Former federal appeals judge, solicitor general and failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, is being remembered as both a conservative legal trailblazer and a divisive nominee who set the contentious tone of high court confirmation hearings ever since. 

“Robert Bork was one of the most influential legal scholars of the past 50 years,” Justice Antonin Scalia said in a statement sent to the press not by the court itself, but by CRC Public Relations, which handles publicity for the conservative Federalist Society. Scalia continued, “His impact on legal thinking in the fields of antitrust and constitutional law was profound and lasting. More important for the final accounting, he was a good man and a loyal citizen. May he rest in peace.”