Alito From NYTimes

[Annie]

I'm flummoxed at this point:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/politics/politicsspecial1/01alito.html?pagewanted=print

The New York Times
November 1, 2005
Man in the News
After a Career of Quiet Focus, Alito Is Leaving the Background
By NEIL A. LEWIS and SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 - One weekend in 1986, two young lawyers working for Samuel A. Alito Jr., then a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department, faced a looming deadline for a legal analysis and realized they would have to work all night to get it done.

"In the legal world, most bosses would say, 'This is what I want on my desk in the morning,' " said John F. Manning, one of the lawyers. "Sam stayed with us. He went out and got pizza and he pulled the all-nighter with us. I've never seen anything like that before or since."

Throughout his life - ever since he resolved his high school indecision between his dream of a career in baseball or a life in law - the self-effacing Judge Alito, President Bush's new choice for the Supreme Court, has made his mark with quiet dedication rather than showy display. He has cloaked his formidable intellect in modesty, an attribute both surprising and endearing to colleagues in high-octane legal circles.

While Judge Alito, 55, has built a reputation for decency, he has also compiled a conservative record that is coming under intense scrutiny from activists on the left and the right who understand his potential for shifting the balance on the bench.

Larry Lustberg, a former federal prosecutor who has known Judge Alito for 22 years, called him "totally capable, brilliant and nice."

But Mr. Lustberg added, "Make no mistake: he will move the court to the right, and this confirmation process is really going to be a question about whether Congress and the country wants to move this court to the right."

As a federal appeals court judge for 15 years, Judge Alito has amassed a more extensive paper record than either John G. Roberts Jr., who sailed through his confirmation as chief justice, or Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, who withdrew after withering attacks on her credentials and conservative bona fides.

Judge Alito's jurisprudence has been methodical, cautious, respectful of precedent and solidly conservative, legal scholars said. In cases involving the great issues of the day - abortion, the death penalty and the separation of church and state - Judge Alito has typically taken the conservative side.

Yet he has not flaunted his political views inside or outside the courthouse. Friends say Judge Alito seems to have inherited a distaste for shows of ideology from his father, an Italian immigrant who became research director for the New Jersey Legislature and had to rigorously avoid partisanship.

Judge Alito won prestigious academic prizes while at Princeton and Yale Law School, where he stood out for his conservative views, which were in the minority, as well as for his civility in engaging ideological opponents.

"The notion that he's an extreme conservative is wrong," said Mark Dwyer, Judge Alito's fellow student at Princeton and roommate at Yale. "Sam is conservative because he's a straightforward believer in judicial restraint - that is, a judge's personal views should not dictate the outcome of the case."

Even in the Reagan Justice Department, where a palpable sense of conservative triumph was in the air, "I never got the sense that he thought about legal issues in an ideological way," said Mr. Manning, now a professor at Harvard Law School.

But Walter F. Murphy, an emeritus professor at Princeton who supervised Judge Alito's undergraduate thesis on the Italian Constitutional Court and has kept up with him in the years since, said his former student believed in ruling according to an "original understanding" of the Constitution.

The phrase is generally used to describe legal theorists, like Justice Antonin Scalia, who believe judges should try to figure out what the Constitution's drafters would have ruled in contemporary cases.

Friends say references to Judge Alito as "Scalito," a name meant to suggest that he is a clone of Justice Scalia, the court's most robust conservative, are off the mark and demeaning.

Like Justice Scalia, Judge Alito is an Italian-American from Trenton, whose jurisprudence is indisputably conservative. But while Justice Scalia is known for his caustic writing and argumentative manner, Judge Alito is described by clerks, lawyers and former schoolmates as a man who takes extraordinary care to be gentle with others and is quick to help a struggling lawyer arguing before his court.

"He's got a powerful intellectual humility, is the way I'd put it," said Clark Lombardi, who clerked for Judge Alito in 1999 and 2000 on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, the judge's current seat.

Judge Alito grew up in the Mercerville section of Hamilton Township, a postwar suburb that came to life as residents abandoned Trenton in the 1950's. The unassuming homes have small front lawns, and like so many of its New Jersey neighbors, the town's outskirts are lined with strip malls.

