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being mhm senator from Florida has been recognized our responsibility, Mr. President, the distinguished senator yield for a question. The managers are trying to alert other senators as to when they may proceed with their amendments. Could the distinguished senator indicate how long he will be speaking? Oh, very well, I am.

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Of course, there's no time agreement on the bill, and there's no way you can limit any senator if he gets recognition. So the senator would be speaking about 10 minutes. I would hope to get some time agreements so that so we could move on with the amendments.

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And in this way, if you yield to senators. But if they want to speak, uh, you can yield five minutes to them or whatever. Just I use the floor so the senator may proceed. Thank you for the senator from Florida controls the floor. Senators who want to speak on this subject that we've been trying to limit it to a maximum five minutes.

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Uh, senator, uh, Pestle yesterday waiting for it was I would just say Mr President, the senator from Florida controls the floor. One would have to ask him to yield in order to speak Mr President, our responsibility to the public embraces few tasks which are more challenging than that service on nomination to or conservation of the Supreme Court justice.

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Clearly, both our president and Judge Robert Bork have approached this matter matter of Judge Bork's nomination with the utmost respect for reflection upon the role of the Supreme Court and end a Supreme Court justice in our society. Judge Bork has dedicated a lifetime to scholarly pursuit and judicial application.

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He has repeatedly defined a set of deeply held convictions which inform his decision. His intellect is formative. His articulation of his views is forced. We in the Senate have no lesser responsibilities. Ours is to evaluate the candidate proposed and to measure and reflect the will of the people in choosing not only a justice but in choosing to maintain the historic confidence of the American people in American justice.

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Such a decision must probe deeply held beliefs and can be, as we have seen, both contentious and even anguish we have. Each of us had to pause in the inevitable clamor of our daily events to consult with the people of our state, the words and decisions of the candidate the history of the United States law and judicial interpretation, which hold the pattern and direction for our future.

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And we've had to pause and search our own souls for a sense of what will best serve our nation's interest as a Floridian and as someone whose life has been dramatically affected by Supreme Court decisions. I have a unique perspective on this particular choice. I might never have been elected to public office were it not for the Supreme Court decision on reapportioning.

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Another former governor of our state, Leroy Collins, a man whose record is distinguished by courageous battles to bring Florida into the 20th century of civil rights and equal opportunity, tells a story a story, Mr President, which illustrates the sentiment, an ultimate power of the Supreme Court influence and be influenced by our efforts to sustain a workable democracy.

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Governor Collins found himself next to Justice Hugo Black after a Georgetown dinner party in 1963 Justice Black asked Collins what was his biggest disappointment As governor of Florida. Collins replied without hesitation that he had been unable to convince the Florida Legislature to reapportion the voting districts of the state in effect to reform itself to reflect the dynamic growth of Florida and the diversity of ethnic backgrounds and political position.

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Just as Black told Governor Collins that the Florida experience was not an experience of failure, that that experience had been discussed by the justices of the Supreme Court as they deliberated on the Tennessee reapportionment decisions that the inability of Florida with strong, courageous, effective leadership to resolve the issue through state legislative processes had convinced the United States Supreme Court that it must assume the final role in assuring equal weight to each voice that one man equaled one vote.

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Mr President, we have heard eloquent testimony from former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. She ran for office twice, guarded an impressive turnout twice and lost twice before reapportionment allowed her to win a seat in the Texas Legislature. Barbara Jordan told the Judiciary Committee. My opposition to this nomination is really a result of living 51 years as a black American born in the South and determined to be heard by the majority community.

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When you experience the frustrations of being in a minority position and watching the foreclosure of your last appeal, and then suddenly you are rescued by the Supreme Court of the United States that is tantamount to being born again. It is this hope, this confidence in the essential fairness and justice of our government, which has served as the strong sinew in binding our nation together.

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The expectation of full membership in the family of America has kept those waiting for admission within the democratic system. Our Constitution is the wellspring, which in spirits the nation, the Supreme Court is the channel for the great river of democracy that flows from it time and time again.

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Throughout our history, the court's decisions have changed the direction of our individual lives. The court struck down the poll tax. It said. We can teach foreign languages in our schools. It's supported affirmative action. It affirmed that individual privacy is a right. It opened our schools to all of our Children.

