[6] While at Harvard, he published many articles, including his famous piece, "Finality in Criminal Law and Federal Habeas Corpus for State Prisoners," 76 Harv.
[6] Bator argued and won eight cases on behalf of the government at the Supreme Court, including Hishon v. King & Spalding, which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to partnership selection at law firms;[9] Grove City College v. Bell, which applied provisions of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act narrowly;[10] Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence, which denied that protesters' First Amendment rights were violated by a law prohibiting overnight sleeping in Washington, D.C. memorial parks;[11] and Reagan v. Wald, which allowed the government to impose currency restrictions on travelers to Cuba.
The Chevron doctrine lasted for forty years until the Supreme Court overruled it in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024).
In his last Supreme Court appearance on October 4, 1988, he successfully represented the United States Sentencing Commission in a case challenging the latter's constitutional validity.
[15] Bator returned to Harvard in 1984, but departed due to "what he felt was an increasing factionalization at the law school and what he saw as its dominance by left-leaning faculty members.
"[6] He specifically said that the Critical Legal Studies movement had had "an absolutely disastrous effect on [Harvard's] intellectual and institutional life ... [s]tarting with the premise that confrontation, trashing and disparagement are legitimate instruments for creating a radical political ambiance.
[15] In 1987, Bator testified in support of Judge Robert Bork, whose nomination to the United States Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate.
[18] He also wrote an op-ed supporting Bork in the New York Times, explaining that it would not be "good for the country, in the long run, to encourage Senators to subject all [judicial] appointments to an ideological test.
[8] Fried characterized Bator's teaching as "Mozartian," displaying "a brilliance, a clarity of intelligence, deployed with lightning speed and a distinctive style that was at once inventive and entirely apt" and described his briefs and arguments before the Supreme Court as "sonatas of reason.