Reflections on Fifth Day of Alito Hearings

I watched more of and got more from the fifth day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court than of the previous four.

The first four days were the predictable sham dance performed for various constituencies and political reasons. What we heard yesterday was more authentic and less politically-charged. As a consequence, it better evoked not only Alito's character and biography, but his qualifications.

Back when Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s hagiographic account of the Kennedy Administration, A Thousand Days, was published, he and his book were the subject of a TIME magazine cover story. I remember that, though there was less skepticism about the purportedly saintly-attributes of JFK in the period immediately following his assassination, there were nonetheless those who questioned the appropriateness of what was perceived as hero-worship-as-biography.

Someone--forty-one years later, I can't remember who--was quoted as saying that if they had to choose between a biography that extolled a person and one that tore that person down, they'd choose the former. The point being that admirers, whatever faults their accounts might have, take the time to more clearly know the person about whom they write and try to understand their motives and beliefs. It then becomes the obligation of an informed reader to question and consider other perspectives.

I bring this up because in listening to Alito's former clerks, supervisors, and fellow jurists yesterday, we got a different view of him. It was neither the portrait of the fascist-in-robes painted by some committee Democrats nor the judge-in-white-robes presented by some Republicans. One was forced to ask, "What sort of person evokes this kind of loyalty and appreciation?" Not a perfect one, to be sure. But also not the monster that those who cherry-pick his record say he is.

I firmly believe that the ideology of judicial nominees is and ought to be decided when we cast our votes on the second Tuesday of November every Leap Year. It isn't headline news that presidents nominate judges who are broadly sympathetic to their views of the Constitution and of the law to the courts. Presidents who deliberately nominated persons in overt disagreement with their views of the Constitution and the law would be breaking faith with the voters who elected them.

Generally speaking, it seems to me that unless some previously unknown affinity for unconstitutional notions, an allegiance to an ideology of hate, or ethical problems are surfaced, judicial nominees, irrespective of party or ideological allegiance, ought to be confirmed. I think that Alito will be, though by a narrower margin than John Roberts enjoyed.