This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In "Judge Bork was a champion of rule of law" (Opinion, Dec. 22), Brent Hatch claims that Robert Bork would have been a perfect choice for the Supreme Court, where he could enforce "the neutral, non-political application of the law."
Makes you laugh. As the title of Bork's book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline reveals, he was a conservative zealot. His confirmation would have been a disaster.
Rather than observing "the rule of law," Bork would have supported his own agenda of restoring the true America — a right-wing paradise where women and minorities know their place, welfare doesn't exist and Rush Limbaugh feels right at home.
Bork was a member of the Federalist Society, as is Sen. Orrin Hatch and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. While pretending to objectively "interpret the law," this partisan group simply wants courts to rubber stamp laws passed by legislatures, which usually represent the wealthy.
The powerful don't need more help. As Justice Elena Kagan put it, in a tribute to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the role of courts should be "to protect the people who went unprotected by every other organ of government — to safeguard the interests of people who had no other champion."
J. Bryan Larsen
Murray