Judge Alito's Radical Views

January 23, 2006
New York Times Editorial

If Judge Samuel Alito Jr.'s confirmation hearings lacked drama, apart from his wife's bizarrely over-covered crying jag, it is because they confirmed the obvious. Judge Alito is exactly the kind of legal thinker President Bush wants on the Supreme Court. He has a radically broad view of the president's power, and a radically narrow view of Congress's power. He has long argued that the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He wants to reduce the rights and liberties of ordinary Americans, and has a history of tilting the scales of justice against the little guy.

As senators prepare to vote on the nomination, they should ask themselves only one question: will replacing Sandra Day O'Connor with Judge Alito be a step forward for the nation, or a step backward? Instead of Justice O'Connor's pragmatic centrism, which has kept American law on a steady and well-respected path, Judge Alito is likely to bring a movement conservative's approach to his role and to the Constitution.

Judge Alito may be a fine man, but he is not the kind of justice the country needs right now. Senators from both parties should oppose his nomination.

It is likely that Judge Alito was chosen for his extreme views on presidential power. The Supreme Court, with Justice O'Connor's support, has played a key role in standing up to the Bush administration's radical view of its power, notably that it can hold, indefinitely and without trial, anyone the president declares an "unlawful enemy combatant."

Judge Alito would no doubt try to change the court's approach. He has supported the fringe "unitary executive" theory, which would give the president greater power to detain Americans and would throw off the checks and balances built into the Constitution. He has also put forth the outlandish idea that if the president makes a statement when he signs a bill into law, a court interpreting the law should give his intent the same weight it gives to Congress's intent in writing and approving the law.

Judge Alito would also work to reduce Congress's power in other ways. In a troubling dissent, he argued that Congress exceeded its authority when it passed a law banning machine guns, and as a government lawyer he insisted Congress did not have the power to protect car buyers from falsified odometers.

There is every reason to believe, based on his long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings, that Judge Alito would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. So it is hard to see how Senators Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, all Republicans, could square support for Judge Alito with their commitment to abortion rights.

Judge Alito has consistently shown a bias in favor of those in power over those who need the law to protect them. Women, racial minorities, the elderly and workers who come to court seeking justice should expect little sympathy. In the same flat bureaucratic tones he used at the hearings, he is likely to insist that the law can do nothing for them.

The White House has tried to create an air of inevitability around this nomination. But there is no reason to believe that Judge Alito is any more popular than the president who nominated him. Outside of a small but vocal group of hard-core conservatives, America has greeted the Alito nomination with a shrug - and counted on senators to make the right decision.

The real risk for senators lies not in opposing Judge Alito, but in voting for him. If the far right takes over the Supreme Court, American law and life could change dramatically. If that happens, many senators who voted for Judge Alito will no doubt come to regret that they did not insist that Justice O'Connor's seat be filled with someone who shared her cautious, centrist approach to the law.

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FROM: Adherents.com

Religious Affiliation of the U.S. Supreme Court

Related pages: - Religious Affiliation of The Legal 100:the people who have most influenced law - Religious Affiliation of U.S. Congress - Religious Affiliation of U.S. Presidents - Religious Affiliation of U.S. Vice-Presidents - Religious Affiliation of U.S. Governors


John Roberts was confirmed by Congress on 29 September 2005 as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, replacing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.
The chart below reflects what the composition of the Supreme Court will be if Sandra Day O'Connor (who has announced her retirement effective immediately once her replacement is confirmed) is replaced by Samuel Alito, who was nominated on 31 October 2005 to take her place:

John Roberts (Chief Justice)
Catholic
Stephen G. Breyer
Jewish
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Jewish
Anthony M. Kennedy
Catholic
Antonin Scalia
Catholic
David H. Souter
Episcopalian
John Paul Stevens
Protestant
Clarence Thomas
Catholic
Samuel Alito
Catholic

Irish Senator O’Rourke: " Working like Blacks"

