Now that Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s rigidly conservative beliefs from 1985 have surfaced, Alito is doing is best to assure senators he’s not a right-wing ideologue. His defense, however, is not without flaw.
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. sought to distance himself yesterday from staunchly conservative views he expressed 20 years ago, but some liberals and conservatives said they see the comments as the best indication yet of judicial philosophies he would bring to the bench. One liberal group said it will use the remarks in ads opposing Alito’s confirmation. […]
“He said, first of all, it was different then,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told reporters after meeting with Alito. “He said, ‘I was an advocate seeking a job, it was a political job, and that was 1985.”
That may sound vaguely compelling, until the explanation is considered in the broader context. The argument, in a nutshell, is that Alito was simply willing to say what was necessary in order to get the job he wanted at the time. Unfortunately, he’s acknowledging this through the course of another job interview.
Even taken at face value, Alito’s remarks yesterday suggest that he wasn’t actually lying in ’85 — he really was a staunch conservative — but rather was spinning, accentuating the points that he thought would get him ahead. But as Michael Froomkin noted, this isn’t reassuring.
What does that mean? He was lying? Puffing? Being parsimonious with the truth? But we should believe him now because he’s a judge seeking a much better job?
It’s also worth remembering that Alito’s credibility at this point isn’t great.
For example, when under consideration for the federal bench in 1990, Alito pledged to senators that he’d recuse himself from cases involving two financial firms in which he held accounts. He didn’t follow through on his commitment.
Alito, trying to quell conflict-of-interest issues raised by liberal opponents, said he had been “unduly restrictive” in promising in 1990 to recuse himself in cases involving Vanguard Group Inc. and Smith Barney Inc. After the Senate confirmed him as an appellate judge and when he subsequently ruled on routine cases involving the two companies, he said, he acted properly because his connections to the firms did not constitute a conflict of interest under the applicable rules and laws.
Alito had at least $390,000 in Vanguard mutual funds when he ruled in a 2002 case that favored the company. After a party to the suit complained, he stepped aside and another panel of judges reheard the case. Alito also ruled in a 1996 case involving Smith Barney, which was his brokerage firm.
So, in essence, Alito’s pitch to skeptical senators is this: I played up my right-wing bona fides, but only sort of meant it, kind of like the time I promised the Senate to steer clear of the Vanguard and Smith Barney cases. Now please confirm me to the Supreme Court.
We’ll see how well that works out for him.