Samuel Alito

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• SOURCE: NPR
  5/22/2023
  

  The Rise of the SCOTUS "Shadow Docket"

  An increasing amount of the court's consequential business is being conducted through emergency orders in response to lower court rulings, without public argument or signed opinions, argues legal scholar Steve Vladek. Although there are reasons for fast action in some cases, the court's public legitimacy is undermined.

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• SOURCE: Bloomberg
  4/1/2023
  

  On the History, Alito's Wrong: Attacks on Justices Nothing New

  by Kevin M. Kruse

  Even if Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas were burned in effigy or impeached, those challenges to their judicial integrity would be very much precedented. 

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• SCOTUS's Stay of Mifepristone Ruling a Win for Abortion Rights, but Shows Dangerous Power of "Shadow Docket"

  Important judicial decisions are increasingly made through the procedural rulings the Court makes on lower-court decisions, without extensive briefings, arguments, or publicity. Law professor Steve Vladek explains why this matters, and why Samuel Alito is mad at him.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/21/2022
  

  Was the Civil War Inevitable?

  by David W. Blight

  As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/24/2022
  

  2005 Diary Entry Shows Justice Alito Told Ted Kennedy He Respected Roe Precedent

  In his pre-confirmation interview with the Senator, Alito claimed he wrote antiabortion legal memos because he wanted to please his bosses in the Reagan administration. This failed to reassure Kennedy, who voted against his nomination and wrote skeptically of the judge's integrity in his diary. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  8/28/2022
  

  Alito's Battle Against Secular Society is Just Getting Started

  "Some baby boomers were permanently shaped by their participation in the countercultural protests and the antiwar activism of the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Others were shaped by their aversion to those movements. Justice Samuel Alito belongs to the latter category."

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  8/9/2022
  

  Alito is Fulfilling Promises to the Supporters to Demolish Church-State Separation

  by Duncan Hosie

  The Justice was elevated to the high court by supporters who imagine the First Amendment supports the pervasive influence of Christianity on public life and who reject the premise of a secular state. He is meeting their highest expectations. 

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• SOURCE: Juan Cole
  7/29/2022
  

  Alito Laments "Disrespect" for Faith – But His Dobbs Ruling Will Push More Americans Away

  by Juan Cole

  "Ironically, even as Alito has managed to impose 20th century Roman Catholic dogma on all Americans, striking down any right to privacy or for women to control their own bodies, he is puzzled as to why anyone would be hostile to his agenda."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  7/20/2022
  

  Originalism is Just Selective History

  by David H. Gans

  "This is a Court that insists it is following history and tradition where they lead, while cherry-picking the history it cares about to reach conservative results."

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• SOURCE: Politico
  6/2/2022
  

  What Alito Got Wrong about the History of Abortion

  by Leslie J. Reagan

  "The logic that Alito uses in the draft opinion leans heavily on history — history that he gets egregiously wrong."

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• 6/5/2022
  

  Discarding Legal Precedent to Control Women's Reproductive Rights is Rooted in Colonial Slavery

  by Clyde W. Ford

  The colonial Virginia lawsuit of Elizabeth Key, who won freedom in 1656, pushed colonial authorities to reverse precedent to ensure that the law would be a tool for maintaining hierarchies of race, gender, and class, and Black women's bodies would be the battleground of those conflicts.

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• 6/5/2022
  

  What Would Madison Think of Originalism? Depends When You Asked Him

  by Don Fraser

  James Madison moved away from a strict constructionist position based on public necessity and acceptance of legislation based in implied powers. Whatever one can say about the originalist legal theory behind the leaked Dobbs opinion, it's not Madisonian. 

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• 5/29/2022
  

  Originalism, History, and Religiosity are the Faults of Alito's Reasoning in Dobbs

  by Robert Spitzer

  Justice Alito wrote in Dobbs that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong from the start.” But that tart conclusion more aptly applies to the draft verdict of the good justice.

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  5/19/2022
  

  Alito's Opinion Shows Roe is Only the Beginning

  by Thomas Zimmer

  The entire idea of substantive due process under the 14th Amendment is called into question by the draft opinion, potentially threatening reproductive rights, civil rights, and sexual freedom in service of a reactionary ideal of patriarchal society. 

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  5/3/2022
  

  Is Alito's Plan to Repeal the 20th Century?

  Alito's invocation of Plessy v. Ferguson as a reason to discard precedent is galling because his opinion would destroy the kind of protection under law that Homer Plessy actually sought. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/4/2022
  

  Abortion Isn't in the Constituiton? Neither are Women

  by Jill Lepore

  "Women are indeed missing from the Constitution. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor."

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• SOURCE: Education News
  5-12-15
  

  Historian Alan Singer says he’s not qualified to be on the Supreme Court and neither are Roberts, Scalia, Alito or Thomas

  That’s because he’s an activist and so are they.