Archive: December 18, 2005 - December 24, 2005
Immunity Stories Critiqued
Powerline takes on the AP's story on the Alito "immunity" document. Here, ConfirmThem goes after a New York Times editorial on the same subject. Ed Whelan at Bench Memos also weighs in, noting that the stories on Alito's position do not mention or relegate the fact that his view was also the view of the Carter Administration....
By Fred Barbash | December 24, 2005; 11:01 AM ET | Comments (2)
Alito Documents Articles
Articles on Samuel Alito's 1984 memo on official immunity, included in a document release yesterday, can be found inThe Washington Post, the New York Times, Knight-Ridder and elsewhere. For further background, including the document and the resulting Supreme Court decision, see previous post. Also in the Washington Post this morning is an article by Howard Kurtz on the media reaction to release of an Alito abortion-related memo mistakenly reported by some outlets as major new news, for the second time in less than a month, since the memo was the same as the one released in November....
By Fred Barbash | December 24, 2005; 8:07 AM ET | Email a Comment
Alito and Immunity Issue in '84 Document
Bloomberg News is running this article based on this document in which Samuel Alito urged the Solicitor General to advocate qualified immunity for the Attorney General in a wiretap case involving former Attorney General John Mitchell. Alito said that absolute immunity would be appropriate but that it was the wrong case to make such an argument. The article does not make entirely clear that the wiretap in question was legal at the time it occurred. The Solicitor General argued for absolute immunity and lost. The Supreme Court, in this case,ruled for qualified immunity. Justice Byron White wrote the opinion. All the justices, including Justices Brennan and Marshall, thought that at the very least, qualified immunity was appropriate. Justices O'Connor and Stevens and Chief Justice Burger would have voted for absolute immunity. Justices Powell and Rehnquist took no part in the case....
By Fred Barbash | December 23, 2005; 3:44 PM ET | Comments (1)
New Old Alito Documents
The abortion-related document being trumpeted by CNN, MSNBC and wire services as new, appears to be the identical 1985 document from the last document release, in which Alito makes recommendations to Acting Solicitor General regarding a proposed amicus brief in the Thornburgh case, including stating the administration's position that Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned. Click here to view it. Here is the document, sent to a different person in the DOJ, released on November 30. See also this note at Bench Memos....
By Fred Barbash | December 23, 2005; 10:03 AM ET | Comments (5)
Newly Released Alito Documents
The documents released this morning by the archives on Samuel A. Alito can be accessed here. They were requested by Jo Becker of the Washington Post just a few weeks ago, which probably accounts for the timing of the release....
By Fred Barbash | December 23, 2005; 9:11 AM ET | Email a Comment
Alito Document Dump on Dec. 23-Press Release
National Archives Opens Additional Samuel Alito Records...
By Fred Barbash | December 22, 2005; 6:00 PM ET | Email a Comment
Kennedy Seeks Alito Documents on Princeton Case
Associated Press reports: "Sen. Edward Kennedy is pressing for documents on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's involvement with a conservative group that argued Princeton University lowered its admission standards to accept women and minorities. In a letter on Thursday, Kennedy, D-Mass., asked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., to make a formal request for files in the private papers of a founder and leader of Concerned Alumni of Princeton." Here's Kennedy's press release on the subject....
By Fred Barbash | December 22, 2005; 5:55 PM ET | Comments (13)
Gap in Interest Group TV Spending on Alito Nomination Narrows--Brennan Center
The Brennan Center at NYU has issued another report on advertising spending pro and con the Alito nomination. " A coalition of liberal interest groups working to defeat the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court has sharply stepped up their television advertising campaigns in Maine and Rhode Island in recent weeks. In doing so they have closed what was once a wide gap in total spending on television airtime relative to their conservative peers who back Alito's nomination. Combined the groups have now spent just under $650,000, with conservative spending accounting for 54 cents of every television advertising dollar, compared to 46 cents for the liberal groups, according to records compiled through December 20. The data comes from new statistics released by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and the Justice at Stake Campaign."...
By Fred Barbash | December 22, 2005; 12:00 PM ET | Comments (5)
NPR : A Conservative View of Alito's Record on Race
Click here for NPR story on response to Black Caucus opposition to Alito by Project 21....
By Fred Barbash | December 22, 2005; 3:54 AM ET | Comments (3)
Critique of Yale Law Student's Alito report etc.
