Alito Links & Quotes II

…in light of the smoking gun, I thought it would be worth bumping the most recent Alito link dump (first one here); I’ll add any good stuff I find. (Make sure to explore in the link dump at Prof. B’s place too–many of them are excellent.) I have recent posts challenging the myth of Alito as a moderate here, here, here, and here.

• For those who missed it because I added it late, an invaluable omnibus source at UM, including his opinions and other documents.
• Excerpts from the excellent New Republic cover story on Alito. Again, whether he’s a nice guy is irrelevant to the content of his jurisprudence.
• Very good post by Balkin. I agree that fears of a “Constitution-in-Exile” revolution have always been overblown. The defining feature of Alito is being slavishly pro-business and hostile to other individual rights. He may go further on federalism than O’Connor or Scalia, which is bad, but the New Deal state is not in any danger.
• As a follow-up to Newman!’s post, here’s an excellent analysis of his dissents in 2 employment discrimination cases in which (using highly strained readings of Supreme Court precedents) he tried to prevent discrimination plaintiffs from even getting to a jury. [I should highlight the conclusion: “No, Alito’s not a fire-breather the way Scalia is, but he looks for every available loose joint in the law to try to push it in a more conservative direction — and that’s when he’s bound by Supreme Court precedent.”]
• Sick of fake libertarians reflexively defending every aspect of Alito’s jurisprudence? See Jim Henley on Groody: “But Groody is a fascinating contrast in judicial tendencies, between a judge concerned to keep the scope of the police search power narrow and focused (Michael Chertoff, of all people), who worries that at some point – flexibility becomes breakage, and one whose bedrock concerns run the other way – protecting the searchers rather than the searched.”
• Mahablog on his Casey paternalism.
• More on Alito and civil liberties.
• Joe Biden (Sen-MNBA) is signaling his willingness to roll over and die. I explain why he’s wrong.
• Justin and I agree–hell, if this can happen maybe Alito can be beaten after all!
• This, on the other hand, is scary: “Finally, if Justice Stevens were to retire in the next few years, and be replaced by a staunch conservative, we would have a full scale constitutional revolution on our hands. For then the median Justices would be none other than John Roberts and Samuel Alito.” And, of course, given what we know about Alito it could be worse: the median justices could be Roberts and Scalia.