Alito Hearings: 1/9/2006

3:39: Specter adjourns the hearing until Tuesday morning.

3:38: Alito says that no person in this country is above the law, and no person is beneath it. When he was appointed, he took an oath to apply to the law equally to all. That is what he has sought to do over the years, and it is his pledge that he will continue to do precisely that if appointed to SCOTUS.

3:35: As a judge he’s sat on thousands of cases and written hundreds of opinions. Through that, he learned a lot about how a judge should go about judging: A judge does not have a client. His only obligation is to the rule of law. In every case, a judge must do what the law requires. Good judges form certain habits that assist in that process. For instance, they withold judgment until the facts and law have been presented, and they resist external influence.

3:34: His clerkship was also formative, as was his experience at DOJ. He remembers when he stood up in court for the first time and said, “My name is Samuel Alito and I represent the United States,” and the feeling of having the US as a client.

3:33: Alito also credits the community in which he grew up. Princeton was a change from that. He couldn’t help but notice the difference between the privileged people behaving badly that he saw at college and the hard work and decency that he knew at home.

3:30: Alito explains how he “got here.” He discusses his parents’ background and what it taught them. His father’s story is about the opportunities that our country offers, and about fairness and hard work. His mother was the first in her family to get a college degree, and worked as a teacher and a principal until she was forced to retire. Both parents instilled a deep love of learning.

3:28: Alito’s opening remarks. He is grateful and humbled.

3:27: Formal swearing in of Alito.

3:19: Former Governor Whitman states that she would recommend that Alito be confirmed. She says that Alito has excelled at everything he’s undertaken and has for the past 15 years been a respected appeals court judge.

Her decision to support Alito is not based on whether she agrees with him on any issue or set of issues, or some general ideology. Such questions are ultimately irrelevant to the issue of whether Alito should serve as an associate justice on SCOTUS. We should look for justices who instinctively understand that their opinions are to be shaped only by the facts before them and by the constitution–judges who know not to legislate, and do not hold ideologies that will prevent them from making judicial decisions. Whitman says that, although Alito has been accused of having a strong ideology, he is ultimately guided only by precedent and his analysis of the facts and law at issue.

She says to the senators that it is impossible to find a judge who will act as they would were they in his or her position. And that is as it should be. She then strongly urges the committee to recommend his appointment to SCOTUS.

3:19: Specter asks Lautenberg if he’d care to make a recommendation and Lautenberg defers, stating that he would let the evidence speak for itself.

3:13: Testimony of Senator Lautenberg (NJ). Some of the most important recent justices have, like Alito, been from New Jersey. For instance, Brennan, who he says ushered in our nation’s renewed committment to civil rights in the latter half of the century. And Scalia (who needs no introduction).

Lautenberg continues by noting that Alito went to public school where he was on the debate team. He then went on the Princeton, where his yearbook entry predicted that he would one day warm a seat on SCOTUS. After Yale Law, Alito worked in the Solicitor General’s office, and later went on to be a federal prosecutor, before being appointed to the federal bench.

3:05: Senator Coburn says he’s heard a lot about “the vulnerable, the weak, those that suffer,” and also a great deal about “the right to choose.” He asks, where are we in America when we decide it’s legal to kill our unborn children? It is a real measure of our society when we legitimize and say there’s a constitutional right to that action. Coburn says you can’t claim to care for those that are vulnerable and those that suffer, and at the same time say that you don’t care about those who have been “ripped from the womb.” Accordingly, his hope is that as we go through this process we can be straightforward about what we’re talking about. If we’re to honor the heritage of our country, we need to have this debate honestly and openly. His point, in short, is that these hearings are fundamentally about Roe.