Judge Robert Bork died at the age of 85 on Wednesday in his home in Virginia. His son Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed the news to MSN News.Details of the causes of his death have not been released yet, but in the recent years Bork had been suffering from heart ailments.
Bork is most remembered for his nomination for Supreme Court in 1987nomination under the presidency Ronald Reagan. Bork's nomination was rejected by the senate, which was led by democrats, who felt that Bork's political philosophy was much too conservative for the bench.
Bork, became central figure in the U.S. media, when in 1973, he served as the Solicitor General of the U.S. Justice Department and fired Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox at the behest of President Richard Nixon. The incident went down in national history as a significant chapter in the Watergate Scandal known as "Saturday Night Massacre."
His name, Bork, went on to become a verb in the English dictionary. "To Bork," which is defined in the dictionary "to attack a candidate or public figure, systematically, particularly in the media," as on Dictionary.com
Judge Bork once said, "My name became a verb...And I regard that as one form of immortality," as reported by CNN News.
Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst, said Bork was an "an epic figure in American law... one of the intellectual godfathers of the conservative movement in this country," as reported by CNN News.
Bork also served as the legal advisor for Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney during his campaign run in 2012. Bork also as a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institution at the time of his death.
