Confirm Alito

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“After hearing Samuel Alito testify this week, this editorial board's assessment is that the appellate judge has the intellectual breadth and legal depth to sit on the Supreme Court. ... First, his embrace of judicial precedent was persuasive enough to conclude he wouldn't rush to overturn Roe vs. Wade. ... Second, he allayed fears he wholly prefers presidential power. ... Third, his objections to the ‘one man, one vote’ doctrine appeared mostly technical.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Yes, Judge Alito should be confirmed by the Senate. He does have sufficient intellectual breadth and legal depth, as DMN says. President Bush is entitled to nominate candidates who share his conservative viewpoint. All that said, the DMN editorial board is mistaken if they believe any fears were allayed by his testimony.

The danger is not in the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade. It's in the Supreme Court hollowing out a woman's right to control her own body. The Supreme Court has already agreed that abortion can be regulated, but not banned outright. Judge Alito, and probably a majority of the Court now, has never seen a regulation he didn't like. Parental notification laws, spousal notification laws, so-called informed consent laws, denial of federal funding to institutions who perform abortions, etc., all will soon make abortion as unobtainable as if it were outlawed altogether. Like the Jim Crow laws in the old South that didn't forbid blacks from voting, but made it all but impossible, expect abortion regulations to sprout a forest of modern day equivalents of literacy tests, poll taxes, and other voter registration restrictions. And expect Judge Alito to find that all such restrictions pass Constitutional muster, without ever having to overturn Roe v Wade.

Second, Judge Alito's reassuring words that not even the President is above the law mean nothing if Judge Alito shares President Bush's belief that current law allows the President to ignore Constitutional rights in his pursuit of the war on terror. Like President Nixon before, President Bush and Judge Alito act as if they subscribe to the belief that “when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” By definition.

Finally, the “one man, one vote” doctrine is an important brick in the wall raised against those same Jim Crow voter discrimination laws that earlier Supreme Courts found no objections to. That Judge Alito is now interested in chipping away at that wall with technical objections bodes ill for this most important of all rights -- the right to vote.

Yes, Judge Alito deserves confirmation because he is the President's nominee and he is qualified, but expect his service on the Supreme Court to be a time when Americans’ civil liberties are eroded. That’s a fear these hearings did nothing to allay.