Advise and Dissent

The inquiry promises to be a grand piece of political theater, with enough ( ideological conflicts, impassioned players and historic resonance to make it a worthy sequel to this summer's Iran-contra civics lesson. But the hearings into the nomination of Robert Bork as the nation's 104th Supreme Court Justice offer something more. At issue on the 200th birthday of the Constitution will be the most fundamental questions at the heart of that document and in the soul of the nation it constituted: What inalienable rights -- ranging from free speech to equal justice to personal privacy -- are guaranteed to citizens by the highest law of the land? Because Bork's ascension to the chair of Lewis Powell could decisively shift the court to the right on these issues, the outcome could affect the course of American law and society well into the 21st century.

This Tuesday the bearish federal judge and former law professor, who is as amiable in person as he is controversial in his concepts, will begin three days of intensive grilling by the 14 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bork and his supporters will argue that he is a fair, open-minded, brilliant jurist whose philosophy of judicial restraint represents a reasonable antidote to 30 years of excessive social activism by the court. His foes, led by Chairman Joseph Biden, will seek to show that he is a right-wing radical whose opinions and writings reveal a reading of the Constitution so constricted as to threaten basic principles of social justice and individual liberties that the nation now takes for granted.

The battle over Bork could be the culminating ideological showdown of the Reagan era. After nearly seven years in office, the President has altered the tenor of the nation's political debate, riding and guiding the pendulum swing from the liberal Zeitgeist of the 1960s to the conservative climate of the '80s. Yet for all the talk of a Reagan Revolution, for all the President's personal popularity and success in changing tax and spending policies, the social agenda of the New Right has remained largely unfulfilled. When he nominated Bork, Reagan said that the judge "shares my view" of the proper role of the court.

Thus, to a great many people around the country, the Bork confirmation struggle is nothing less than a fight for the soul of American society. Evangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson speak of a Bork appointment as a kind of salvation for a morally misguided Supreme Court. Exulted Human Events, a right-wing journal: "The President . . . could advance his entire social agenda -- from tougher criminal penalties, to curbing abortion-on- demand, to sustaining religious values in the schools, etc. -- far beyond his term in office."

The liberal call to arms was proclaimed by Senator Ted Kennedy just hours after the nomination was announced. Said he: "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 would be censored at the whim of Government."