Saving Justice: Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, and Other Adventures of a Solicitor General

by Robert H. Bork

Overview

In June 1973, Judge Robert Bork was plucked from a quiet life of academia at Yale Universityand planted in the tumultuous soil of constitutional crisis by a Nixon administration barreling toward collapse. From the ousting of Vice President Spiro Agnew to the discharge of the Watergate special prosecutor, an event known as the Saturday Night Massacre, Saving Justice offers a firsthand, insider account of the whirlwind of events that engulfed the administration during the last half of 1973 and the first few months of 1974. This important volume provides a revelatory look into the inner workings of the Justice Department during some of the most consequential months of the Nixon administration.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594036811
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	03/12/2013
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robert H. Bork, who died December 19, 2012, was the author of two New York Times best sellers, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline and The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law, and several other books, including A Time to Speak, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges, and The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself. A Distinguished Fellow of Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and formerly the Tad and Dianne Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Bork served as the United States solicitor general from 1973 to 1977. Before becoming a partner in the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, Bork served in the United States Marine Corps. He taught for nineteen years at Yale UniversityLaw School and was named to the Alexander M. Bickel Chair of Public Law in 1980. Bork was the circuit judge of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1982 to 1988, and a distinguished scholar at the American Enterprise Institute from 1988 to 2003. At the time of his death, he was a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute.

Table of Contents

Foreword Edwin Meese ix

Acknowledgments xvii

Prologue: The Office of Solicitor General 1

1 Getting the Job 13

2 Nixon's Defense Attorney Offer 35

3 William O. Douglas's War 41

4 L'Affaire Agnew 53

5 The Saturday Night Massacre 69

6 After the Massacre 91

7 Restoring Justice 101

Epilogue 113

Notes 125

Index 129

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

While certainly Judge Bork’s confirmation struggle was an important political inflection point, what he did for the life of the law in this country and in defense of the Constitution greatly overshadows that one moment.

— Leonard A. Leo, Federalist Society

Editorial Reviews

“Bork deserves to be remembered by a grateful nation for the services he rendered in preventing disarray in the Justice Department at a moment of unprecedented assault on the rule of law, and for facilitating the removal of a president during Washington days that were darker than most people today can imagine. His book confirms the axiom that our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times.”

— George Will

“Robert Bork was a remarkable American patriot. … Absolutely a fascinating book.”

— Mark Levin

While certainly Judge Bork’s confirmation struggle was an important political inflection point, what he did for the life of the law in this country and in defense of the Constitution greatly overshadows that one moment.

— Leonard A. Leo, Federalist Society

From the Publisher