What's really at stake regarding Supreme Court Justice selection-Part 2

Link
If you haven't read Part 1, you might just want to look at the first posting below this one. Here is the second part of the speech, as promised:

"First, it's a debate over how much government should be able to intrude upon the most personal choices of Americans. This is Terri Schiavo and much more. The second, the other side of that same coin, is a debate about whether government can act as a shield to protect people from abuses by powerful interests. For example, can we keep tobacco companies from targeting our children?

These very questions are debated daily in the House and the Senate. They are debated in the halls of academia. They are debated over the dinner table in homes throughout America. And just as in prior periods of our history, they are debated most vociferously when a vacancy occurs on the Supreme Court of the United States -- when filling that vacancy has the potential to fundamentally alter the direction of the Court. That's when the debate reaches a crescendo.

And the debate has reached that crescendo today, with good and just reason. The debates about a confirmation are one of the most important venues for raising fundamental questions about which constitutional view is better for our country. And the outcome of the debate can make a huge, huge, huge difference.

The quotations which I began with express very different constitutional views. The second, it will not surprise you, was written by Judge Robert Bork, who came before the Judiciary Committee in 1987, as a believer in a kind of a "strict construction." He was a self-proclaimed originalist. He had previously said, and I quote, "It is necessary to establish the proposition that the framers' intentions with respect to freedoms are the sole legitimate premise from which constitutional analysis may proceed."

According to originalist logic, many Supreme Court decisions that are fundamental to the fabric of our country are simply wrong. By Judge Bork's own estimate, dozens upon dozens, including major decision -- holding that couples could not be prohibited from using contraceptives, rulings that the government could not involuntarily sterilize criminals, rulings relating to the incorporation doctrine -- were all declared by Judge Bork and others who embraced what we now call the "Constitution in Exile" firmly to be constitutionally incorrectly decided.

At that time, I particularly thought it critical to probe Judge Bork's views on privacy. Judge Bork stated quite clearly he believed there was no -- emphasize no -- general right of privacy the Constitution protects. Judge Bork would never have written, let alone joined, the opinion that contains the first quotation I read, Justice Kennedy. The man who took the seat for which Judge Bork had been nominated authored the language that I quoted you first.

Justice Kennedy's views reflect, in my judgment, a much healthier -- and that's an unusual word to use in reference to the Constitution -- but a much healthier view of the Constitution and its role in our society.

When the Senate voted not to confirm Judge Bork, it sent a message that his views were not right for the country. Make no mistake, however, that did not end the debate. But also make no mistake that the defeat of Judge Bork did not have a profound effect, a profound effect on constitutional jurisprudence and the lives of average Americans the last 20 years.

Just place Bork everyplace where Kennedy has been, in every decision -- nice little project for you 1-Ls -- and you'll see a very different America. Not an America outlined by bad guys, not an America outlined by people who are trying to feather the nest of any interest, but honorable, decent people who have a very different view of the Constitution and those ennobling phrases that we're going to be debating 200 years from now."

Tomorrow Part 3 of the speech. Have you guessed who wrote and gave this speech?