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It affirmed that the law must equally protect every American and that no American may be deprived of liberty without due process of law. His inattention to the human consequence of adjudication is seen as a threat by many who have only recently one hard one progress towards equity for all Americans.

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In the course of these hearings, Judge Bork has amended some of his views, altered others. But in the course of his judicial and academic work, the judge has chosen has chosen consistently to be provocative, to be to visit. We are an expansive people. We cannot be constricted by a narrow view.

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Scholastic brilliance, when it is bloodless and abstract, is nothing more than brilliance. With blinders on, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend of the Constitution. Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deemed them like the Ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

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The greatest lessons of our common history are the lessons of the heart. All men are created equal. We are each entitled to a share of the abundance of this earth. We have rights to express our opinions, to seek knowledge and gainful employment, to live in adequate shelter, to shield our privacy, to be heard equally, to be judged equal, to find our own happiness, to dream our own dreams.

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If the Constitution is the framework of our government, if the Declaration of Independence is the soul and spirit of our nation. Then the Supreme Court has the responsibility to infuse the one with the other. The Supreme Court is the living instrument of the will and yearnings of the American people.

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A justice of that Supreme Court must be a part of that humanity. Not apart from that humanity. Judiciousness is reached through streets teeming with noise and struggles and fears and joys of life. One who is untouched by his passage through those streets is unprepared to wield the power of decision which will so intimately touch others lives.

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I have decided, Mr President, I cannot support the nomination of Robert Bork as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. His own words mark him as an inappropriate Canada. In response to a question from the senator from Wyoming, Senator Simpson, Why do you want to be an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court?

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Judge Bork replied. I think it would be an intellectual feast just to be there and to read the briefs and discuss things with my colleagues. That is the first answer. We need not go on. That is the wrong answer. The dedication of a life to the shaping of so many lives is the highest honor and the highest austerity.

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The preparation for such a role must be rigorous. The character of such an aspirin must fully exhibit intellectual discipline, informed by real passion. The pursuit and definition of justice is passionate work. It is all consuming. It is a trust we can call sacred. It is my life.

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It is your lives. It's the lives of our Children and the foundation of democracy, which we safeguard for all Americans, the enlightened hope we hold up as a beacon to the rest of the world. Thank you, President. Mr. President. Mr President. Mhm now will book take himself out.

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The Supreme Court nominee shuttled from the White House to Capitol Hill during the day book is reportedly deciding for himself tonight about whether he can and should try to beat the odds or whether it's more like beating a dead horse. Phil Jones reports on Bork and the approaching our of decision.

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It looked like a political pep rally today, as more than a dozen Republican senators escorted Judge Bork and his wife to their car and applauded them as they departed. Thanks, Mark, are you going to stay in bark wouldn't answer questions, but he told the senators he wanted to think about it and talk it over with his wife and Children.

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His supporters urged him to fight on and attack Senators Biden and Kennedy and other opponents. The American people know what all the people who cheated in college think about this. We want to give them a chance to hear the qualifications of a guy who was a straight a student.

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There's been a lot of disinformation about Judge Bork has been presented. The American people were going to reverse that and tell the truth about what we want. Some of those people have been telling lies about to have to try to prove them. A few senators came out for work today, including Hatfield of Oregon, while more Democrats went on record against him, among them Bro, Shelby, Exxon Dixon, Fowler, Gore and both of Florida's conservative Democratic senators, Childs and Graham.

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Judge Bork's overall philosophy with respect to the Constitution that I find radical and greatly at odds with our 200 years experience in the course of his judicial and academic work the judge has chosen has chosen consistently to be provocative to be to visit publicly. President Reagan wasn't budging today.

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He met with Mark this morning, but aides said withdrawal of the nomination was not discussed. If Judge Bark asked that his name be withdrawn, would you honor his request? Okay, next. The president's strategy on Bork is increasingly under attack, the latest today from a prominent Republican who's been watching from the sidelines.

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I kept wondering, When is the president going to put more effective troops on this? Howard Baker stepped in and never seem to do the right things. It never raised real organized, genuine opposition to all these flaky, oddball groups all over this country. Mark is expected to tell the president tomorrow whether he wants to stay in the fight.

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Opponents are ready for a showdown, claiming they have 56 votes to kill the nomination. Phil Jones, CBS News Capitol Hill A desperate journey ended in death for more than 100 illegal right