October 31, 2005

It's War! Judge Samuel "Scalito" Alito is nominated to the Supreme Court
by Liza Sabater

First, kudos to Tom Goldstein of ScotusBlog. Much to the chagrin of A3G, Tom Goldsteing called it called it right first. Time to crow guys : SCOTUSblog: President names Alito.

Second, I've been talking to people off-blog about how I've felt Miers was more like a red herring to me --but so did John Roberts. Well, Miers proved to be the one.

Eric Muller of Is That Legal? actually worked with him in New Jersey :

Is That Legal?: Sam Alito, As I Knew Him. || He is cerebral. He is very, very smart. In small-ish interpersonal settings he comes off as a bit shy and a touch awkward. (I say that this is so only in small-ish settings because I once saw him deliver a speech, at his farewell dinner, actually, and in that setting, speaking to a big crowd, he was remarkably at ease and exceedingly funny.) He seems younger than his years; there is a boyishness to him. Because his nature is reserved, I found him tough to read for politics. I knew, of course, that his conservative pedigree was impressive, but it was not something he wore on his sleeve.

Well, if being the only dissenting judge in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey is not akin to wearing your politics on your judicial sleeves, I don't know what would be. He is already being touted as an extremist and if you read that one dissent alone, you can see there is a HUGE reason for people to keep this guy away from the Supreme Court.

This is what Planned Parenthood has to say:

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. - Bush Nominates Samuel Alito || Judge Alito was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey when the case was before the Third Circuit, voting to uphold Pennsylvania's spousal notification requirement. In callous disregard of battered women who would be affected by the statute, Alito wrote separately from the majority to express his support for the law, which would have required Pennsylvania women to notify their husbands prior to obtaining an abortion. The Supreme Court later ruled the spousal notification provision unconstitutional, holding that a state cannot give a man control over his wife, stating, "Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry."

In Planned Parenthood of Central New Jersey v. Farmer, the Third Circuit was asked to rule on an abortion regulation that did not contain a valid health exception for the life of the woman. Alito grudgingly applied the Supreme Court precedents in both Roe v. Wade and Stenberg v. Carhart to overturn the statute while refusing to endorse the reasoning of the Supreme Court in either case.
"Samuel Alito's record is deeply troubling to Americans, who overwhelmingly support a woman's right to choose," said Pearl. "His confirmation would radically transform the Supreme Court and create a direct threat to the health and safety of American women."

The Supreme Court's decision to hear Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood at the end of November spotlights the urgency of the threat to reproductive freedom. In this high-stakes case, the justices are expected to rule on whether a woman's health will remain the paramount concern in laws that restrict abortion access. The ruling may have an immediate impact on women's health across the nation and will determine whether a fundamental principle established in Roe v. Wade will remain the law of the land.

People for the American Way has not only an overview but a 24 page preliminary report of Alito's judicial record.

Quick Facts on Samuel Alito || Samuel Alito has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since his appointment by the first President Bush in 1990.  In that time, Alito has compiled an extensive, extreme right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans -- a record that has earned him the nickname "Scalito" for his ideological resemblance to Justice Antonin Scalia.  Alito's judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court. 

For example:

Hostile to basic reproductive privacy rights: Alito wants government to be able to interfere in personal decisions on reproductive rights. In Casey, Alito stated that he would have upheld a provision of Pennsylvania's restrictive anti-abortion law requiring a woman in certain circumstances to notify her husband before obtaining an abortion. His colleagues on the Third Circuit and the Supreme Court majority disagreed and overturned the provision.

Rejects basic protections for workers: In a number of dissenting opinions, Alito has taken positions that, if adopted, would have made it more difficult for victims of race and sex discrimination to prove their claims. In one case involving claims of race discrimination, the court majority sharply criticized Alito's dissent, stating that Alito's "position would immunize an employer from the reach of Title VII" in certain circumstances.

Leads revolution against federal laws protecting individual and other rights: According to one of Alito's opinions, Congress had no authority to require state employers to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a ruling that was repudiated by the Supreme Court in a later case in which conservative Chief Justice Rehnquist, no friend of civil rights, wrote the Court's decision. Alito also dissented from a ruling by the Third Circuit that Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause to restrict the transfer and possession of machine guns at gun shows.

Fails to consider racial discrimination in capital punishment: An African American had been convicted of felony murder by an all white jury from which black jurors had been impermissibly struck because of their race. Alito cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in a 2-1 ruling rejecting the defendant's claims. The full Third Circuit, in a split decision, reversed Alito's ruling, and the majority specifically criticized him for having compared statistical evidence about the prosecution's exclusion of blacks from juries in capital cases to an explanation of why a disproportionate number of recent U.S. Presidents have been left-handed. According to the majority, "[t]o suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants . . ."

I have much, much more to say about this. I was quiet during the Miers selling period because, honestly, she did not strike me as the real nominee. It was such a bad choice and such an error in judgement after the FEMA "Brownie" fiasco that I could not for the life of me believe Miers really was going to make it to the Supreme Court.

Now we know why.

By the by, Eric Muller says that when Alito became US Attorney in New Jersey, he hired none other than Michael Chertoff to be his top deputy. Let's just say I am a bit creeped out by that bit of information.

It's an omen.

I am going to take a whole different tactic with Alito. With John Roberts, I felt I was evaluating a resume. With Scalito, I am not going to take that strategy.

My forte is not judisprudence. My forte is literary analysis --looking at how people use words to construct a judgement, frame it with an ideology and make it pass as if it were The Truth. I just drooled at a quick glance of Scalito's work, because, as a deconstructivist, I can see how right-wingers have coopted the language of the pro-choice movement to throw it back at them with alleged judicial impartiality.

Still, I have one more thing to say about Miers before I move along. I also have to finish migrating this website to it's new home.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Supreme Court
Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2) | Technorati Cosmos

Trackbacks

Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/3415

The following blogs make reference to this post :

» Alito Shuffle from protein wisdom

Some reaction from the left: Chuck Schumer:It is sad that the President felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America instead of choosing a nominee in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor, who would unify us. This controversial nominee, wh...

[More...]

Found inOctober 31, 2005 01:48 PM

» Scalito = Bad News from Feministe
Really, really, really (pdf) bad news. The run-down: The Bad -Alito penned the Third Circuit majority opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which severely limited the right to abortion. But Alito went a step further than the rest of the court, as... [More...]

Found inOctober 31, 2005 06:21 PM

Say it loud, say it proud!