Samuel Alito: Telling 'em what they wanna hear

Imagine if everything you ever said in a job interview was made public, simultaneously, on national television. If you promised a little more than you intended to deliver, or crossed your fingers when professing undying loyalty to the goals of your employer, all the while thinking no one would ever find out, it certainly would be a rude surprise to wake up and read your conflicting statements in the New York Times.

Of course, you probably weren't applying for a job in the Reagan administration or a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. If you had been, you would have known that questionnaires for those kinds of jobs are part of the public record.

Judge Samuel Alito told Sen. Dianne Feinstein today that when he wrote on a 1985 application to become a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration that there is no constitutional right to abortion, he was "an advocate seeking a job." This is from the AP account of Senator Feinstein's description of their meeting today:

"He said first of all it was different then," she said. "He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I'm now a judge, I've been on the circuit court for 15 years and it's very different. I'm not an advocate, I don't give heed to my personal views, what I do is interpret the law.'"

Don't be distracted by reassuring bromides: Judge Alito's 1985 statement that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion" is not a statement of his personal views on abortion, but a reasoned judgment interpreting the basic law of the United States. His personal views on whether abortion is right or wrong cannot even be determined from that statement. (You can ask his mom, though, she'll tell you.)

Judge Alito also tried his new story on another Democrat:

Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said he and Alito also talked about the 1985 statement during their early meeting. "He said it was 20 years ago," said Bingaman, who added that Alito also said he has respect for the precedent set by the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, which established abortion rights.

Judge Alito is clearly trying to tell the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee what they want to hear: that he is not committed to overturning Roe v. Wade. But what is he telling those Republicans who want to hear the opposite?

"This man is a conservative," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., after meeting with Alito. "He's been a conservative all his life, and in 1985 when he was applying for a job, he reiterated that fact in his application."

Separately, Judge Alito told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that he was "unduly restrictive" in 1990 when he promised the Judiciary Committee he would not participate in cases involving Vanguard, Smith Barney, or his sister's law firm if confirmed for a seat on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Alito later participated in a case involving Vanguard and a case in which McCarter & English, his sister Rosemary's law firm, represented one of the parties.

There may have been no conflict of interest in those cases and no impropriety of any sort. That's a separate issue from whether in 1990 Judge Alito was so anxious to please the Judiciary Committee and get confirmed that he told them anything they wanted to hear, and whether he did that when he applied for a job in the Reagan administration in 1985, and whether he's doing that again right now.


Copyright 2005

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