By Liam Horan and Paul O’Brien
Irish Times
1/10/06


FIANNA FÁIL’S Senator Mary O’Rourke was last night warned to watch the language she used after praising her supporters for “working like blacks”. Ms O’Rourke, the leader of the Seanad, made the comment in an acceptance speech after winning a place on the party ticket for the next general election. She survived a close scare in last night’s Longford-Westmeath selection convention, defeating Cllr Kevin “Boxer” Moran by just nine votes to join TDs Donie Cassidy and Peter Kelly on the ticket. But the controversial comment threatened to overshadow her win. There were audible gasps among the 500-plus attendance of party members as she said of her supporters: “They were there for me and they worked like blacks.”She later defended the comment, saying: “I just meant that they worked very hard.”
A colleague later said she had used “a bit of a euphemism that dated badly” in the context of a “very emotive” event. But Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, said: “Some terminology that would have been in common use a long time ago is clearly unacceptable now.” However, he said there was a difference between people deliberately using racist language and doing so unintentionally. “Mary O’Rourke has never been known to make any negative comments towards people of immigrant backgrounds ... But we all have to watch the language we use.” Last night’s result was in doubt right up until the voting took place after 6pm, but in the end, delegates decided to give Ms O’Rourke a chance to recover the Dáil seat she lost in 2002. “I know no life other than politics, and it is a noble calling,” she said. Meanwhile, there was a light-hearted moment at the start of the convention when the chairperson of Westmeath Dáil Comhairle Ceanntair, Gerry Sheridan, introduced Brian Cowen as “our esteemed party leader”. When the laughs died down, Mr Cowen thanked Mr Sheridan for “that unsought promotion”.

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The Alito Nomination


January 10, 2006

To: Journalists
Fr: Ralph G. Neas, President, People For the American Way
Re: Alito and the White House Codebook: Day One (and a Half)

Our January 5 memo, “Cracking the White House Codebook: Separating Spin from Reality in the Alito Hearings,” (link) highlighted some of the types of nominee “spinning” that senators, media, and the public should expect to hear during the Alito confirmation hearing – identifying the strategy is a way to get beyond it to the answers Americans need about this nominee and his record.

Here’s a brief update from the opening statements and first morning of questioning.

The “human touch” strategy

We said: It’s no surprise that nominees try to humanize themselves by introducing their families, telling stories about their upbringing, and otherwise trying to establish points of empathy with senators and television viewers. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it can’t be permitted to distract from the purpose of the hearings, which is for senators, and through them the public, to learn about the nominee’s record and judicial philosophy in order to understand how he would approach our Constitution and laws if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

We heard: On Monday we learned about Judge Alito’s parents and his ties to the values of his hometown community. We learned about his mother’s success in getting a college education, and his father’s good fortune to have a benefactor who gave him a boost making it possible to go to college. While we certainly celebrate these accomplishments, and the accomplishments of Judge Alito, they do not provide any answers to the urgent questions about Judge Alito’s extensive and troubling record on protecting Americans’ civil rights, privacy, and access to justice, and protecting them from abuse of power by governments and corporations.

We heard: Samuel Alito declare, in response to Sen. Hatch’s softball question, that he is not opposed to women and minorities attending college and make a joke about the benefits of coeducation. This exchange was an effort to dismiss serious questions about why Alito, more than a decade after his graduation, was bragging about his membership in a reactionary group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, in order to get a promotion in the Reagan administration, when CAP’s divisive and inflammatory opposition to the growing number of women and minorities on campus had led Bill Bradley to disavow the group and Bill Frist to harshly criticize it years earlier. Judge Alito’s focus on CAP’s support for ROTC at a time when the program was under fire on campus during the Vietnam War also doesn’t explain away CAP’s larger agenda, nor his Senate questionnaire answer in which he said he had no memory of his membership in the group other than having reviewed his application for a promotion.

The “open minded,” “no agenda” and “clockwork” strategies

We said: Other strategies that could be used to mislead listeners misleading listeners would be to say that the nominee has “no quarrel” with a precedent or “no agenda” to overturn it, without really offering information about the nominee’s position on the constitutional issues, and to say that a judge really acts like a machine or technician, applying the law without exercising judgment or discretion or drawing upon his or her personal experience or values.

We heard: During his statement to the Judiciary Committee on Monday, Judge Alito invoked the “I have no agenda” tactic and wove it in with the technician tactic as he talked about his mentor, for whom he had clerked on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals:

“I had the good fortune to begin my legal career as a law clerk for a judge who really epitomized open-mindedness and fairness. He read the record in detail in every single case that came before me; he insisted on scrupulously following precedents, both the precedents of the Supreme Court and the decisions of his own court, the 3rd Circuit. He taught all of his law clerks that every case has to be decided on an individual basis. And he really didn't have much use for any grand theories.

A judge can't have any agenda, a judge can't have any preferred outcome in any particular case and a judge certainly doesn't have a client. The judge's only obligation -- and it's a solemn obligation -- is to the rule of law. And what that means is that in every single case, the judge has to do what the law requires.”

