Misrule of Law

The late, great Robert Bork is usually remembered as an advocate of judicial restraint.  This is certainly the position he took in his famous 1971 article in the Indiana Law Journal, “Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems,” and thereafter, but it turns out that earlier in his career Bork (who was a disciple of Aaron Director at the University of Chicago) flirted with a more libertarian approach, even embracing Griswold‘s reliance of unenumerated rights. In other words, in his youth Bork briefly embraced something resembling “judicial engagement” before moving on to the more serious work that provided the seeds for constitutional originalism. I explore Bork’s evolution in this piece in Law and Liberty.