Issues and (Possible) Answers: A Primer on the Alito Hearings

[hang a left]

The Hearings

Issues and (Possible) Answers: A Primer on the Alito Hearings


By ADAM LIPTAK

*
Published: January 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - When Judge John G. Roberts Jr. appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September for hearings on his nomination to the Supreme Court, all of the participants were largely improvising. It had been 11 years since the last nomination, and the legal landscape, political climate and very state of the world had changed so radically that the old templates were of little use.


Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., on the other hand, will have a fresh road map from the Roberts hearings when he sits to face the committee Monday for his own confirmation hearings. The topics to be covered, the nature and tenor of the senators' questions, and the limits on what Judge Alito will be willing to answer will almost certainly follow the path cut in September.

But there will be distinct differences, too. Judge Roberts replaced Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, meaning that his nomination was a one-for-one, conservative-for-conservative swap. If Judge Alito is confirmed, he will replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whose vote was often the fulcrum on which the Rehnquist court's decisions turned.

Judge Roberts's judicial record was, moreover, comparatively thin, a product of less than two years as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Judge Alito, by contrast, has produced hundreds of opinions in his 15 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia. Unlike Judge Roberts, he has written at length on some of the most contentious issues of the day.

snip>

http://nytimes.com/2006/01/09/politics/politicsspecial1/09legal.html?hp&ex=1136869200&en=432762ee6aac4727&ei=5094&partner=homepage


The Reagan Legacy
Two Legal Careers That Diverged May Intertwine Again


By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: January 9, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 - Not long after the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, two young lawyers moved into cramped offices along the same hallway on the fifth floor of the Justice Department's headquarters.
Skip to next paragraph

Go to Complete Coverage
Live video of the confirmation hearings and a blog by The Times's David D. Kirkpatrick will be available beginning at noon Monday.

One, Samuel A. Alito Jr., 30, was hired as a nonpolitical career lawyer. Promoted from the office of a New Jersey prosecutor, he quietly drafted Supreme Court briefs in the solicitor general's office. Former colleagues describe him as shy and serious, prone to spending long hours buried in case files. Charles Fried, the Reagan administration solicitor general, remembers Mr. Alito as "a very cultured man" who was more likely to spend their lunches together talking about books and ballet than politics.

The other, John G. Roberts Jr., 25, arrived fresh from a clerkship for Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court, and entered the department a rung higher than Mr. Alito, as a presidential appointee assisting the attorney general on a variety of matters. Mr. Roberts was handsome and funny, former colleagues say, and hard not to like.

snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/09/politics/politicsspecial1/09judges.html

[babylonsister]

1. Thank you! nt

[mom cat]

2. Thanks...K&R