Bork for The Court

The ground swell of public opinion against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court is understandable ((NATION, July 13)). His reliance on original intent precludes the notion that the Founding Fathers originally intended us to evolve as a people into something better than we were. The nation, and indeed the President's legacy, would be better served by a Justice who views the Constitution as a living part of the present rather than a relic from the past.

Gregory A. Durbin

Indianapolis

I, like other Americans, voted for Ronald Reagan in large part because it was the only way to change a misguided Supreme Court. In nominating Bork, the President is faithful to his mandate from the people. If the U.S. Senate rejects Bork on the basis of his political views, the Senate will have wrongfully obstructed the only constitutional route Americans have to influence the direction of the court.

Wayne Grudem

Libertyville, Ill.

U.S. Senators and the public should be aware that Bork's refusal to recognize a constitutional right to privacy extends to contraception as well as abortion. Bork has referred to the 1965 Supreme Court decision in which the court said married couples have a right to use contraceptives in their homes as "shallow, murky and rhetorical." He called the constitutional right to privacy "simply one more slogan that some Justices will use or not as convenient in the process of writing their own tastes into law." We must not allow this antiwoman, anti-civil rights nominee to be named to the court.

Anne Nicol Gaylor, Administrator

Women's Medical Fund, Inc.

Madison, Wis.