During questioning about his approach to judging, Judge Alito repeatedly invoked the platitude that he approaches cases with an open mind and that he is open to changing his mind based on the facts and the briefs in the case, an assertion that quickly made headlines. But the notion that Judge Alito really has an open mind is belied by study after independent study of his record as a judge. One study, by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein, found that 91 percent of his dissents take positions more conservative than do his colleagues on the appeals court, including colleagues appointed by Presidents Bush and Reagan. When there is a conflict between institutions and individual rights, Alito’s dissents argue against individual rights 84 percent of the time. In civil rights cases, he has sided against individuals with claims of discrimination 75 percent of the time. A Knight-Ridder study of his published opinions found “decisions so consistent that it appears results do matter to him,” and concluded that “he’s seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big businesses.” The Washington Post reported that Alito sided with criminal defendants only three times out of 33 cases, aligning with prosecutors more often than the average Republican-appointed judge in divided cases.

The “it was different then” strategies

We said: Often nominees will try to separate themselves from previous controversial statements or actions by saying things are different now that they are a judge, that they were only doing what they had to do in the job, or that controversial statements were “personal views” that will in no way affect their decisions as a Supreme Court justice.

We heard: Judge Alito, during questioning, stated that his 1985 job promotion application accurately reflected his views at the time that the Constitution does not include a woman’s right to have an abortion. That was clearly a legal, not “personal” opinion. Alito tried to distance himself from the impact of that statement by saying it was a different time in his career, that he was playing a different role, etc. Alito failed to say, however, and Sen. Specter failed to follow up and ask, whether he still believes today that the Constitution does not protect that right. That is one of the relevant facts for senators considering whether to confirm him to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

It is worth noting that Alito was willing to repudiate a previous statement about the “supremacy” of the elected branches, but not his previous statement that Roe should be overruled.

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New Book Brings up Old Info about Dr. King’s Sex Life

Taylor Branch has concluded the last of his trilogy on the civil rights movement titled, “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68.” The Time magazine excerpt of the book includes information about Dr. King’s extramarital activities. News of such conduct by the slain civil rights leader is not new – former aide Ralph Abernathy mentioned it in his autobiography, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David J. Garrow covered the same territory in “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference” and transcripts of sordid FBI wiretaps have been made public in the past. Branch’s latest work contends that Dr. King discussed one particular dalliance with his wife, Coretta, that infuriated Abernathy’s wife, Juanita:


His affairs had been an open secret for years, but two weeks after his birthday, King confessed one of them to his wife Coretta.

As a newcomer, Rutherford stood at the periphery of SCLC's most private drama. He saw the swirling, teasing flirtations of its inner circle, and he discouraged prurient speculation about the link between Coretta's regal suffering and King's pursuits elsewhere. Rutherford could only guess about what he called a "double life," marveling at burdens King must carry beyond the superhuman pressures and expectations of the movement. King's formidable armor wore down in midlife, draining assurance from his glib mantra as a young scholar that many great men of religion had been obsessed with sex--St. Augustine, St. Paul, Martin Luther, Kierkegaard, Tillich--and his self-reproach spilled over when Coretta underwent surgery for an abdominal tumor on Jan. 24. He disclosed to her the one mistress who meant most to him since 1963--with intensity almost like a second family even though she lived in Los Angeles--a married alumna of Fisk, of dignified bearing like Coretta, but different. The result was painful disaster. On hearing the news, Juanita Abernathy, SCLC co-founder Ralph Abernathy's wife, exploded with the fury of a trusted second that King had picked Coretta's most vulnerable moment, just as she recovered from her hysterectomy, to ambush her sanctuary of willful, silent discretion. If he was truly desperate to be honest, she said, King should purge himself privately to God or a psychiatrist. Ralph Abernathy grew so alarmed about King's confession that he canvassed the regular mistresses for hidden fits of jealousy or romantic blackmail, but he found no conventional clues to explain the rash new fatalism in King.

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Success of Black Coaches Could Spur NFL Copycat


The success this season of Black NFL Coaches Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts, the Cincinnati Bengals’ Marvin Lewis and Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears – each long overlooked as potential head coaches before finally getting their chance to lead – means that other Black assistant coaches may not have to wait as long to move up to the NFL ladder. When it comes to success, the NFL is a known copycat.

As many as one-quarter of the teams in the league may get new coaches for next season.
Fired as head coaches were: Mike Sherman of Green Bay, Oakland’s Norv Turner, Mike Tice of Minnesota, St. Louis’ Mike Martz, Don Capers of Houston and New Orleans’ Jim Haslett. In addition to those six, Detroit fired Steve Mariucci in midseason and Dick Vermeil retired at Kansas City. New York Jets Coach Herman Edwards, an African-American, is expected to succeed Vermeil as coach of the Chiefs.

The quickest way to the top is to serve as offensive or defensive coordinator. Three Black defensive coordinators – Tim Lewis of the Giants, Ted Cottrell of Minnesota and Jerry Gray of Buffalo – are considered leading candidates to become a head coach. Others, including San Francisco linebackers coach Mike Singletary, could also be in the running.

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