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Samuel Alito

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See Samuel Alito Supreme Court nomination for details on the nomination process.
Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. (born April 1, 1950) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. On October 31, 2005, President George W. Bush nominated him to the position of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. This nomination came after President Bush's White House Counsel Harriet Miers withdrew her name from consideration.

Alito and his wife, Martha, live in West Caldwell, New Jersey; they have two children: a son in college and a daughter in high school.

Early life

Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in 1972, and went to Yale Law School, where he earned a J.D. in 1975.

Career

From 1976 to 1977, Alito clerked for the Honorable Leonard I. Garth of the Third Circuit.

From 1977 to 1981, he served as Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey.

From 1981 to 1985 he was assistant to Solicitor General Rex E. Lee.

From 1985 to 1987 he was deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese.

From 1987 to 1990, he served as U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Alito was nominated by George H. W. Bush on February 20, 1990 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. On April 27, 1990, the United States Senate confirmed him. His chambers are in Newark, New Jersey.

He served in the United States Army Reserve and was honorably discharged as a captain.

He is known for his conservative views and pointedly written rulings. Women's rights groups point to a Pennsylvania law that he voted to uphold that required women to tell their husbands before having an abortion. However, he pointed out that this requirement would not be necessary under certain exceptions, such as an abusive spouse. The Supreme Court struck down the law in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992.

George W. Bush nominated Alito for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States on October 31 2005. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Alito will be the twelfth Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court, and the fifth on the current Court (along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas), creating the First Majority Catholic Supreme Court in history (and by extension, the highest percentage of religious minorities on the court, with 77% of the Justices being Roman Catholic or Jewish).

Nomination

Following the announced retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2005, it was widely reported that Alito had been narrowly passed over as her replacement; the Bush Administration instead nominated John Roberts, who was then re-nominated to fill Rehnquist's post following the Chief Justice's death on September 3, 2005. On October 3, White House counsel and Bush confidante Harriet Miers was nominated to fill O'Connor's spot, but her nomination was withdrawn on October 27, following opposition from conservative Republicans and some Democrats. On October 31, 2005, President Bush announced that he had selected Alito as his nominee for O'Connor's position.

Case history

  • Alito wrote the majority opinion [1] in ACLU v. Schundler, 168 F.3d 92 (3d Cir. 1999), holding that a holiday display on city property did not violate the Establishment Clause because it included secular symbols, such as a large plastic Santa Claus, in addition to religious symbols. Such mixed displays had previously been held constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU argued that a previous city display that was ruled unconstitutional because it lacked secular symbols colored the purpose of the new display. Alito wrote:
"As our prior discussion of Lynch and Allegheny County illustrates, the Supreme Court's decisions regarding holiday displays have been marked by fine line-drawing, and therefore it is not easy to determine whether particular displays satisfy the Court's standards. Under these circumstances, the mere fact that city officials miscalculate and approve a display that is found by the federal courts to cross over the line is hardly proof of the officials' bad faith."
  • A dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 947 F.2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991), arguing that a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to inform their husbands should have been upheld. As Judge Alito reasoned, "[t]he Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems — such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition — that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion." while also adding some exceptions: "These exceptions apply if a woman certifies that she has not notified her husband because she believes [FN4] that (1) he is not the father of the child, (2) he cannot be found after diligent effort, (3) the pregnancy is the result of a spousal sexual assault that has been reported to the authorities, or (4) she has reason to believe that notification is likely to result in the infliction of bodily injury upon her." Chief Justice Rehnquist's dissent from the Supreme Court's 5-4 [corrected] decision striking down the spousal notification provision of the law quoted Judge Alito's dissent and expressed support for Judge Alito's reasoning.
  • A majority opinion in Williams v. Price, 343 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2003), granting a writ of habeas corpus to an African-American state prisoner after state courts had refused to consider the testimony of a witness who stated that a juror had uttered derogatory remarks about African Americans during an encounter in the courthouse after the conclusion of the trial
  • A majority opinion in Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233 (3d Cir. 1993), allowing an Iranian woman to seek asylum in the U.S. on gender persecution grounds.
  • A majority opinion in Saxe v. State College Area School District, 240 F.3d 200 (3d Cir. 2001) [2], holding that the public school district's anti-harassment policy was unconstitutionally overbroad and therefore violated First Amendment guarantees of free speech.
  • A majority opinion in Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S., 381 F.3d 194 (3d Cir. 2004) [3] reinstating an administrative law judge's ruling in favor of parents who claimed the school system's failure to protect their child from bullying justified their placing him in a different high school.
  • A dissenting opinion in Sheridan v. Dupont, 74 F.3d 1439 (3d Cir. 1996) (en banc). [4] Alito would have required a plaintiff to meet a higher standard of evidence to survive a motion for summary judgement in a sex discrimination case, agreeing with a ruling by the 5th circuit.
  • A concurring opinion in Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, 220 F.3d 127 (3rd Cir. 2000) in which Judge Alito recognized that a New Jersey law banning "partial-birth abortions" was unconstititional in light of the recent Supreme Court case of Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914, 120 S.Ct. 2597, 147 L.Ed.2d 743 (2000).
  • A dissenting opinion in United States v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), arguing that a U.S. law banning private citizens from owning assault weapons violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution in light of the then recently decided United States v. Lopez.
  • A dissenting opinion in "Homar v. Gilbert", 89 F.3d 1009 (3d Cir. 1996) arguing that a state university did not violate the procedural due process rights of a campus policeman when it suspended him without pay and without a prior hearing upon learning that he had been arrested and charged with drug offenses. The Supreme Court, which reversed and remanded the case on other grounds, agreed with Judge Alito's reasoning that no hearing was required prior to the suspension because the drug charges showed that the suspension was not baseless.

Scalito nickname

Some claim he is ideologically similar to United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia have attempted to nickname him "Scalito." "Scalito" (a portmanteau of "Scalia" and "Alito") is a nickname that appears to have originated in a 1992 National Law Journal article. Republicans have criticized the nickname as ethnically insensitive, saying it stigmatizes his Italian-American heritage. [5] Philadelphia journalist Shannon P. Duffy claims to have coined the nickname. [6]

References

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