During the judge's childhood, Mercerville was populated by blue- and white-collar families: state employees, steel and porcelain workers, a mix of ethnic Europeans dominated by Italians, Poles and Hungarians.

The Alito family house on Fenwood Avenue, where Judge Alito's mother still lives, is a brick Cape Cod with a screened porch. An American flag is planted on the front lawn.

The judge's late father, Samuel A. Alito, came to America as a boy from Italy and worked as the research director of a nonpartisan agency that analyzed legislation for state lawmakers. The judge's mother, Rose, who will be 91 in December, worked as principal of the local elementary school.

The small family was close, and Sam Jr. and his sister, Rosemary, who worked as a television reporter and is now a lawyer, got along well, friends say. Ted Fort, 66, the former band director at Steinert High School, remembered Judge Alito as quiet and intensely focused on school and family.

He was a standout student, a valedictorian who served as student council president in his senior year. His yearbook entry lists 10 clubs and extracurricular activities, including band, track, honor society and public speaking. Friends said he also loved baseball and dreamed of being a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

"He was very respected by his peers and his teachers," Mr. Fort remembered. "He was a very bright boy, very quiet and extremely polite."

As for Judge Alito's trumpet skills, Mr. Fort said, "he certainly was no virtuoso."

The debate team experience was a formative one for him, said Victor R. McDonald, who attended grades 7 to 12 with Judge Alito. Mr. McDonald described him as a persuasive public speaker and debater. "He wasn't an in-your-face confrontational person," he said. "It was just well-reasoned, solid argument."

But his friend had a mischievous streak, too, Mr. McDonald remembered: "He enjoyed busting my chops."

Judge Alito attended Princeton just as it was opening its doors to women, but classmates said he was not among those voicing opposition. Professor Murphy said he had predicted that the young Sam Alito would become a judge.

"He thought in judicial opinions even then," Professor Murphy said, adding that it was "not as clear then as now" that Judge Alito was a staunch conservative.

Mr. Dwyer said they both shunned the selective eating clubs that were a center of social life at Princeton. Instead, they joined Stevenson Hall, which was open to all students.

"Sam was never into cocktail parties or kissing up to important people," Mr. Dwyer said. "Sam was a regular guy. He made it on his smarts."

Mr. Dwyer said he was not surprised when his friend joined the R.O.T.C. at Princeton after he learned his number in the draft lottery in his sophomore year. "We were all worried about the draft, and Sam's number was really low - 25, give or take," Mr. Dwyer said. "Being in R.O.T.C. was a way to be an officer, and that would seem to be better than being an enlisted man."

With campuses nationwide embroiled in Vietnam War protests, Princeton decided in 1970 to phase out the R.O.T.C., allowing those already enrolled to finish up. When Judge Alito graduated in 1972, he was just one of 12 R.O.T.C. members in the class.

He was commissioned as an Army second lieutenant at graduation, but went to law school and served on active duty for just three months in 1975, though he remained in the Army Reserve until 1980.

At Yale Law School, where he was in the class behind Justice Clarence Thomas, Judge Alito was widely regarded as one of the smartest students, said Peter Goldberger, a classmate. Mr. Goldberger, who describes himself as a staunch liberal, said it was always enjoyable to get into a discussion with the young Mr. Alito.

"We fundamentally disagreed over just about everything," he said, "but it led to cheerful jousting."

Mr. Goldberger, who has also argued dozens of criminal appeals before Judge Alito, said his style on the bench - as the member of a three-judge panel who talks the least but asks the most perceptive questions - recalled their Yale days.

"At Yale, he wasn't someone who spoke frequently in class," Mr. Goldberger said, "but when he did it was something you wished you had said. It's the same way on the bench. He's always asking the right question."

Anthony T. Kronman, a Yale classmate who went on to become dean of the law school from 1994 to 2004, said Judge Alito stood apart from many classmates who wanted to be social reformers and saw the law as an instrument of change.

