Alito Sounds Death Knell for Individual Rights

[katty]

cont'd at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006I.shtml

Alito Sounds Death Knell for Individual Rights
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 10 October 2006

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee began its confirmation hearings on the nomination of Samuel Alito for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

Alito is no John Roberts. Whereas Roberts had barely been a judge for two years when Bush nominated him for the Supreme Court, Alito has authored 361 opinions during his 15-year tenure on the federal court bench. Whereas Roberts is photogenic, with a winning smile, Alito is stiff and awkward before the cameras. Most significantly, whereas Roberts replaced Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who had a similar judicial philosophy, Alito would take the place of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided the swing vote 77 percent of the time.

If confirmed, Alito would tip the high court's delicate balance radically to the right. Nearly always favoring the government, corporations and universities, Alito has ruled against individual rights in 84 percent of his dissents.

In a 196-page report released last week, the Alliance for Justice (AFJ) determined that in split decisions - the "difficult cases" - "the reasoning Judge Alito employs and the results he reaches are not balanced. Rather," the report found, "they track the staunchly conservative political and legal views he expressed in his 1985 application to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in President Reagan's Justice Department."

[Surya Gayatri]

1. For anybody who has watched the hearings--

seen his squirmy body-language and heard his stammering replies, this is one scary MoFo. SG :scared: