Washington – President Bush nominated federal appellate Judge Samuel Alito for the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, placating those conservative activists who undermined previous nominee Harriet Miers but provoking a fight with liberals.
“He is scholarly, fair-minded and principled,” Bush said, naming Alito to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Alito, 55, has served for 15 years as an appeals court judge. Bush said his nominee “has more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years.”
The son of an Italian immigrant, Alito graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. He served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration and as a federal prosecutor before winning the Senate’s unanimous approval to the federal bench in 1990.
Alito is best known for a 1991 dissent in a landmark Pennsylvania case in which he argued that a state can make women notify their husbands before getting abortions. The Supreme Court rejected Alito’s reasoning and instead used the case to reaffirm abortion rights.
Several groups – People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, MoveOn.org, NARAL Pro-Choice America and others – immediately declared their opposition.
“Judge Alito would undermine basic reproductive rights,” said Karen Pearl, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “It is outrageous that President Bush would replace a moderate conservative like Justice O’Connor with a conservative hardliner.”
“Any nominee who so worries the radical left is worthy of serious consideration,” countered conservative James Dobson, founder and chairman of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family Action, who declared himself “extremely pleased.”
Republican Senate leaders pledged their support, but moderates took a wait-and-see stance.
One key senator – Republican John McCain of Arizona – said he was “pleased” with the nomination and added that “Judge Alito’s record is one of a thoroughly experienced, capable and principled jurist.”
McCain is one of the bipartisan “Gang of 14” senators who negotiated to keep the Senate filibuster rule for judicial nominations while promising to employ the tactic only under “extraordinary circumstances.”
But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, when asked about a filibuster, said: “I wouldn’t take it off the table right now.” Like other Democrats, Reid criticized Bush for selecting a white male: “We have here the good ol’ boys club.”
Republicans hold 55 seats in the 100-member Senate. To defeat a nominee on an up-or- down vote, Alito’s foes would have to garner 51 votes. To indefinitely delay a vote by filibustering, they would need just 40.
If confirmed by the Senate, Alito would be the court’s fifth member of the Roman Catholic faith. Alito’s mother, Rose, 90, told The Associated Press: “Of course he’s against abortion.”
Bush introduced Alito at an 8 a.m. ceremony at the White House, where the bespectacled nominee promised to “interpret the Constitution and the laws faithfully and fairly, to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans, and to do these things with care and with restraint.”
Alito’s record as a government lawyer and federal judge will give his critics ample material with which to question him when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on the nomination.
In 1997, Alito dissented in a case that upheld the conviction of a gun dealer for selling machine guns. Citing a Supreme Court decision that limited congressional authority to regulate gun use as a form of interstate commerce, he argued that Congress’ power under the Constitution’s commerce clause “must have some limits.”
Liberal groups zeroed in on Alito’s dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, a 1991 abortion case that the Supreme Court ultimately used to reaffirm Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 ruling establishing the right of abortion.
The issue was whether the Pennsylvania legislature could restrict the ability of women to obtain abortions through such regulations as a requirement that wives notify husbands before undergoing the procedure.
The 3rd Circuit court, with Alito dissenting, ruled that the spousal-notification provision was the kind of burdensome regulation forbidden by Roe. The Supreme Court then took the case, threw out the spousal-notification rule and other Pennsylvania restrictions, and sustained Roe.
But Alito won renown in conservative circles after his dissent in Casey was cited by the late Chief Justice William Rehn quist, who joined Scalia and two other justices in unsuccessfully arguing that Roe should be overturned.
Alito himself, however, never went so far as to openly challenge the reasoning in Roe. And in two subsequent New Jersey abortion cases, he joined the court majority in decisions that upheld various abortion rights.
