It makes sense that President Bush chose the most qualified Supreme Court nominee who will likely gain approval from the majority of the Senate, and his newest nominee, Samuel Alito, seems a reasonable pick to replace the outgoing Sandra Day O’Connor.
Alito has had more previous experience as a federal judge than most other Supreme Court justices, and he has shown an admirable record of respecting a judicial philosophy rather than his own personal ideology. He is a sudden departure from Bush’s now-withdrawn nominee, Harriet Miers, whose lack of experience as a judge and refusal to answer valid questions from senators made her unworthy of being appointed to the Supreme Court.
Recent criticism from Alito’s colleagues on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit cited his disrespect for precedents set by previous court decisions. In one instance the majority claimed Alito “ignored our precedent” in a case involving a couple from Korea facing deportation for filing a fraudulent tax return. But does the word “ignore” mean that Alito completely disregarded a court precedent or that he considered it but disagreed with the court’s logic in deciding the case?
Critics of Alito have failed to back up their claim that he is incapable of making jurisprudential decisions in the nation’s highest court. His fellow judges, who may themselves be envious of Alito for having been favored by Bush instead of them, might be inducing this criticism on Alito for purely personal reasons.
And any judge with as long experience on the bench as Alito is bound to have made decisions that several other legal professionals might not agree with, and no nominee would be capable of satisfying all senators on both sides of the aisle.
With a focus on grand jury indictments against top government officers, it makes sense that the president not play political games and instead choose a nominee based only on his or her qualification to be a judge.
It would be unfair to assume that based on Alito’s previous disagreements with his fellow judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals, that he will continue that trend, or that he dissented with the rest for the mere sake of standing out from the rest, as some critics have alleged.
And it would be unreasonable to assume that President Bush could have chosen an equally qualified woman, or liberal, because even today only few federal judges fall into those categories.
As a student at Princeton University, Alito was known to support gay rights and especially the privacy rights of citizens, in a research paper he submitted there. His liberal views may have slightly downshifted since attending Princeton, but his determinism to base court decisions on an intentionalist interpretation of Constitutional law likely remains.