Democratic Convention. According to him, the seven states of the Deep South, the same seven states that seceded after Lincoln's election and before his inauguration, demanded as a plank in the Democratic platform, without which they would not support Douglas, a slave code for the territories. When the Convention refused to grant this demand, the delegates of the seven states left the convention. In this section of the debate, Jaffa points out that slavery was aggressively expanding with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. Also, the Dred Scott case allowed slave owners to take slaves into the territories and demand Federal government protection for slavery in those areas. Jaffa claims that this was one of the largest expansions of federal power. The Lincoln–Douglas Debates: Jaffa argued that Douglas accepted the Dred Scott decision. There, Chief Justice Taney said that the right to own slaves is expressly affirmed in the Constitution. However, Lincoln said in the debates that it was implied but not expressly affirmed. Lincoln said to Douglas that by accepting Taney's opinion that slavery is expressly affirmed in the Constitution, one is under an obligation to give the slave owners the implementation of this right. The possibilities for the expansion of slavery were almost endless, according to Jaffa. Because Douglas would not subscribe to the slave code, the South left the party, which was enough to elect Abraham Lincoln. Criticism of Robert Bork Jaffa argues that former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork advances a theory of American constitutionalism that is in fundamental tension with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that was insufficiently conservative. Jaffa argued that Bork's argument represents legal positivism and moral relativism akin to that expressed by John C. Calhoun and the Confederacy during the Civil War. According to Jaffa, Bork believed that the Constitution and the Declaration are separate documents that were never intended to inform one another. Bork argued that the Constitution said nothing about abortion or gay rights. Jaffa believed that the Constitution followed natural law principles, and therefore prohibited states from protecting abortion or homosexuality. Bork replied that Jaffa's theories amounted to "the heart's desire theory of constitutional jurisprudence: Anything one does not like is in the Constitution", and that those who agreed with him "had much in common with Harry Blackmun, although neither would care to admit it." National Review Jaffa was close friends with