Alito is a leader of the radical right legal movement to prevent the federal government from enforcing civil rights protections and otherwise acting on behalf of the common good.
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Alito’s record shows an alarming trend toward standing against protections for workers.
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Alito wants government to be able to interfere in personal decisions on reproductive rights.
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In one case that came before Alito, an African American had been convicted of felony murder and sentenced to death by an all-white jury from which black jurors had been impermissibly struck. Alito cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in a 2-1 ruling rejecting the defendant’s claims. The full Third Circuit reversed Alito’s ruling, and the majority specifically criticized him for having compared statistical evidence about the prosecution’s exclusion of blacks from juries in capital cases to an explanation of why a disproportionate number of recent U.S. Presidents have been left-handed. According to the majority, “[t]o suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants.”
The Wikipedia entry on the judge nicknamed "Scalito" is here. A background article at Law.com is here. These are the concerns of Think Progress, while ACS has valuable background here. And here's Marquette law professor Scott Moss:
"Judge Alito is exactly the far-right nominee that the Republican Party's reactionary wing demanded after it 'Borked' Harriet Miers. Judge Alito is to the right of the existing Supreme Court on abortion, and he's to the right of all nine justices, even Scalia and Thomas, in advocating an extremely high burden of proof for employment discrimination cases."
From a criminal defense standpoint, this is the kind of review that makes lawyers cringe:
Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer who has known Alito since 1981 and tried cases before him on the Third Circuit, describes him as "an activist conservatist judge" who is tough on crime and narrowly construes prisoners' and criminals' rights. "He's very prosecutorial from the bench. He has looked to be creative in his conservatism, which is, I think, as much a Rehnquist as a Scalia trait," Lustberg says.
