointment using savvy Madison Avenue style strategies; a Justice Department desperate to hold its ground; a shocked White House staff, caught off-guard; and of course Bork himself, who insisted that "the process of confirming justices for our nations highest court has been transformed in a way that should not and indeed must not be permitted to occur again.” Featuring a new epilogue, "Where Are They Now?”