Bush Nominates Alito

[Sandman]

Originally posted by lazs2
here's a clue for ya.... 100% of the canadian population has no say in it and no one will even care.
 

How much "say" do you think you or I have in Alito's confirmation?

[lazs2]

we live in a representitive republic... how much more say do you want?

Do you think we should all vote on it?  maybe so... We did all understand the process tho when we voted ... It is probly one of the main reasons bush got elected.

lazs

[StarOfAfrica2]

OOooooo, he's gonna take some heat over this one.

''I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.''

-- Samuel Alito, in a document from 1985, when he was applying to become deputy assistant attorney general

WASHINGTON (Nov. 14) - Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito boasted about his work arguing that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" while trying to become a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, according to documents released Monday.

Alito, a federal appellate judge nominated by President Bush to the nation's highest court, was a young lawyer working for the solicitor general's office in 1985 when he applied for the position under Attorney General Edwin Meese.

As part of his application, Alito sent a document saying his work in the solicitor general's office had included helping "to advance legal positions in which I personally believe very strongly."

"I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government argued that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," he wrote.

That sentence provides one of the first clear-cut statements attributed to Alito about abortion, which will be one of the main topics of his January confirmation hearing as retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's replacement.

"I think that it is more reason to question him closely at the hearing," said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who will run Alito's Jan. 9 hearings as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter, an abortion rights moderate, said a lot of people have shifted their views about abortion over the years and that he has found Alito to have "a very heavy commitment to legal interpretation which might differ from his own personal views."

Bush picked Alito after White House counsel Harriet Miers withdrew her Supreme Court nomination when confronted by withering criticism by some conservatives.
   
"This may explain why the right wing expressed such enthusiastic support for Judge Alito after campaigning against Harriet Miers," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., one of several senators who will meet with Alito privately on Tuesday. "When he comes before the Senate, Judge Alito faces a heavy burden of demonstrating that he no longer holds these extremely troubling views and would bring an open mind and a real commitment to fundamental rights and freedoms."

O'Connor has been a crucial swing vote on abortion on the Supreme Court, and Alito's opponents fear that he and recently confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts would swing the Supreme Court to the right and lead to the overturning of the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade decision establishing abortion rights.

Alito, 55, has told senators in his two weeks of private meetings that he has "great respect" for Roe v. Wade as a precedent, but he did not commit to upholding it.

Alito "joins a long list of jurists who have written that Roe was wrongly decided, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg before she was confirmed to the court," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Judiciary Committee. "The question is whether he will put his personal views aside as any judge should and base his rulings on what the Constitution says. His long track record as a federal appeals court judge shows that he has indeed put his personal views on abortion aside, and I have every confidence he will continue to do so."

The document was included in more than 100 pages of material about Alito released by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library on Monday.

Some abortion rights groups already have come out against Alito because of his work as a federal appellate judge, including a dissent on an appeals court decision striking down a law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

But White House spokesman Steven Schmidt said Alito's 15 years as a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shows "a clear pattern of modesty, respect for precedent and judicial restraint."

When he wrote this document, he was working as an assistant to the solicitor general, where he stayed from 1981 to 1987. Although he sought the job of deputy assistant attorney general in 1985, he did not win that job until 1987.

In the document, Alito declared himself a "lifelong registered" Republican and a Federalist Society member, and said he had donated money to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Conservative Political Action Committee and several GOP candidates.

"I am and always have been a conservative and an adherent to the same philosophical views that I believe are central to this administration," Alito said.

Alito also wrote that he believed "very strongly in limited government, federalism, free enterprise, the supremacy of the elected branches of government, the need for a strong defense and effective law enforcement and the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values."

The 1985 document on abortion was first reported by The Washington Times in Monday editions.

Kennedy, who is also a Judiciary Committee member, wrote Alito on Monday questioning his explanations for ruling on a Vanguard case after telling the committee in 1990 that he would recuse himself from cases involving that company.

Alito holds six-figure investments with Vanguard.

In a Thursday letter, Alito told senators he was "unduly restrictive" in promising to avoid Vanguard's appeals cases, and he did not believe he was required to disqualify himself on the basis of ownership of shares in a mutual fund. The White House has added that there was a computer glitch that allowed the disqualification issue to slip through undetected.

The Vanguard name was prominent throughout the case, Kennedy said. "Surely, whatever the system, the oversight should have been obvious when the case reached you," the letter said.

