NYT: Few Glimmers of How Conservative Judge Alito Is
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 13, 2006
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - In over 18 hours responding to some 700 questions at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. mostly described a methodical and incremental approach to the law rooted in no particular theory.
But to the extent Judge Alito claimed a judicial philosophy, it aligned him with the court's two most conservative members, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas....
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On one of the few occasions Judge Alito spoke about his general approach to the law, he embraced a mode of constitutional interpretation known as originalism and often associated with Justices Scalia and Thomas.
"In interpreting the Constitution," Judge Alito said Wednesday, "I think we should look to the text of the Constitution, and we should look to the meaning that someone would have taken from the text of the Constitution at the time of its adoption."...Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., by contrast, described a more eclectic and dynamic approach to constitutional interpretation at his confirmation hearings in September.
"Judge Alito sounded less amenable to constitutional evolution than Roberts," said Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who studied Judge Alito's dissenting opinions at the request of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, but has taken no position on the nomination. "He is someone who is more likely to vote with Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas than Justice O'Connor."...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/politics/politicsspecial1/13legal.html?hp&ex=1137128400&en=065a40629131d8e0&ei=5094&partner=homepageON EDIT, adding WP article, indicating Alito would likely shift Court to the right --
WP: Right Cautious Nominee
Measured Replies Paint Picture With a Conservative Tint
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 13, 2006; Page A06
Samuel A. Alito Jr. did everything he could do to avoid saying how he would rule on the big issues that might come before the Supreme Court if, as now seems likely, he is confirmed by the Senate and succeeds Sandra Day O'Connor.
Yet even his cautious answers to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee contained evidence that the court could shift to the right once the federal appellate judge takes O'Connor's seat.
Though he distanced himself from his youthful expressions of support for the conservative Concerned Alumni of Princeton and the ill-fated nomination of Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987, Alito, 55, stood by the generally conservative opinions he has written as an appellate judge. When Democrats repeatedly sought to portray those decisions as insensitive to the rights and concerns of minorities or working-class people, Alito explained why he thought the law had required him to rule as he did.
And when Alito described his personal history, his comments revealed a man whose conservatism developed not only in the cool corridors of a law library but also in the heated backlash against the perceived excesses of 1960s and 1970s liberalism.
Alito could thus form a relatively solid conservative bloc with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The court has four liberal-leaning members: Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/12/AR2006011202015.html