This was in August or September of ’63, and I remember that one. I think the most important, in some ways, was an article he wrote in the New Republic actually, Bork did, in 1963, that laid out his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Well, leading up to it, I was essentially gathering information about Bork’s writings. KnottĪnd so could you tell us about the role that you would play in the coming weeks and months during the Bork hearings? Blattner And he walked out of the hearing and onto the Senate floor. There is an allusion in the hearing record to the coming Supreme Court nomination, and Senator Kennedy said-and I thought this was epic understatement-he said, Well, I think I may have something to say about it. And I remember when I was walking with him to the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and Attorney General Meese called him in the anteroom-well, I think he called him in the anteroom-and Senator Kennedy was having an exchange in the hearing, on the record, with Brad Reynolds, who was then still the Assistant Attorney General in charge of civil rights, who’d been denied confirmation as Associate Attorney General at that time. Actually the last hearing on the Fair Housing bill was July 1st, 1987, the day that Bork was nominated. He spoke on the floor of the Senate within an hour after the announcement. ![]() Senator Kennedy was clearly prepared for this to happen. ![]() So that was the first thing I worked on.Īnd then judicial nominations, which were district and court of appeals nominations, until June of 1987, at which point Lewis Powell resigned, and about a week later, Robert Bork was nominated. I came on board in January, and I think hearings started on that bill by March, and we actually had about six days of hearings. So it had been rattling around and reintroduced biennially, and of course, when the Democrats took back over, it in essence bubbled back up. It had been introduced, I think, as far back as 1979, so really about at that point eight years earlier, and it had been filibustered at the end of the 1980 Congress when the Republicans took over as a result of the 1980 election. I guess the first two issues I dealt with, and then things got, perhaps, historic-what ultimately became the Fair Housing Act of 1988 was a piece of essentially unfinished business in terms of civil rights legislation. KnottĬan you give us some sense of some of the early issues that you dealt with once you joined the Kennedy team? Blattner It was just before Christmas in 1986, and just in his office in the Russell Building. I met him again, of course, and really for the first time on a going-forward basis, when he interviewed me. Steve was, at that point, shuttling back and forth between Cambridge and Washington, and he introduced me to him. Steve Breyer, who was then my ad law professor at Harvard, introduced me to him at an event that summer, summer of ’79, in Washington. The first time I met the Senator was not in 1986 when I interviewed there. Knottĭo you recall your first meeting with the Senator? Did he interview you for the position? Blattner He called me up, and that’s essentially how I came on board. I had clerked for Potter Stewart, for whom Carey Parker clerked, so I sent Carey a note. I was, at that time, an associate at a law firm here in Washington, and I sent letters to a few Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. ![]() The Democrats had taken over the Senate as a result of the November 1986 elections. I came to work for him in January of 1987. Well, perhaps the best place to start would be to simply ask you how you came to work for Senator Kennedy.
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