The Supreme Court in Politics

Abstract

Despite all that has been written about the bitter struggle initiated by President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to a seat on the Supreme Court, its most remarkable feature, that it was waged over a judicial appointment, has drawn relatively little comment. Two hundred years after the Philadelphia Convention, Hamilton's branch least dangerous because it would have influence over either the sword or the purse, no direction either of the strength or the wealth of the society, and can take no active resolution whatever1-had come to occupy so important a place in the nation's political life that the question of its future course was capable of generating a controversy more intense and more divisive than all but a very few contests for political office. In the summer of 1987, when Judge Bork was nominated, the United States was plagued by foreign trade and budget deficits that arguably marked the beginning of a long-term economic decline. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Americans were homeless, the most visible symptom of the still unsolved problem of widespread poverty in the midst of plenty. Despite important progress in civil rights during the previous twenty-five years, the besetting issue of race persisted, amid signs that the conditions of life and future prospects of a large segment of the black population were deteriorating. Both the educational and medical care systems were widely acknowledged to require significant repair. The likely influence of the Supreme Court on these and other vital issues facing the nation ranges between negligible and nonexistent.2 Yet, President Reagan declared that securing Bork's confirmation would be his highest domestic priority during the remainder of his term (p. 214). The implicit judgment about the importance of the appointment might be discounted on the ground that Reagan was a