"He appreciated the traditions," Mr. Kronman said. "He seemed to take real pleasure in the intricacies of the law."'

Then, as later, he said, Judge Alito did not wear his political leanings conspicuously. "If you asked me the day we graduated whether Sam was a Republican or Democrat," he said, "I couldn't have told you."

After Yale, Mr. Alito clerked for a Trenton law firm and then for an appellate judge, Leonard I. Garth of the Third Circuit. He then worked for four years in New Jersey as an assistant United States attorney before departing in 1981 for a seven-year stint in the Justice Department. First, as assistant to the solicitor general, he argued several cases before the Supreme Court involving criminal, communications and labor law.

While some talented young lawyers reveled in the conservative camaraderie of the Justice Department under Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Mr. Alito was not among them.

"Nobody tagged Sam as a fire-breathing conservative," said Mark Levy, a self-described Clinton Democrat who worked with him there. "He had friends across every divide."

Charles J. Cooper, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, recruited him to become a deputy assistant attorney general.

Mr. Cooper, who has remained friendly with Mr. Alito, said: "The power of his intellect is the most striking thing about him. I'd imagine there are about six lawyers in the country who are John Roberts's equal, and Sam is one of them."

Mr. Cooper said the Office of Legal Counsel was a "pressure cooker" in those days, handling the fallout from the Iran-Contra affair, among other issues. "But I never saw him lose his temper or raise his voice," he said.

In 1987, Mr. Alito returned to New Jersey as United States attorney, where in three years he handled cases involving organized crime, child pornography and even terrorism, in a case against a member of the Japanese Red Army who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb a Navy recruiting center.

While in that job, Mr. Alito met and married the librarian in the United States attorney's office, Martha-Ann Bomgardner. They have a son, Phillip, now in college, and a daughter, Laura, in high school.

Since the first President Bush appointed him to the Third Circuit in 1990, Judge Alito's unaffected, low-key style has remained unchanged. Katherine Huang, a Los Angeles lawyer who was a law clerk to Judge Alito in 2000, said: "He's just a regular, approachable guy. He's a truly gentle sort."

Former clerks say Judge Alito would sometimes don baseball pants before rushing out the door to coach his son's Essex County Little League team. "He didn't care who saw him dressed that way," said Mr. Lombardi, the former clerk, now a law professor at the University of Washington.

Another former clerk, Jeffrey N. Wasserstein, once went to watch Judge Alito coach a game. "He had just the right temperament as a Little League coach," Mr. Wasserstein said, "enthusiastic in the right way and very gentle in his teaching. Much like he was with his young law clerks."

Friends say that Judge Alito, a lifelong Phillies fan, once used the court's spring recess to attend the team's fantasy camp at spring training, where fans can play a little baseball with the pros.

"I got a report," said Judge Edward R. Becker, a veteran judge on the Third Circuit. "Good field, no hit. He played second base."

Judge Alito owns the newest, most impressive house on a modest block in West Caldwell, N.J. It sits atop a hill and stands out from the surrounding jumble of ranch-style homes with brick faces.

A neighbor, Frederick J. Urban, said he occasionally ran into Judge Alito jogging in a nearby park. But he said he more often saw Mrs. Alito walking the family dog, a springer spaniel named Zeus.

The family attends mass at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament several miles away in Roseland, and Mrs. Alito teaches religious education classes there.

The Alitos' largest social circle may be the other parents of their daughter's swimming teammates. Laura Alito, a senior at James Caldwell High School, is team captain and holds the school record in 100-meter butterfly.

Whatever his fate in the nomination process, Judge Alito has already achieved an unusual kind of renown at the T. M. Ward coffee shop near the federal courthouse in Newark, where a popular blend is called "Bold Justice - the Judge Alito blend."

The owner, Jeffrey Sommer, described the blend of Java, New Guinea and other coffees as "strong in the cup with some sweetness and a winey aftertaste." Mr. Sommer said the judge stops by for a cup most days, and sales "really took off" in recent months.

"Customers usually just say, 'Give me an Alito,' " Mr. Sommer said.