See previous post on the Alito Project report issued by Yale Law students. Also see a critique here, by James Copland, at Point of Law."The problem with the Alito Project's report is not merely that it reads more like a one-sided recitation of the facts in a legal brief, rather than the neutral assessment it tries to suggest it is -- and it does -- but that it actually gets the facts wrong." See also National Review Online "Yale Law School has apparently, upon calmer reflection (or perhaps just reading Ed Whelan's Bench Memos post about the embarrassing display of legal analysis by the Yale professors and students) backed away from its embrace of the 'Alito Report.'"...
By Fred Barbash | December 22, 2005; 3:36 AM ET | Email a Comment
Women and Families group opposes Alito
The National Partnership for Women and Families has issued a report called "Tipping the Balance: The Record of Samuel A. Alito and What's at Stake for Women." It says that Alito's "restrictive interpretations of laws protecting civil and individual rights threaten to undo critical gains for women." Click here to read the report. It is accompanied by this press statement....
By Fred Barbash | December 21, 2005; 12:50 PM ET | Email a Comment
Poll Finds Support for Alito
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that "a majority of Americans now support the confirmation of U.S. Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.....The survey found that 54 percent of the public say the Senate should confirm Alito while 28 percent say he should not be approved. That marks a modest increase in public support for Alito since November, when 49 percent said he should be confirmed and 29 percent said he should not. In both surveys, about one in five Americans said they did not yet know enough about the nominee to have an opinion. Click here to read the article by Rich Morin....
By Fred Barbash | December 21, 2005; 6:21 AM ET | Comments (20)
Alito Speeches Reveal a Warmer, Wittier Nominee-Law.com
By Tony Mauro "Buried deep in more than 200 pages of texts, notes, and transcripts of speeches and presentations that he filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of his Jan. 9 confirmation hearings is a different Alito, one somewhat at odds with the bland, scrupulously noncommittal, and even humorless persona he has conveyed in appearances since being nominated Oct. 31. "...
By Fred Barbash | December 21, 2005; 3:47 AM ET | Email a Comment
Yale Law Students Assess Alito Opinions
The "Alito Project" at the Yale Law School conducted a review of Judge Alito's published opinions over his fifteen years on the bench. The report is available here. The summary of the conclusion is below: Our review indicates that when confronted with situations where statutory language and controlling precedent are clear, Judge Alito defers to settled law.However, in many cases Judge Alito has had more latitude to decide questions where statutory language is ambiguous, precedents are in conflict, or the Supreme Court has not issued a controlling decision. These opinions are especially significant because they provide more insight into Judge Alito's own judicial philosophy and because it inevitably falls to the Supreme Court to decide closely contested issues. From these cases, we identified several trends in Judge Alito's judicial approach: he rules in favor of institutional actors and defers to agency decisions in many settings while showing skepticism toward individual...
By Fred Barbash | December 20, 2005; 7:02 PM ET | Email a Comment
Judiciary Democrats Want Alito Papers
By Jesse J. Holland of Associated Press The Bush administration should release all of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's internal Justice Department documents before confirmation hearings begin next month, Senate Democrats said Tuesday.The documents 'will be important in evaluating Judge Alito's nomination,' the eight Judiciary Committee Democrats said in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." To see the Democrats' letter and press release, click here....
By Fred Barbash | December 20, 2005; 6:48 PM ET | Email a Comment
Brady Center Announces Opposition to Alito
Press Release from Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence "Judge Alito's nomination poses serious dangers to the safety of our communities, our families, and our children, as evidenced by his troubling dissent in U.S. vs. Rybar..... In that case, Judge Alito argued that the federal machine gun ban amounted to an unconstitutional exercise of Congressional power under the Commerce Clause. Alito attempted to erect arbitrary hurdles to Congressional efforts to reduce the availability of machine guns to the criminal element."...
By Fred Barbash | December 20, 2005; 1:47 PM ET | Email a Comment
Lawmakers to Ask Alito About Spy Views
Jesse J. Holland of Associated Press reports that Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and ranking Judiciary Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont sent separate letters to Alito telling him they would ask about the president's authority to order warrantless spying at Alito's Jan. 9 confirmation hearings.
By Fred Barbash | December 19, 2005; 5:02 PM ET | Comments (2)
