Word: alito
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...remote a possibility as that scenario now seems, it is enough of a threat that the Bush Administration has taken an unprecedented approach to selling Alito. Instead of first focusing on potential liberal opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee like Ted Kennedy and Joseph Biden, Alito made many of his initial courtesy calls on more moderate Democrats, some of whom are members of the Gang of 14. That coalition of Democrats and Republicans banded together to prevent an escalation to a filibuster--nuclear-option scenario during the battles over federal appeals-court nominees earlier this year, and they met last...
Because they are both Catholic, Italian-American conservative federal judges who hail from Trenton, N.J., Alito and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia have often been viewed as brothers in arms--so much so that Alito earned the nickname Scalito among many court watchers. But the comparison is misleading. Throughout Alito's career--from his time as an Assistant Solicitor General and Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Reagan Administration to his three years as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey to the past 15 years as a Newark-based judge on the Third Circuit Appeals Court--he has earned...
...former clerks and colleagues talk of Alito's quiet modesty and unfailing politeness, whether with interns or lawyers arguing cases in front of him. "He'll ask very penetrating questions, not to demonstrate his intellect, as some judges do, but to penetrate your thoughts," says veteran New Jersey attorney Donald Robinson. More important, those same people testify to Alito's methodical, open-minded approach to deciding cases, one free of dogma and much passion, for that matter. Not only is Alito very careful to follow existing precedent--as he did in invalidating a statute restricting late-term abortions that didn...
There is another, less flattering way to characterize that kind of approach: Alito can be seen as overly focused on details and technicalities while missing the fundamental values embedded in such matters as job discrimination and jury selection. "He approaches law in a formalistic, mechanical way abstracted from human experience," says Goodwin Liu, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Berkeley...
...confirmed, Alito would one day have an opportunity to weigh in on other much disputed issues, from affirmative action and campaign-finance reform to gay rights and state's rights. The last one may become an especially sensitive topic during his hearings. Since 1995 the Rehnquist Court has struck down, in whole or in part, more than 30 federal statutes, essentially arguing that Congress had overreached and such legislation should be left to the states. Alito's controversial dissent arguing to invalidate a federal law banning machine guns nationwide leads many Senators to suspect that he would try to further...