Tag Archives: Supreme Court

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NewsHour: Analysts Discuss Second Day of Alito Hearings – January 10, 2006

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RAY SUAREZ: We are now joined by two court watchers who have been following these hearings closely: Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at George Washington University and legal affairs editor at the New Republic, and Stuart Taylor, a columnist with National Journal and a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And Stuart, Judge Alito was in the hot seat for upwards of seven hours. They covered a great many subjects during this first day of questioning. Looking at the arc of the day, how did he do?

STUART TAYLOR: Given the rather arcane rules of this game– and it is sort of a game– I thought he had a pretty strong day after a little bit of a weak opening statement yesterday beginning with the joke that fell flat.

But today he managed to duck the questions he needed to duck. He gave very reassuring answers to the questions that people were worried about. You know: yes, I respect precedent. I would have an open mind about Roe v. Wade; I believe in the right to privacy; I believe in the right to contraception, Griswold v. Connecticut. The president is not above the law. I agree with Justice O’Connor when she said a state of war is not a blank check for the executive when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens. The one person/one vote principle is a fundamental part of American law.

So these are all areas where he previously said things that shook some people up, and he to some extent took the sting out of a lot of those. And with the help of Republican senators, he gave some counter examples to the claims that have been made that he very rarely rules in favor of a civil rights plaintiff or a race discrimination complaint.

This isn’t to say that he has no problems, but going in the idea was that he would be confirmed unless he stumbled. I didn’t see him stumble.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Rosen.

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Opening Argument – The Case of Alito v. O’Connor

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Most analysts predict (and I agree) that if confirmed, Judge Samuel Alito will be more conservative than Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whom he would succeed on the Supreme Court. That’s why O’Connor was practically begged to stay on by liberal Democratic senators such as Barbara Boxer of California and Patrick Leahy of Vermont; moderate Republican senators such as Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine; and liberal groups such as the National Organization for Women.

But amid the debate over Alito’s writings and decisions, some of the most telling signs of a right-wing agenda have received too little attention.

Affirmative action. The judge has repeatedly blocked or crippled programs designed to protect blacks against the continuing effects of American apartheid. One decision, which struck down a school board’s policy of considering race in layoff decisions, thwarted an effort to keep a few black teachers as role models for black students. A second blocked a similar program to shield recently hired black police officers from layoffs. A third blocked a city from opening opportunities for minority-owned construction companies by striking down its program to channel 30 percent of public works funds to them.

Voting rights. Making it harder for black and Hispanic candidates to overcome white racial-bloc voting, the judge has repeatedly struck down majority-black and majority-Hispanic voting districts because of their supposedly irregular shape. But the judge saw no problem with the gerrymandering of bizarrely shaped districts by Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature to rig elections against Democrats!

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NewsHour: Reviewing Documents from Supreme Court Nominee Alito’s Past – December 28, 2005

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RAY SUAREZ: As a lawyer in the Reagan administration, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote several memos, briefs and letters that have garnered widespread attention since their release by the National Archives earlier this month. In these documents, Alito advised his superiors at the Justice Department on matters ranging from executive privilege to abortion rights to civil rights, subjects that are likely to take center stage at his Senate confirmation hearings in two weeks.

Meanwhile, advocates and court watchers are pouring over the writings, hoping to glean how Alito might rule from the high court.

I’m joined now by two scholars who have been doing just that: Jeffrey Rosen, professor of law at George Washington University and legal affairs editor at the New Republic; and Stuart Taylor, a columnist with National Journal and a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And, looking over these vast number of documents that have been released in the last month, are you getting a better sense of who Samuel Alito is?

JEFFREY ROSEN: It is possible to get a sense, and it’s interesting to compare them with the Roberts memos. In many ways, Alito’s seemed less deft; I think in particular of that job application that he sent to Attorney General Meese where he said, "I am a fierce conservative. I’m proudest of my opposition to abortion."

There was an earnestness and a rawness that we didn’t see in the wittier Roberts. On the other hand, you have the sense in these memos that Alito is a careful lawyer, always strategically advising the Justice Department to choose conservative and prudent strategies, rather than a fire-breathing ideologue, and in that sense he seems a little bit more reassuring than I might have feared.

