Nominee Plays Down
Remarks on
Quotas and Abortion
By SHERYL GAY
STOLBERG and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
NYTimes on the Web,
November 16, 2005
WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Seeking
to tamp down a political uproar over a 1985 document in which he denounced
racial quotas and said the Constitution did not protect the right to abortion,
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. told senators on Tuesday that the sentiments were
simply the views of "an advocate seeking a job."
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Doug Mills/The New York Times
Judge
Samuel A. Alito Jr., left, the Supreme Court nominee, with Senator
Edward M. Kennedy Tuesday |
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The document, an application for a
promotion within the Reagan administration, could complicate Judge Alito's
nomination for the Supreme Court, opening him up to questions during his
confirmation hearings about his personal views on the politically sensitive
issues of abortion and civil rights. Other nominees have been able to
dodge such questions, but both Republicans and Democrats said Tuesday that Judge
Alito might be unable to do so.
The application's release by the White House on Monday came as liberal advocacy
groups were preparing a major television campaign against the Alito nomination.
By Tuesday, the groups were already at work on an advertisement that will use
the application against Judge Alito, said Ralph G. Neas, president of the
liberal advocacy organization, People for the American Way.
"Like Robert Bork in 1987," Mr. Neas said, "his own words are the best evidence
of how and when he embraced the agenda of the radical right."
A coalition of liberal organizations, including Mr. Neas's group, is set to meet
Thursday with the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, to discuss the
nomination -- the first time the groups and Mr. Reid have met to talk about
Judge Alito.
While the groups plotted strategy, the nominee tried to play down the importance
of the 1985 job application as he met with senators, including two prominent
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee.
"He said first of all it was different then," said one of the two, Senator
Dianne Feinstein of California. "He said, 'I was an advocate seeking a
job, it was a political job and that was 1985. I'm now a judge. I've been
on the circuit court for 15 years, and it's very different. I'm not an
advocate; I don't give heed to my personal views. What I do is interpret
the law.' "
Mrs. Feinstein said she thought the judge was being "very sincere" and described
him as "clearly well-steeped in the law."
The only woman on the judiciary panel, Mrs. Feinstein has said that she feels a
special obligation to protect the right to abortion, and that she would not vote
to confirm a Supreme Court candidate if she believed the nominee would overturn
Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision. She made
similar statements about Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and then voted
against his confirmation, partly over the abortion issue.
A second committee Democrat, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, sounded
skeptical of Judge Alito's assurance that the 1985 document should not be given
great weight because it was an application for a political job. "And so I
asked him, 'Why shouldn't we consider the answers that you're giving today an
application for another job?' " Mr. Kennedy said.
He added: "He had indicated that he is an older person that has learned
more, that he thinks he is a wiser person, that he has got a better grasp and
understanding of constitutional rights and liberties."
Whether Democrats have an appetite to block the nomination by filibuster is
unclear. A number of Senate Democrats, as well as leading Republicans,
have said a filibuster is unlikely, but at least one influential conservative
organizer, Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation, said on
Tuesday that he was not convinced.
"I do not believe all the happy talk that the Republicans have been putting out
that, 'Oh, the meetings are going so well and everything is going great and
there won't be a filibuster' and all of this," Mr. Weyrich said in an interview.
In the 1985 application, Judge Alito said he was "particularly proud" of his
work on cases in which the Reagan White House had argued "that racial and ethnic
quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right
to abortion."
He said he was motivated to study constitutional law in part because of his
disagreements with the Warren Court, which during the 1950's and 1960's issued
rulings desegregating schools and expanding voting rights.
Judge Alito also mentioned membership in the Federalist Society, the
conservative legal group, and in another group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton,
founded in 1972 to oppose coeducation. On Tuesday, liberal groups
dispatched researchers to look into the alumni organization and Judge Alito's
role in it.
The group published a magazine, Prospect, and copies on file at the university
library include articles that criticized Princeton for using student health fees
to pay for abortions, for tolerating homosexuality and for supporting
affirmative action policies.
The magazine also complained about Princeton officials for pressing the
university's all-male student "eating clubs" to admit women.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a commentator for Fox News and a Princeton classmate of
Judge Alito's who served on the organization's advisory board, said he did not
recall his playing an active role in the group.
But a former student, Sally Frank, who filed a 1979 lawsuit to open the clubs to
women and became a target of attacks by the magazine, said she was alarmed that
Judge Alito "took credit" for the group.
Richard Lezin Jones contributed reporting for this article.
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