Bork tapes

The Bork tapes were a series of 146 videotapes rented out by Robert Bork, then a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, from Potomac Video in Washington, D.C. He had been nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1987. His contentious confirmation hearings made him a subject of intense media scrutiny, based especially on his views concerning privacy in the Constitution. Michael Dolan, a writer at the Washington City Paper who frequented the same video rental store, learned about Bork's visits and obtained his rental history from store management.

On September 25, the City Paper published Dolan's commentary on Bork's rentals but not the list itself in a cover story titled "The Bork Tapes". The revealed tapes proved to be modest, innocuous, and non-salacious, consisting of a garden-variety of films such as thrillers, British drama, and those by Alfred Hitchcock. The subsequent leakage and coverage of the tapes resulted in Congress passing the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which forbids the sharing of video tape rental information, amidst a bipartisan consensus on intellectual privacy. Proponents of the VPPA, including Senator Patrick Leahy, contended that the leakage of Bork's tapes was an outrage. The bill was passed in just over a year after the incident.

Background

President Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court of the United States on July 1, 1987, to replace Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. Bork was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and was known for his strict constructionist views regarding the subject of privacy, for which he believed privacy protections were guaranteed only by specific legislation.