RAY SUAREZ: Stuart?

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Trashing Alito

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The San Diego Union Tribune

A sometimes subtle but unmistakable pattern has emerged in major news organizations’ coverage of Judge Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination.

Through various mixes of factual distortions, tendentious wording, and uncritical parroting of misleading attacks by liberal critics, some reporters insinuate that Alito is a slippery character who will say whatever senators want to hear, especially by "distancing himself" from past statements that (these reporters imply) show him to be a conservative ideologue.

I focus here not on the consistently mindless liberal hysteria of The New York Times’ editorial page. Nor on such egregious factual errors as the assertion on C-SPAN, by Stephen Henderson of Knight Ridder Newspapers, that in a study of Alito’s more than 300 judicial opinions, "we didn’t find a single case in which Judge Alito sided with African-Americans … [who were] alleging racial bias." This, Henderson added, is "rather remarkable."

What is remarkable is that any reporter could have overlooked the at least seven cases in which Alito has sided with African-Americans alleging racial bias. Also remarkable is the illiterate statistical analysis and loaded language used by Henderson and Howard Mintz in a 2,652-word article published (in whole or in part) by some 18 newspapers. It makes the misleading claim that in 15 years as a judge, Alito has sought "to weave a conservative legal agenda into the fabric of the nation’s laws," including "a standard higher than the Supreme Court requires" for proving job discrimination.

The systematic slanting – conscious or unconscious – of this and other news reports has helped fuel a disingenuous campaign by liberal groups and senators to caricature Alito as a conservative ideologue.

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Keeping It Real

by Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

For many intellectuals, the ideal of Blind Justice, impartially weighing her scales, went out the window about 80 years ago. At Yale Law School in the 1920s and ’30s, a highly influential group of scholars called the Legal Realists argued that the law was not a set of fixed, unchanging rules–"not a brooding omnipresence in the sky," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once put it. The Legal Realists contended that, inevitably, judges were influenced by their political views and personal values,

For many intellectuals, the ideal of Blind Justice, impartially weighing her scales, went out the window about 80 years ago. At Yale Law School in the 1920s and ’30s, a highly influential group of scholars called the Legal Realists argued that the law was not a set of fixed, unchanging rules–"not a brooding omnipresence in the sky," as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once put it. The Legal Realists contended that, inevitably, judges were influenced by their political views and personal values, whether they admitted it or not. There was a lot of truth to what the Legal Realists were saying. Today it is almost ajournalistic cliche that judges are either liberal or conservative, that the law is nothing but politics in disguise and that judges couldn’t be neutral if they tried.

Nonetheless, they are supposed to try. And, in fact, most judges do try to set aside or at least check their personal political leanings when ruling on a case. Judging from his life story and judicial record, few try harder than Sam Alito.

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Alito is Neither Far Right Nor Activist

by Stuart Taylor, Jr

The San Diego Union Tribune

Liberal critics and many media outlets have spewed tons of misleading stuff about Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., particularly about his supposed views on abortion and about the significance of two Sandra Day O’Connor opinions disagreeing with prior Alito opinions. So here’s some straight stuff.

The claims that Alito is a "far-right activist" are laughable, except to far-left activists. He richly deserves the praise that he has received from colleagues and friends across the political spectrum for his powerful mind, intellectual honesty and fairness.

The American people will figure this out. Any effort to filibuster Alito seems likely to fail, and likely to backfire against Democrats. So, the Senate will confirm him by 60-40, give or take five votes, I’d wager. Most of the no votes (and, alas, many of the yes votes) will reflect political posturing and herd instincts rather than careful analysis.

Once installed in Justice O’Connor’s seat, Alito will be an exceptional justice. His rulings will probably be congenial to the broad middle of the electorate. He will be to the right of O’Connor – that is, the O’Connor of recent years, who has been markedly more liberal than she was before 1991 or so. Alito will probably be to the left of Antonin Scalia, albeit with less of a libertarian streak. He will be well to the left of Clarence Thomas, and far more respectful of precedent.

