Patrick Leahy: “Judge Alito missed opportunities during the hearings on a number of issues. I am left with a deep and abiding concern…”

“Judge Alito missed opportunities during the hearings on a number of issues. I am left with a deep and abiding concern about Judge Alito's understanding of the role of the courts and their responsibility to protect the constitutional rights of individuals, especially the less powerful and especially where the political system has failed to do so. Despite Judge Alito's attempts to retreat from several of the more outrageous statements in his 1985 job application for a political position in Edwin Meese's Justice Department, his testimony at the hearing has done little to dispel my concerns. The consequences for all Americans of Judge Alito putting the beliefs he expressed in that job application into practice on the Supreme Court are too great. In his job application, Samuel Alito wrote, as a 35-year-old, practicing lawyer, that: In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the area[] of . . . reapportionment. This was a startling statement to make in 1985, just two decades ago. He was 35 years old and had been practicing law for almost a decade when he wrote that statement about his disagreement with Warren Court decisions on reapportionment.…”