NR PLUS
Magazine January 28, 2013, Issue

The Original Originalist

By
How Robert H. Bork galvanized a movement

In an article for Fortune magazine in 1971, Professor Robert H. Bork of Yale Law School wrote that “the two fields that I know best, antitrust law and constitutional law, are in states of intellectual chaos.” Striking a theme he was to repeat often over the course of the next two decades, he remarked that law in general was a field of study that “possesses very little theory about itself.” Before he was finished, Bork was to supply a good deal of the theoretical groundwork for a coherent understanding of law and judging.

In that same year, Bork published an article …

In This Issue

Articles

Politics & Policy

Off the Cliff

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For a few weeks around New Year’s Day, Washington, D.C., turned topsy-turvy. Well, topsy-turvier than usual. Conservative groups blasted a huge tax increase, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the size ...
Politics & Policy

Nixon at 100

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As President Nixon sat in the Oval Office on Wednesday, June 2, 1971, the sun’s rays splashing brilliantly across the blue and gold carpet embroidered with the presidential seal, he ...
Politics & Policy

Bork Vivant

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Was Bob Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court finally undone by the fact that he had a beard? Not that his beard was the sole obstacle, of course. The vicious ...

Features

Politics & Policy

Race and the Constitution

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November’s electoral setbacks have prompted conservatives to reconsider their beliefs and rhetoric on a variety of issues. While they debate new ideas on immigration, taxes, and entitlements, they should not ...

Books, Arts & Manners

Politics & Policy

Nation-Building

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The emergence and ultimate ascendance of the English-speaking peoples — the Anglosphere — is the salient fact of modern history. And the colonization of America is the turning point in ...
Politics & Policy

City of Lights

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‘From the moment it began,” argues Michael Neiberg, a history professor at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., “the liberation of Paris was an almost mythical affair.” He is ...
City Desk

Pigeon Watching

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The city has been great for species other than man — roaches and rats; cats and dogs; once upon a time, horses. Another big winner in the lottery of urbanization ...

Sections

Politics & Policy

Letters

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O’Neill Uncensored In his memoir In Confidence, former Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin wrote of an encounter he had had with House speaker Tip O’Neill: “O’Neill said no effort should be spared ...
Politics & Policy

The Week

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‐ Egyptian prosecutors are investigating a popular television comedian for insulting the president. That could never happen here. When do popular television comedians insult the president? ‐ Chuck Hagel, the Republican ...
Athwart

Keep the Change

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There are many compelling reasons to mint a trillion-dollar coin, including “plot device for Mission: Impossible 5.” The coin has been stolen, and nefarious enemies of the United States intend ...
Politics & Policy

Poetry

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SCRAPS The hunt, for both, was empty as the light blue sky . . . the solitary gull and the eagle, at day’s end, find what little remains from the ice fisherman’s bucket; the gull landing ...
Happy Warrior

The Veil Descends

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In the summer of 2010, mourners lined the streets of Wales’s capital city to pay tribute to a seven-year-old boy killed in a house fire. In fact, Yaseen Ali Ege ...