Bork Foresees ‘Disgrace’ if He Changes Stated Stands : Liberals Claim He Flip-Flops

Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork, accused of flip-flopping on key issues, said today that he would be “disgraced in history” if he abandoned the moderate stands he has taken in Senate hearings and turned radically rightward after confirmation.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee strained to conclude its nearly weeklong questioning of Bork, the nominee also came under fresh attack from opponents who said his earlier views frighten women and minorities.

The opposition to Bork appears to have coalesced around two related themes:

Liberals say the views he has expressed in a 25-year career as lawyer, scholar and judge place him outside the mainstream of generally accepted American jurisprudence. And they charge that his moderate stances this week merely reflect his ambition to be on the high court rather than any true change of heart.

Bork sought today to reassure the Senate he has not vacillated nor is he an extremist.

‘Would Be Preposterous’

“This is a hearing which you gentlemen referred to as historic,” he said. “I have expressed my views here and those views are now widely known. It really would be preposterous to say things I said to you and then get on the court and do the opposite. I would be disgraced in history.”

The remarks were in response to a question by Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.), one of three or four apparently undecided members of the closely divided committee.

“If you want to follow the agenda they fear you’ll follow, you could do great harm to minorities,” Heflin said.

Bork responded, “That argument assumes something about me that’s not true,” and he pointed to his opinions as a federal appeals court judge upholding the rights of minorities and women.

Such an argument also “assumes there are four other justices who have sinister views, which is not true,” he added.

Objects to ‘Imperialism’

Bork addressed what his detractors charge is a convenient change of views on judicial activism by drawing a distinction between “activism” and “imperialism.”

He said, “I don’t want anybody to think courts should be passive and not defend individual liberties. Courts should be active in that field.”

“Imperialism” is what he finds offensive, Bork said. “That means taking over territory that doesn’t belong to them.”

One of the more dramatic moments occurred in an exchange between Bork and Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio), one of the nominee’s sternest critics.

Metzenbaum said: “You are not a frightening man. But you are a man of frightening views.”

The senator said he was shocked by an opinion of Bork’s upholding a chemical company’s plan for dealing with dangerous lead levels in the workplace.

Fired or Sterilized

As Metzenbaum described it, the plan meant that women of childbearing age would have to choose between being fired or sterilized to protect potential fetuses from lead poisoning.

“Maybe that somehow explains the concerns women have about your appointment,” Metzenbaum said. “The women of America have much to be frightened about from your appointment, blacks as well,” Metzenbaum added.

But Bork said the chemical company’s plan was a humane attempt to deal with a distressing problem.

He said federal health and safety officials determined that the company was unable to lower the lead levels sufficiently to protect fetuses. Rather than fire the women or transfer them to safer, lower-paying jobs, Bork continued, they were given the choice of sterilization.

“My opinion is not an endorsement of sterilization. It is not an anti-woman opinion,” Bork said.