RIP

Robert Bork Dies at 85

Supreme Court nomination was famously rejected

Robert Bork, the conservative judge whose Supreme Court nomination was famously rejected by the Democratic Senate in the Reagan years, died Wednesday in Virginia. He was 85. The cause of death was heart complications. Bork served as a law professor at Yale, where he was known as an anti-trust scholar and taught Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Robert Reich, and John Bolton, among others. In 1987, he was nominated for the Supreme Court, where he was vehemently opposed by Senate Democrats, who eventually were able to block his nomination, but not before a circus-like nomination process where even his video-rental records were leaked to the press. After failing to secure the Supreme Court seat, Bork went on to work for a series of conservative think tanks and write books.