The Senate Judiciary Committee's negative vote on the nomination of Justice Robert Bork to the Supreme Court reaffirms the nation's commitment to individual liberty, a major civil rights activist said last night.

American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Ira Glasser said he was "pleased as punch" with the outcome of the Bork hearings before the Senate Committee because it concentrated on Bill of Rights issues.

"This issue became a battleground for what were the values of this country," Glasser told a crowd of about 60 at the Law School. "We decided and reaffirmed how the balance between liberty and democracy should be struck."

The speech, sponsored by the Harvard Law School Civil Liberties Union, follows the rejection of Bork's nomination by the Senate Judiciary Committee and precedes the full Senate vote, expected to occur next week.

"Bork goes on to explain that laws are as reflection of the morality of the majority of people," Glasser said. "And that deciding those laws is up to the local majority. He believes that if the Bill of Rights does not explicitly define a certain right, that it does not exist."

Glasser said the debate about Bork signalled the nations disillusionment with the extremism of a recent conservative coalition of politicians and religious leaders that he said has threatened gains made in civil liberties during the 1960s.

"Such a frontal assault against civil rights had not happened before, not even under Nixon," he said.

"Bork in my view represents the last best hope of that movement, it's instrument and theoretician," Glassor said."

"There arose the charge that Bork was not a conservative but an extremist," he said. "That demonstrated that the whole recent conservative movement was actually extremist also, that it was to overturn the real traditional values."