http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/politics/13343330.htm
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is mounting an aggressive effort to counter a Knight Ridder story that described Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a committed judicial conservative.
The administration's response - delivered separately Tuesday by the White House and the Justice Department - reflects its determination to defend Alito and its sensitivity to the "conservative" label for him.
The attack came after Senate Democrats circulated Knight Ridder's assessment of Alito's judicial record for possible use against him at his confirmation hearings next month.
The 2,500-word Knight Ridder analysis, based on 311 opinions by Alito during his service on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded that he "has worked quietly but resolutely" to advance his conservative philosophy on a host of legal issues.
"Although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business," reporters Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz wrote.
The reporters also concluded that Alito "rarely supports individual rights," shows "a strong deference to police authority" and is extremely skeptical about claims of racial discrimination. Henderson covers the Supreme Court for Knight Ridder. Mintz, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder paper, worked on the Alito project during a stint in Washington.
Administration officials said the story unfairly cast the Supreme Court nominee as a conservative ideologue.
"His 15-year record on the 3rd Circuit shows him to be a mainstream, fair, thorough judge," Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand said in a C-SPAN interview devoted to her critique of the Knight Ridder analysis.
Brand, whose duties include shepherding judicial nominations through the Senate, rejected the conservative label for Alito.
"The term conservative means different things to different people. A judge is supposed to apply the law, not make it," she said.
John Nowacki, senior counsel in the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, also objected to the Knight Ridder analysis. In an e-mail to Henderson, Nowacki criticized attempts to discern a judicial philosophy by looking for trends in a judge's record.
"This outcome-based analysis is inapplicable and unfair to judges ... A judge's work cannot be divorced from the facts of particular cases," Nowacki wrote.
The White House produced an opinion article defending Alito against the Knight Ridder analysis by lawyer Jeffrey Wasserstein, a Democrat who says he supported John Kerry in the last presidential election. Wasserstein, a former Alito clerk, said he was unaware of Alito's political leanings when he worked for the judge in 1997-98.
"It was my experience that Judge Alito was (and is) capable of setting aside any personal biases he may have when he judges," Wasserstein wrote.
But some of Alito's allies say he should embrace the conservative label because it fits.
"The Department of Justice statement is fatuous. If you can't tell by looking at his opinions what kind of philosophy he would carry to the Supreme Court, how would you know to nominate him?" said Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar and an Alito supporter. "A judge has a personal view of what the Constitution means."
Separately, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, challenged the Knight Ridder analysis in a letter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, a Knight Ridder paper that printed the article. Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained that the article misrepresented Alito's record in siding with employment-discrimination plaintiffs in only four of 18 cases.
Cornyn said a 2003 study showed that overall, federal appellate judges side with plaintiffs in such cases only 13 percent of the time, so Alito's four in 18 record, or 22 percent, shows him "actually more favorable to such plaintiffs than his fellow jurists."
The response to the Knight Ridder analysis was the latest in a series of administration efforts to counter any suggestion that Alito would be a conservative activist on the Supreme Court.
Administration officials scrambled last week to counter speculation that Alito would seek to ban abortions after the release of a 1985 memo he wrote in which he outlined a long-term strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortions legal nationwide.
At the suggestion of White House officials, Alito met with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to explain that the 1985 memo should not be taken to mean that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade as a member of the Supreme Court.
The White House and other Alito allies also downplayed the significance of a letter that Alito wrote later in 1985 expressing the opinion that "the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion." At the time, Alito was seeking a promotion in the anti-abortion Reagan administration.
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is mounting an aggressive effort to counter a Knight Ridder story that described Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as a committed judicial conservative.
The administration's response - delivered separately Tuesday by the White House and the Justice Department - reflects its determination to defend Alito and its sensitivity to the "conservative" label for him.
The attack came after Senate Democrats circulated Knight Ridder's assessment of Alito's judicial record for possible use against him at his confirmation hearings next month.
The 2,500-word Knight Ridder analysis, based on 311 opinions by Alito during his service on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, concluded that he "has worked quietly but resolutely" to advance his conservative philosophy on a host of legal issues.
"Although Alito's opinions are rarely written with obvious ideology, he's seldom sided with a criminal defendant, a foreign national facing deportation, an employee alleging discrimination or consumers suing big business," reporters Stephen Henderson and Howard Mintz wrote.
The reporters also concluded that Alito "rarely supports individual rights," shows "a strong deference to police authority" and is extremely skeptical about claims of racial discrimination. Henderson covers the Supreme Court for Knight Ridder. Mintz, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, a Knight Ridder paper, worked on the Alito project during a stint in Washington.
Administration officials said the story unfairly cast the Supreme Court nominee as a conservative ideologue.
"His 15-year record on the 3rd Circuit shows him to be a mainstream, fair, thorough judge," Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand said in a C-SPAN interview devoted to her critique of the Knight Ridder analysis.
Brand, whose duties include shepherding judicial nominations through the Senate, rejected the conservative label for Alito.
"The term conservative means different things to different people. A judge is supposed to apply the law, not make it," she said.
John Nowacki, senior counsel in the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs, also objected to the Knight Ridder analysis. In an e-mail to Henderson, Nowacki criticized attempts to discern a judicial philosophy by looking for trends in a judge's record.
"This outcome-based analysis is inapplicable and unfair to judges ... A judge's work cannot be divorced from the facts of particular cases," Nowacki wrote.
The White House produced an opinion article defending Alito against the Knight Ridder analysis by lawyer Jeffrey Wasserstein, a Democrat who says he supported John Kerry in the last presidential election. Wasserstein, a former Alito clerk, said he was unaware of Alito's political leanings when he worked for the judge in 1997-98.
"It was my experience that Judge Alito was (and is) capable of setting aside any personal biases he may have when he judges," Wasserstein wrote.
But some of Alito's allies say he should embrace the conservative label because it fits.
"The Department of Justice statement is fatuous. If you can't tell by looking at his opinions what kind of philosophy he would carry to the Supreme Court, how would you know to nominate him?" said Bruce Fein, a conservative legal scholar and an Alito supporter. "A judge has a personal view of what the Constitution means."
Separately, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, challenged the Knight Ridder analysis in a letter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, a Knight Ridder paper that printed the article. Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, complained that the article misrepresented Alito's record in siding with employment-discrimination plaintiffs in only four of 18 cases.
Cornyn said a 2003 study showed that overall, federal appellate judges side with plaintiffs in such cases only 13 percent of the time, so Alito's four in 18 record, or 22 percent, shows him "actually more favorable to such plaintiffs than his fellow jurists."
The response to the Knight Ridder analysis was the latest in a series of administration efforts to counter any suggestion that Alito would be a conservative activist on the Supreme Court.
Administration officials scrambled last week to counter speculation that Alito would seek to ban abortions after the release of a 1985 memo he wrote in which he outlined a long-term strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortions legal nationwide.
At the suggestion of White House officials, Alito met with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to explain that the 1985 memo should not be taken to mean that he would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade as a member of the Supreme Court.
The White House and other Alito allies also downplayed the significance of a letter that Alito wrote later in 1985 expressing the opinion that "the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion." At the time, Alito was seeking a promotion in the anti-abortion Reagan administration.
