From United Press International - April 04, 2000
WASHINGTON, April 4 (UPI) --
The United States should drop the rhetoric of international law and speak the language of morality, Robert H. Bork said here Tuesday.
The impulse toward legal globalism seems to be very strong and "may be capable of changing our Constitution," the former jurist told his audience at the American Enterprise Institute. As an example, Bork cited a recent opinion by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer having to do with the length of time a prisoner may be held on death row before execution. Bryer opined that the constitutionality of this matter should be influenced in part by examining the laws of other nations.
"I'm not sure why the Constitution of the United States, which has its own history and understood meaning, should be affected in any way by what foreign courts have to say about their constitutions," Bork said.
"International law about the use of armed force should not inhibit America's actions in its own interests," Bork said. "We should not, through globalization, surrender our interests to nations of far different cultures and views of politics, not to mention to nations that are overtly hostile to the United States." He termed it "a bit nauseating" to hear of laws forbidding crimes against humanity "when it's obvious that what is involved is not law but politicized force."
Bork mentioned that both Spanish and French courts "have dismissed out of hand" the prospect that laws such as those used to justify the detention in Britain of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet would ever be used against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. These "laws" apply only to small, powerless countries on the right, while the most murderous leaders of powerful leftist countries such as China "are courted, flattered and feted."
"Law that is moral or stable cannot be made out of that kind of hypocrisy," Bork said, because such law must be acceptable to immoral regimes.
The pretense that there is an agreed body of law about the use of armed force, and about the punishment of human rights violations, "can only give false substance to recriminations against us from hostile foreign powers and soft-headed Americans," Bork said. Assenting to such a pretense would "sap our resolve, undermine our sovereignty and remove vital decisions from democratic choice in this country."
Bork was serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1987, when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court. He is best known for the four-month campaign in the Senate against his confirmation led by Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., then ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. Bork's name was later turned into a verb.
William Safire's "Political Dictionary" has the entry "Bork: (to) attack viciously a candidate or appointee, especially by misrepresentation in the media."
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