Soon after Ed Meese was sworn in as attorney general in early 1985, he organized a group within the Justice Department whose purpose was to advise him, and ultimately President Reagan, on who would be the best candidates to select for the Supreme Court, in the event seats opened. There were about 20 of us, and we looked at roughly 20 prospects, most of them federal judges. We reviewed their careers but we were especially interested in whether they espoused the president’s judicial philosophy—Reagan wanted justices who “would interpret the law, not make it,” as he often put it.

We read a lot of opinions and speeches and articles by our 20 prospects. And we debated their relative merits. It didn’t take us long to decide that there were two exceptionally able candidates who were strong exponents of the president’s approach to judging. One was Robert Bork and the other was Antonin Scalia. Either man, we thought, could someday rank among the few greats who have served on the Court.