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Photography and Text by Tony Ward, Copyright 2017
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Former Judge Robert H. Bork, a former solicitor general, and acting head of the Justice Department at the time played a role in the Saturday Night Massacre, 1973, by agreeing with orders issued by then President Richard Nixon, to fire Archibald Cox, special prosecutor appointed to the investigation of President Nixon and his involvement in the Watergate conspiracy. Bork was later nominated by President Ronald Regan on July 1, 1987 (after a promise made by President Nixon) to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Senate, with 54 Democrats, rejected his nomination after very contentious senate hearings, 42-58. During the hearings Senator Ted Kennedy famously remarked:
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”
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To see more portraits from this series, go here: http://tonyward.com/early-work/close-ups-1990s/