Criticism continues as Alito hearings near
- Dec 15, 2005 -
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito will finally get his hearing in the Senate beginning Jan. 9. Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates and other liberals continue to criticize or question Alito, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he will use a controversial strategy, if necessary, to end a filibuster.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearings on Alito’s nomination likely will be contentious. Pro-choice senators are expected to pepper the nominee with numerous questions on the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion legalizing abortion and on its status as a precedent.
Some senators criticized Alito after the Nov. 30 release of a 20-year-old memorandum in which he outlined a strategy to reverse the Roe ruling. The memo, which was written when Alito worked for the solicitor general in the Reagan Justice Department, urged an approach that avoided a “frontal assault” on Roe but might “advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its” impact.
The release of Alito’s memo followed by barely two weeks the news he had said in a 1985 application for an assistant attorney general’s position he was proud of his contributions at the Justice Department in cases in which the federal government has contended “the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”
Sen. Charles Schumer, D.-N.Y., a leading defender of abortion rights, said in a written statement, “These latest revelations cast serious doubt on whether Judge Alito can be at all objective on the right to privacy and a woman’s right to choose.”
When Frist was asked on “Fox News Sunday” Dec. 11 if he would seek to “impose the nuclear option” if Democrats tried to filibuster Alito, the Tennessee Republican said, “The answer is yes.”
Frist said he thinks “it would be unconscionable, I think it would be wrong, I think it would be against the intent of the founding fathers and our Constitution to deny Sam Alito an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
Under Senate rules, 60 votes are required to end a filibuster, a delaying tactic that prevents a floor vote. If Frist chooses the “nuclear option,” also known as the “constitutional option,” he would call for a vote declaring only 51 votes are needed to end filibusters of nominees.
Alito has served the last 15 years as a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
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