Robert Bork Quotes on Constitution (9 Quotes)

Once the justices depart, as most of them have, from the original understanding of the principles of the Constitution, they lack any guidance other than their own attempts at moral philosophy, a task for which they have not even minimal skills. Yet when it rules in the name of the Constitution, whether it rules truly or not, the Court is the most powerful branch of government in domestic policy. The combination of absolute power, disdain for the historic Constitution, and philosophical incompetence is lethal.

The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left.

Americans revere both the Constitution and an independent Court that applies the document's provisions. The Court has done many excellent things in our history, and few people are willing to see its power broken. The difficulty with all proposals to respond to the Court when it behaves unconstitutionally is that they would create a power to destroy the Court's essential work as well.

a constitutional right . . . and once homosexuality is defined as a constitutional right, there is nothing the states can do about it, nothing the people can do about it.

I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

How did Taney know that slave ownership was a constitutional right Such a right is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. He knew it because he was passionately convinced that it must be a constitutional right.

In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.

The right to procreate is not guaranteed, explicitly or implicitly, by the Constitution.

It's a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you're on the court already,