According to the Washington Post and the rest of the media, President Bush will announce the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
President Bush today will name appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a source close to the White House. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.
Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House high court short list. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.
Alito is clearly qualified for the job, unlike the last nomineee:
Alito’s resume, including a degree from the Yale Law School and service in the Reagan administration Justice Department, is very much unlike Miers’, who had no appellate experience, and very much like that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Alito served during the Reagan administration in the office of Solicitor General, which argues on behalf of the government in the Supreme Court.
Unlike Roberts, he has opined from the bench on both abortion rights, church-state separation and gender discrimination to the pleasure of conservatives and displeasure of liberals.
Already, its clear what the controversy will be over Alito’s nomination:
His record on the appeals court makes Alito less liable to suggestions made about Roberts, with only two years as a judge, that he is somehow a judicial mystery.
Rather, liberals are likely to focus on his opinions and dissents, most notably in the 1991 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In that case, Alito joined a Third Circuit panel in upholding most of a Pennsylvania law imposing numerous restrictions on women seeking abortions. The law, among other things, required physicians to advise women of the potential medical dangers of abortion and tell them of the alternatives available. It also imposed a 24 hour waiting period for abortions and barred minors from obtaining abortions without parental consent.
The panel, in that same ruling, struck down a single provision in the law requiring women to notify their husband’s before they obtained an abortion. Alito dissented from that part of the decision. “The Pennsylvania legislature,” Alito wrote, “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 constrains, future plans, or the husbands’ previously expressed opposition — that may be obviated by discussion prior to abortion.”
The Supreme Court ended up sustaining the 3rd Circuit’s ruling in Casey but overruled the Court’s holding on the spousal notification provision, and it is certain that the left is going to try to turn the Alito nomination into a debate about abortion.
At least looking at this nomination initially, I feel confident in saying that *this time* the President deserves the benefit of the doubt. Alito clearly is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. More importantly, he has a clear judicial philosophy and, it seems, a committment to originalism. Now, let the games begin.
Michelle Malkin has a roundup of the news and commentary surrounding the nomination as does James Joyner at Outside The Beltway.
Update @ 9:00am: Ann Althouse takes a look at some of Alito’s more interesting opinions while on the Third Circuit.
Update @ 9:15am: Captain Ed thinks that the Democrats will try to filibuster Alito, but will ulimately fail.
I expect that the Democrats will get 30-35 votes in favor of a filibuster once Alito gets out of committee. If they do consider a filibuster, too many of them will realize that Stevens might get replaced during this term he’s 85 years old). They need that potential stop on Senate business to protect a genuinely liberal seat on the Court — and enough of them won’t agree to tossing it aside before the 2006 elections, when they might narrow the gap in the Senate, in order to keep Alito off the bench. They also won’t want to fight over obstructionism again during the next cycle, or the Democrats might well lose more Senate seats in the midterms
Update @ 12:30pm: Well, that didn’t take long. Within hours after the nomination was announced, and with her body still lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda, Sen. Charles Schumer is using Rosa Parks to score political points.
Schumer opened his news conference by making reference to Rosa Parks, the civil rights pioneer given the tribute of lying in honor at the U-S Capitol. He said, “like Rosa Parks”, Judge Alito would be able to change history by virtue of where he sits.
Schumer asked: would Alito use his seat on the court to change history for the better, or reverse what Parks and others have worked for?
Truly, truly disgusting. Here is a link to the full text of Schumer’s remarks.
Update @ 1:45pm: As I said this morning, the subtext of Alito’s confirmation hearings is going to be abortion, and the focus is going to be on the Third Circuit’s ruling in Casey v. Planned Parenthood. Over at The QandO Blog, Jon Henke takes a look at what the Court actually said in that case, and the distortions already coming from the left.
Update @ 2:00pm: Though I’m sure he’ll be more circumspect that Harriet Miers was, Judge Alito has a blog. Heh.
Also, David Bernstein points out that, if Alito is confirmed, there will be a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court for the first time in history. I wonder if the left will be stupid enough to make an issue out of Alito’s religion the way they almost did with Roberts.
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