Alito will try as hard as anyone – and far harder than O’Connor – to be intellectually honest and analytically rigorous, and to keep his political preferences out of his legal rulings. He will therefore disappoint the most passionate political conservatives and horrify many liberals.

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Supremes: Roberts – And Then The Real Battle

by Debra Rosenberg, Daniel Klaidman and Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

The confirmation battle over Judge John Roberts is about to take center stage. George W. Bush quickly nominated Roberts to serve as chief justice–a move the president had considered all along, according to one adviser close to the process who refused to be quoted because of the sensitivity of the deliberations. Roberts could face some tougher questioning as chief, but barring bombshells, the hearings could turn out to be a drama fit only for C-Span junkies.Far more compelling is the battle am

The confirmation battle over Judge John Roberts is about to take center stage. George W. Bush quickly nominated Roberts to serve as chief justice–a move the president had considered all along, according to one adviser close to the process who refused to be quoted because of the sensitivity of the deliberations. Roberts could face some tougher questioning as chief, but barring bombshells, the hearings could turn out to be a drama fit only for C-Span junkies.

Far more compelling is the battle among conservatives over who’ll fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s spot. In a new NEWSWEEK Poll, 66 percent of those surveyed said Bush should strongly conside…

The confirmation battle over Judge John Roberts is about to take center stage. George W. Bush quickly nominated Roberts to serve as chief justice–a move the president had considered all along, according to one adviser close to the process who refused to be quoted because of the sensitivity of the deliberations. Roberts could face some tougher questioning as chief, but barring bombshells, the hearings could turn out to be a drama fit only for C-Span junkies.Far more compelling is the battle am

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John G. Roberts: What Answers Is He Going To Give

by Debra Rosenberg, Daniel Klaidman and Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

In 39 arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, John G. Roberts earned a reputation as an unflappable advocate for his clients. But this week, when Roberts testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in his own bid to join the high court, he’ll face a different challenge. Instead of sparring with nine erudite justices interested in ferreting out fine points of the law, Roberts will confront 18 senators eager to score political points and rack up minutes on the cable news channels. While the

In 39 arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, John G. Roberts earned a reputation as an unflappable advocate for his clients. But this week, when Roberts testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in his own bid to join the high court, he’ll face a different challenge. Instead of sparring with nine erudite justices interested in ferreting out fine points of the law, Roberts will confront 18 senators eager to score political points and rack up minutes on the cable news channels. While the senators will try to press Roberts for specifics on controversial topics like civil rights, abortion and congressional authority, Roberts will attempt to keep his answers as general as possible without seeming to stonewall. "There’s going to be …

In 39 arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, John G. Roberts earned a reputation as an unflappable advocate for his clients. But this week, when Roberts testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in his own bid to join the high court, he’ll face a different challenge. Instead of sparring with nine erudite justices interested in ferreting out fine points of the law, Roberts will confront 18 senators eager to score political points and rack up minutes on the cable news channels. While the

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Transition: Hail To The Chief

by Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor, Jr.

Newsweek

Rehnquist’s wry aside, which broke the tension, was typical of the man affectionately known to his fellow justices as "the Chief." Rehnquist was quick and funny, and he made his job look easy. He had time left over to run betting pools on sporting and political contests, preside over poker games with other Washington luminaries, play bridge and charades, paint, swim, sing hymns, quote poetry and the classics from memory, and write four books on Supreme Court history. He was respected and admir

Rehnquist’s wry aside, which broke the tension, was typical of the man affectionately known to his fellow justices as "the Chief." Rehnquist was quick and funny, and he made his job look easy. He had time left over to run betting pools on sporting and political contests, preside over poker games with other Washington luminaries, play bridge and charades, paint, swim, sing hymns, quote poetry and the classics from memory, and write four books on Supreme Court history. He was respected and admired by his colleagues on both sides of the ideological spectrum. The late Thurgood Marshall, who opposed Rehnquist on almost any case, called him a "great chief justice." The Supreme Court is sometimes described as "nine scorpions in a bottle," but under Rehnquist’s nearly two decades as chief, the justices generally got along.