I'm sure committee Dems and ordinary Americans will be interested in hearing Alito's explanation of his thinking regarding Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit, which struck a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands, writing: "The plaintiffs failed to show even roughly how many of the women in this small group would actually be adversely affected..."

The Supreme Court opposed Alito's view: "For the great many women who are victims of abuse inflicted by their husbands, or whose children are the victims of such abuse, a spousal notice requirement enables the husband to wield an effective veto over his wife's decision."

I like the invocation of "ordinary Americans"...as opposed to what? I'm sure the pro-choice organizations will mount a major offensive on Alito, but they tried to do that to Roberts as well and it wasn't terribly effective. The difficulty, of course, is that an appeals court judge must follow precedent. On the one hand, you have his dissent in Planned Parenthood v Casey. On the other hand, you have his vote in Planned Parenthood v Farmer, which has gotten far less attention because it hasn't gone to the Supreme Court. In that case, Alito concurred in a ruling striking down New Jersey's ban on partial birth abortions. So does that make him anti-abortion or pro-abortion? Neither, so far as we know. In both cases, he attempted to apply precedent.

I'd like to define my use of the term "ordinary Americans" as being those who think that it is not our government's place to tell a woman what to do in such situations, one way or the other. I haven't done any surveys lately though Ed, so you got me there!

The case I'm hearing a lot on is the one where he supposedly wrote strip searching 10 year olds w/out parental consent was OK. I realize that's probably a (gross) distortion that's being passed around, but I haven't been able to find a good description of 1) the case, 2) the opinion he wrote, and 3) whether the SC agreed/disagreed on appeal (if there was one). Can someone here who has more information on the case explain it to a non-legal person what it was really all about.

Hanspeter...here is the opinion in the case you requested. The case involved the police serving a warrant on a house where the warrant was against the husband, and the police decidign to strip search the wife and daughter while they were there. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court, 6-3 I believe, thus disagreeing with his dissent.

Click this link for a ton of surveys and relevant links showing that "ordinary Americans" in all demographics highly favor spousal notification laws.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Alito's dissent or not, it would certainly be unfair to characterize it as crazy-right-wing; there's no way 65% of ordinary Americans are crazy-right-wing.

there's no way 65% of ordinary Americans are crazy-right-wing.

That's not what the 5.5 billion non-Americans on the planet believe. :-)

greg

The strip-search/warrant dissent by Alito was fairly disturbing to me. The warrant itself gave permission to search "John Doe." The warrant application had requested permission to search "John Doe" and everyone else on the premises.

The warrant application was apparently attached to the warrant and was even referenced in a couple of places in the warrant. But, the part of the warrant describing who was to be searched did not reference the application.

The majority said that the officer wasn't allowed to search the girl in the absence of a warrant and the warrant didn't grant permission for such a search. Alito, on the other hand, wanted to look beyond the face of the warrant to divine the intent of the magistrate who issued the warrant. Alito was apparently reasoning that the magistrate "really meant to include everyone else." Never mind what the warrant actually said. This is incongruous for someone who is supposedly a "strict constructionist." If he's willing to reach that far beyond something as simple as a warrant, what kind of tricks will he be willing to play with the Constitution?

In fairness, however, this is the one and only opinion of his that I've read. Maybe it's an aberration.

Greg: fair enough. :-D

Nonetheless, from Julian Sanchez: The disagreement here isn't over whether carrying out unauthorized strips searches as such violates the Fourth Amendment—if a judge thought that were permitted, it would surely be a dealbreaker. Instead, the opinions reveal a dispute over whether the officers had a good-faith belief that their request to search all occupants at the premises had been incorporated into the warrant. On the basis of my skim, I'm inclined to prefer the majority's take, but Alito's dissent isn't as awful or crazy as the precis above would suggest.

http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/10/wow_a_nominee_w.shtml