Robert Bork served on the Yale law faculty, as President Richard Nixon's solicitor general and acting attorney general, and as a U.S. Appeals Court judge before his nomination by President Reagan to the Supreme Court in 1987. The American Bar Association rated Bork "exceptionally well qualified" and the White House presented him as a moderate. Liberal critics questioned his stances on civil rights, abortion rights, and freedom of speech. Bork's nomination was rejected in a Senate vote, 58-42.
