Alito Brings Qualifications, Not Conservative Tilt, to Court
By John Yoo
San Diego Union-Tribune
Publication Date: November 7, 2005
President Bush has taken the next step in the road map toward peace.
Not with Israelis and Palestinians, but with the Senate.
By naming Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, Bush did not just heal the rift with his conservative base, angry over the nomination of Harriet Miers. The President also picked a judge with the highest educational credentials and professional qualifications who brings more judicial experience to the job than anyone in the last 70 years.
President Bush could have chosen a conservative firebrand designed to spark a fight with the Senate and rally the Republican troops. Instead, he chose a mild-mannered, soft-spoken, modest bookworm whose only hobby appears to be the Philadelphia Phillies (a pitiful interest that I happen to share). Alito has not written books sharply critical of liberalism like Judge Robert Bork, nor has he given speeches suggesting a revolutionary overhaul of constitutional law like Justice Clarence Thomas. Unlike Justice Antonin Scalia, Alito--whom the press has racially profiled with the nickname “Scalito”--does not look to the Framers to dictate the Constitution’s meaning. Alito has simply spent the last 15 years careful interpreting and applying Supreme Court precedent to the cases before him.
If Senate Democrats try to stop Alito, they will be taking a stand against ability, hard work, and accomplishment. He was born in a blue-collar Italian neighborhood in Trenton to an immigrant father, went to public schools, and graduated from Princeton and Yale Law School. After serving as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey, Alito joined the Reagan Justice Department, won 12 cases before the Supreme Court, served as a deputy assistant attorney general, and then served as the head federal prosecutor in his home state before assuming a federal judgeship. Vote against Alito, and Democrats will be providing the grounds for a Republican Senate to block the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer, both outstanding liberal judges with a lifetime of accomplishment.
Liberal interest groups and some Democrat Senators, however, will oppose Alito because of his conservative views. Alito’s opinions, however, are noteworthy not for espousing any political philosophy, but for the painstaking effort devoted to divining the views of Justice O’Connor, whose votes have determined the outcome on controversial issues ranging from abortion to affirmative action to religion. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for example, Alito did not suggest that Roe v. Wade was wrong or at least intellectually empty (as even some honest liberal professors and judges will admit). Instead, he accurately predicted that the Court would adopt Justice O’Connor’s vague and ambiguous “undue burden” test for reviewing abortion restrictions. He simply guessed wrong that she would find unreasonable Pennsylvania’s requirement that a wife to notify her husband of her decision. If correctly predicting the future mind of Justice O’Connor is a job requirement for the Supreme Court, then the entire federal bench would be disqualified from the office.
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.23420/... Guess I'm on a bit of the "expose this cretin named Yoo" binge.
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