Via the NYT: Judge Alito Proves a Powerful Match for Senate Questioners
If Senate Democrats had set out to portray Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as extreme on issues ranging from abortion to government surveillance of citizens, they ran up against an elusive target on Tuesday: Samuel A. Alito Jr. For nearly eight hours, Judge Alito was placid, monochromatic and, it seemed, mostly untouchable.Unlike the testimony of John G. Roberts Jr., who had often declined to answer questions on various grounds, among them that certain issues might come before him as chief justice or that his older writings did not necessarily reflect his current views, Judge Alito’s default impulse frequently seemed to be to try to give a direct response to the senators’ often rambling questions.
First off: Senators rambling? What an outrageous characterization!!
Second: I must admit, based on what little I listened to myself yesterday, and from the clips I watched yesterday evening, it would seem that Alito has comported himself quite well to this point. In fact, I would say that he has done better than expected, given that he was going to be compared to Roberts, who clearly had a very good run in front of the committee.
No doubt, Alito is less charismatic than Roberts, but he comes across as quite intelligent and, well, judicious, in his thinking.
Barring some bombshell, I have a very hard time seeing him having any serious problems from here on out. Certainly I was surprised by the lack of a serious attack from the Democrats. Given the lead-in to the whole thing (such as Senator Kennedy writing anti-Alitp editorials), I would have expected more than they displayed yesterday. Schumer was on the attack, but that appeared to be largely that.
The most dramatic negative that seemed to arise yesterday was this:
He claimed no memory of having been active in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which opposed the university’s affirmative action program for minorities, despite listing his affiliation with the group in a 1985 job application. That lack of memory “left some of us puzzled,” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.
And I found the following (which I actually heard live) rather amusing:
Like Judge Roberts, Judge Alito declined to adopt the terminology of the Judiciary Committee chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, that the status of Roe v. Wade was “super precedent” or “super duper precedent,” a reference to the fact that its core holding had been reaffirmed in later cases. “It sort of reminds me of the size of laundry detergent in the supermarket,” Judge Alito said, in one of the very few comments he made that gave rise to laughter.
While I can understand the logical basis for stating that a precedent that has been reaffirmed multiple times is strengthened by its various affirmations, I have long thought the terminology of “super,” let alone “super duper,” precedent was a tad silly and sounds more like something kids on a playground would say, rather than those discussing the highest court in the land.
Sphere: Related Content
January 11th, 2006 at 9:23 am
Yes, Alito sounded very skilled in answering the “questions” put forth by the senators. I personally think they should keep more to questions and less to their bloviating. Imagine what a real “cross-examination” might show from a nominee. Intead, we get political kabuki.