Robert Bork, whose failed Supreme Court nomination provoked a lasting partisan divide over judicial nominations, died Wednesday at age 85.
"Borked"
In the end, Bork was defeated by a vote of 58 to 42, the largest margin in history.
The whole episode, however, enraged many Republicans. Bork's name became a symbol of conservative grievance, and a new verb  to "bork"  was born, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "to defame or vilify a person systematically."
"The nomination changed everything, maybe forever," says Tom Goldstein, publisher of the popular SCOTUSblog, which extensively covers the Supreme Court. "Republicans nominated this brilliant guy to move the law in this dramatically more conservative direction. Liberal groups turned around and blocked him precisely because of those views. Their fight legitimized scorched-earth ideological wars over nominations at the Supreme Court, and to this day both sides remain completely convinced they were right. The upshot is that we have this ridiculous system now where nominees shut up and don't say anything that might signal what they really think."
