Judge Bork, who died yesterday at the age of 85, will be widely remembered as a man who, save for one of the most scandalous performances by any United States Senate, could have been a justice of the Supreme Court or even Chief Justice of the United States. That was the kind of mind he had and standing he gained from his years as a law professor, solicitor general, and judge of the United States Court of Appeals. But it turns out that a justice of the Supreme Court wasn’t the only thing of which he dreamed.

Your editor discovered this at a dinner with the judge one evening years ago at Washington. A wartime crony, Jack Fuller, by then editor of Chicago Tribune and himself a sage of the Constitution,* and your editor had invited Bork to dinner. The judge had recently stepped down from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If we remember correctly, he needed to earn something resembling a real living. He’d already been rejected by the Senate for a seat on the high court.

Mr. Fuller had made a reservation at an Italian restaurant with curved booths, which enclosed tables around which three persons could gather for a good conversation. Mr. Fuller and we got there first, settled in, had begun our drinks when The Great Bork loomed before the table. We stood and shook hands, and we scrambled out of the booth to make it possible for our guest to take the center seat.

Once the judge was in place, we sat down again. A waiter approached. Bork asked for a double martini. We sat solemnly while the martini was fetched. When it was set before the judge, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes (Kents, if we recall), and tapped one on his fingernail. The judge lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and then exhaled. We remember to this day watching him and thinking to ourselves, “Don’t speak first. The judge will have to say something.”

The judge raised his martini glass by the stem. He took a long satisfying drink. He set it down carefully. He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled. Then, the man who could have been the next Chief Justice of the United States uttered the wistful words: “You know, I could have been a newspaperman.” We recognize the moment mightn’t resonate but for those of us ink-stained wretches who labor in the press. But there it is.

The torpedoing of Bork’s candidacy for the Supreme Court will always stand as one of the most despicable episodes in the history of the upper chamber. No doubt it reflected resentment among the Democrats that Bork had been willing, when he was solicitor general and acting attorney general, to fire, on orders of President Nixon, the special prosecutor of Watergate, Archibald Cox. Liberals like to contrast Bork’s willingness to fire Cox with the supposedly high-minded decision of Attorney General Richardson and his deputy, Wm. Ruckelshaus, to resign rather than carry out President Nixon’s order.

It happens that one of the most distinguished judges on the appellate bench, Jose Cabranes, has shared with us a letter he sent to Bork several years ago reporting that Richardson had confirmed, in post-dinner remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations in September 1974, that Bork, too, had been prepared to resign. It was Richardson himself and also Ruckelshaus who had implored Bork to stay on to stay as acting attorney general and maintain the integrity of the Justice Department.

Even when Bork was made acting attorney general, Judge Cabranes reports, he refused to move into the attorney general’s office suite. Although Bork fired Cox, he did not end the special prosecution. On the contrary, he brought in as a new special prosecutor a former president of the American Bar Association, Leon Jaworski, who pursued the investigation to its dismal conclusion.

Bork’s life is a reminder that great men and women aren’t defined by their offices but by their character, their deeds, and their ideas. Bork will be remembered long after those who made a show of rebuffing the presidential order are forgotten by history. Bork lived for his ideas more than for the offices he held. No doubt newspaperman was but one of the things that he, like a lot of boys and girls, dreamed of being. But what he actually did become was an inspiriter that few who knew him will forget.

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* It was for editorials on the Constitution that Mr. Fuller won his Pulitzer Prize.