Alito It Is

From FOX News:

Bush Nominates Alito for Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday nominated Samuel Alito (search) to the Supreme Court.

"Judge Alito is one of the most accomplished and respected judges of America and his long career in public service has given him an extraordinary breadth of judicial experience," Bush said in making the announcement. "He's scholarly, fair-minded and principled and these qualities will serve him well on the highest court in the land."

The White House arranged for Alito to go to the Capitol after the announcement. If approved, Alito — considered a conservative federal judge — will replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (search), a moderate.

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So consistently conservative, Alito has been dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But while Scalia is outspoken and is known to badger lawyers, Alito is polite, reserved and even-tempered.

The White House hopes the choice mends a rift in the Republican Party caused by the failed nomination of Miers, a Bush loyalist, and puts his embattled presidency on a path to political recovery.

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Bush administration officials said Alito was virtually certain from the start to get the nod from the moment Miers backed out. The 55-year-old jurist was Bush's favorite choice of the judges in the last set of deliberations but he settled instead on someone outside what he calls the "judicial monastery," the officials said.

Bush believes that Alito has not only the right experience and conservative ideology for the job, but also has a temperament suited to building consensus on the court. A former prosecutor, Alito has experience off the bench that factored into Bush's thinking, the officials said.

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While Alito is expected to win praise from Bush's allies on the right, Democrats have served notice they will fight it. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Sunday that Alito's nomination would "create a lot of problems."

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In the early 1990s, Alito was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems — such as economic constraints, future plans or the husbands' previously expressed opposition — that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion," Alito wrote.

The case ended up at the Supreme Court where the justices, in a 6-3 decision struck down the spousal notification provision of the law. The late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist cited Alito's reasoning in his own dissent.

(emphasis added)