WASHINGTON – Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, tried Monday to assure the Senate Judiciary Committee that he is a mainstream jurist who would apply the law without bias or ideology.
“A judge can’t have any agenda,” Alito, 55, told the committee in his opening statement at his confirmation hearings. “A judge can’t have a preferred outcome in any particular case. A judge’s obligation, and it’s a solemn obligation, is to the rule of law. And what that means is that in every single case, the judge has to do what the law requires.”
Questioning in the weeklong hearings begins Tuesday for Alito, currently a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Jersey.
In his statement Monday, Alito told the senators, scores of reporters and photographers and interested witnesses crammed into the hearing room that he would be the same judge on the Supreme Court as he has been in his current position.
“Fifteen years ago, when I was sworn in as a judge of the court of appeals, I took an oath,” he said at the close of his remarks. “I put my hand on the Bible and I swore that I would administer justice without respect to persons, that I would do equal right to the poor and to the rich and I would carry out my duties under the Constitution and the laws of the United States.
“And that is what I have tried to do to the very best of my ability for the past 15 years. And if I am confirmed, I pledge to you that that is what I would do on the Supreme Court.”
The New Jersey native spent most of his 11-minute statement explaining to the panel who he was by talking about his family and upbringing.
He talked about his Italian father, who came to the country as a baby, grew up poor and lost his mother when he was a teenager. But through a $50 gift, he was able to buy one suit, go to college and become a schoolteacher.
He talked about his mother, a first-generation American, daughter of a working-class family, who went on to become the first person in her family to get a college degree and then a master’s degree. She worked as a teacher and principal until she was forced to retire.
“I am who I am, in the first place, because of my parents and because of the things they taught me,” he said.
Briefly, Alito, who spent most of the nearly four-hour session staring stoically at the senators as they made their opening statements, showed a sense of humor.
He said he had sympathy for the committee members and their staff who had to review his hundreds of opinions, saying it “may have constituted cruel and unusual punishment.”
After the hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the key will be how and whether Alito responds to questions during the next few days of testimony, or whether, as Chief Justice John Roberts did during his hearings, he declines to answer many questions.
“I hope when this hearing is over, that the American people while have good sense of who Sam Alito is,” he said.
The senators, who will decide whether to recommend Alito for a vote in the full Senate Jan. 17, filled the first three hours of Monday’s hearing with 10-minute opening statements.
Democrats expressed concern about Alito’s judicial record and stated views on abortion, the powers of the presidency, civil rights, voting rights and congressional power.
“In an era when the White House is abusing power, is excusing and authorizing torture, and is spying on American citizens, I find Judge Alito’s support for an all-powerful executive branch to be genuinely troubling,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
Republicans spent much of their time praising Alito’s background and warning Democrats that they would not abide what they thought might be unfair questioning of the nominee.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., cited Alito’s 10 years as an attorney in the Justice Department, his degrees from Princeton and Yale and his 15 years as a federal court judge – more judicial experience than any sitting Supreme Court justice.
“You have a record as a brilliant, but modest, jurist,” Sessions said.
Both sides repeatedly said that they did not want an activist judge who would legislate from the bench, thus usurping the power of legislative branches to represent the will of their constituents.
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But at the same time, each side made it clear that they would like Alito either to protect Supreme Court rulings they hold dear or to reverse ones they dislike.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he hoped that if confirmed to the court, Alito would help reverse Supreme Court decisions on religion, such as the court’s ruling last year on the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings.
“It is my sincere hope, Judge Alito, that you will be confirmed to the Supreme Court and that you will persuade your colleagues to reconsider their attitude towards religious expression and grant it the same freedom currently reserved for most all other, nonreligious speech,” he said.
Sen. Sam Brownback , R-Kan., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Colo., made it clear that they would like Alito to help overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that gave women the right to an abortion.
“Where are we in America where we have decided it’s all right to kill unborn children,” Coburn said.
Democrats made it clear that they want Alito to be the same kind of jurist that he is replacing, Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court and a critical swing vote in over 148 Supreme Court decisions.
“If you are confirmed, Judge Alito, who will inspire your thinking if the president, or any president, threatens our fundamental constitutional rights – the Federalist Society or Justice O’Connor?”
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The chairman of the committee, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., expressed concern that too many of the senators – Democrats and Republicans – have already made up their minds about Alito before even the first day of testimony, which begins Tuesday.
“I am very concerned that so many senators are already concrete,” he said after Monday’s session. “As chairman, I am determined to see that this nominee is judged on his testimony.”
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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): SCOTUS-ALITO
AP-NY-01-09-06 2023EST
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