February 21, 2006



Reasons to Oppose Samuel Alito

Posted by Eric Jaffa
Tuesday January 24th 2006, 7:53 pm
Filed under: Government, Courts

Samuel Alito is George W. Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

An editorial from the New York Times sums up Samuel Alito’s judgment this way:

Judge Alito has consistently shown a bias in favor of those in power over those who need the law to protect them.

More from that New York Times editorial:

Judge Alito would no doubt try to change the court’s approach. He has supported the fringe “unitary executive” theory, which would give the president greater power to detain Americans and would throw off the checks and balances built into the Constitution. He has also put forth the outlandish idea that if the president makes a statement when he signs a bill into law, a court interpreting the law should give his intent the same weight it gives to Congress’s intent in writing and approving the law.

Judge Alito would also work to reduce Congress’s power in other ways. In a troubling dissent, he argued that Congress exceeded its authority when it passed a law banning machine guns, and as a government lawyer he insisted Congress did not have the power to protect car buyers from falsified odometers.

There is every reason to believe, based on his long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings, that Judge Alito would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. So it is hard to see how Senators Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, all Republicans, could square support for Judge Alito with their commitment to abortion rights.

Judge Alito has consistently shown a bias in favor of those in power over those who need the law to protect them. Women, racial minorities, the elderly and workers who come to court seeking justice should expect little sympathy. In the same flat bureaucratic tones he used at the hearings, he is likely to insist that the law can do nothing for them.

SpeakSpeak is primarily about free speech and the media. Because of the negative effect Alito would have in those areas, I am covering his nomination even regarding articles which don’t discuss free speech.

Please ask your Senators to oppose Alito.



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