Contact: Sean McCabe at 703-683-5004 (x 110)
November 14, 2005
Washington, D.C. Today's Washington Times reports that Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito stated in a 1985 memo that he was "particularly proud" of his contributions, as a lawyer working in the Reagan administration's Solicitor General's office, to cases in which the government argued "that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion." Wendy E. Long, counsel to The Judicial Confirmation Network (www.judicialnetwork.com), made the following statement regarding this report:
"Judge Alito's statement in 1985 reflects a legal view that has been widely held among judges, lawyers, and legal scholars from across the political spectrum, who have widely divergent views on the proper abortion policy. That legal view that the Constitution is silent on the question of abortion, and does not mandate either a pro-life or a pro-choice policy, but rather leaves the matter of abortion to be decided by the people's representatives instead of the courts is a view shared by the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the late Justice Byron White (a Democrat and Kennedy appointee), and the late federal Court of Appeals Judge Henry Friendly, among many others.
"Moreover, that Judge Alito holds this view does not tell us how he will rule on specific cases that come before the Court. He has said, for example, that it is not enough to overturn a prior case just because it was wrongly decided.
"For pro-choice extremists and other liberal activists to say that this legal statement by Judge Alito in 1985 somehow disqualifies him from serving as a Supreme Court Justice is absurd. Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer had taken clear public positions to the contrary, and no one argued that those positions should be held against them. The more mainstream, intellectually respectable position in fact is the one that Judge Alito expressed in 1985."
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