[Eagler]

"This may explain why the right wing expressed such enthusiastic support for Judge Alito after campaigning against Harriet Miers," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., one of several senators who will meet with Alito privately on Tuesday. "When he comes before the Senate, Judge Alito faces a heavy burden of demonstrating that he no longer holds these extremely troubling views and would bring an open mind and a real commitment to fundamental rights and freedoms."

huh??

what "extremely troubling views"?
nope, just another ant hill mountain from the likes of drunk teddy is all

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Eagler
"This may explain why the right wing expressed such enthusiastic support for Judge Alito after campaigning against Harriet Miers," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., one of several senators who will meet with Alito privately on Tuesday. "When he comes before the Senate, Judge Alito faces a heavy burden of demonstrating that he no longer holds these extremely troubling views and would bring an open mind and a real commitment to fundamental rights and freedoms."

huh??

what "extremely troubling views"?
nope, just another ant hill mountain from the likes of drunk teddy is all

agreed.  That was written a whole 20 years ago and one can develop a different sense for law/prescedent in that "short" amount of time.  The guy can really swing both ways depending on what the law says and personal feelings aside as this:

Some abortion rights groups already have come out against Alito because of his work as a federal appellate judge, including a dissent on an appeals court decision striking down a law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

I'm assuming these abortion rights groups are actually right to life type peopel because he ruled against them in the quoted text.  I think you're going to hear alot of hemming and hawing from the extreme liberals in the senate but the majority of them are really going to like this guy.  Good ole "driving instructor teddy" never passes up air time to say something bad about conservatives.

[Staga]

Originally posted by tikky
i heard Alito is Catholic

a bit plus for me:aok

What does being catholic help?
Aren't religion and the State separated in US ?
Or are you thinking that he might let his beliefs to affect his rulings?

[lazs2]

staga... all that is seperate is that the constitution says that the government can't have a state sponsored religion... it says nothing about individual beliefs other than that we are entitled to em.

lazs

[Seagoon]

More to the point is there anyone who believes that a strict constructionist reading of the constitution will discover a "fundamental right" to abortion on demand or ethnic and racial quotas? Certainly a positivist reading of the Constitution did, but a positivist reading is capable of discovering literally anything that the reader feels would be a good law that would contribute to the progress of the society.

In essence Teddy and his cadre do not really want a constitution that functions in the way that constitutions are intended to -- i.e. to provide a neutral and objective arbiter amidst competing philosophies that will restrain either the designs of an interest group or the tyranny of the majority. Neither do they want a Supreme Court that serves simply to strictly interpret and apply that document, they want a legislative body consisting of 9 appointed oligarchs with a liberal/progressive point of view. Unfortunately, the grave danger is that as Scalia has warned, both sides will eventually come round to this view and the Lawyer/Interpreter paradigm will dropped in favor of "we want a partisan to decree our views from the bench" at which point the Supreme Court ceases to be an asset to the Republic and becomes instead only a liability that nullifies all the checks and balances built into the American system.

We've already seen this in the tendency to fish around for decisions in foreign law that support the viewpoint of the Judge. People get caught up in debating the legitimacy of applying foriegn law without stopping to think, "Hey wait a minute, that means he arrived at his decision first and then searched around for material to support it rather than doing what he is paid to do, i.e. interpret the constitution."

I know this will sound odd, but I don't want an Evangelical or a Catholic or a Republican or a member of the John Birch society on the court - I want a person who simply understands and applies the Constitution as it was originally written. If that means my worldview doesn't always get advanced, so be it. I'd rather have that than an unelected body dictating their preferences any day of the week. Under that system we all lose an even more fundamental part of American government, the right to self-governance.

- SEAGOON

[Maverick]

Well spoken Seagoon.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Seagoon

I know this will sound odd, but I don't want an Evangelical or a Catholic or a Republican or a member of the John Birch society on the court - I want a person who simply understands and applies the Constitution as it was originally written. If that means my worldview doesn't always get advanced, so be it. I'd rather have that than an unelected body dictating their preferences any day of the week. Under that system we all lose an even more fundamental part of American government, the right to self-governance.

- SEAGOON

Nailed it... except for the "originally written" part. The Constitution was intended to be changed as necessary.

[Maverick]

Sandy, They will deal with it depending on if or when someone raises the constitutionality of the change and it makes it to the supremes.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Maverick
Sandy, They will deal with it depending on if or when someone raises the constitutionality of the change and it makes it to the supremes.

If the Constitution is amended. It is by definition constitutional. The Supreme Court doesn't get to decide if they like the amendment or not.

[Seagoon]

Sandy,

As I've said before, I have nothing against the ammendment process, it should be used when necessary and ammendments once incorporated into the constitution become part of the constitutional law that all of our other legislation should be judged by until and unless they are repealed. For that reason, ammending the constitution is rightly a difficult process and should not be entered into lightly.

What I do object to however is simply circumventing that rightly difficult amendment process by interpreting the constitution as if it had already been amended according to the judge's preferences. 5 yeas has become the standard for new constitutional law, and that is just plain wrong.

I know I'll get in trouble for saying this, but I firmly believe the positivist legal philosophy of Oliver Wendell Holmes with all of its faulty assumptions about human nature and the "progress of society" needs to be flushed and replaced with the healthy scepticism and restraint of the founders. Madison, Jay, and Hamilton understood human nature and the dangers of arbitrary government far better than most of the policy wonks of the 20th and 21st centuries.

- SEAGOON

[lazs2]

yep... interpret all amendments in a constitutional manner... they say what they say... if you want something changed or added.... go through the process...  it was made intentionally difficult in order to keep every nanny and do gooder big government socialist from destroying the freedoms it sought to protect.

lazs