A Time for Hope: The Prospects for American Law

Gerald Russello reviews a new ISI Books collection of the selected writings and arguments of Robert Bork–A Time to Speak:

Judges do not make the law, in other words, though that timeworn phrase is often used by those who ostensibly support Judge Bok’s perspective but cannot see the implications of its meaning. For Judge Bork is arguing for a deep level of legal discipline by judges. There is no “higher law” in the Constitution that can allow judges to pick and choose among their favorite moral principles to decide cases in defiance of the text and structure of the Constitution itself or in furtherance of an agenda of “living constitutionalism.”