Voting Cases Could Shape Debate Over Alito (how Alito is just like Bork)

By Jess Bravin
Wall Street Journal
Monday, Nov. 21, 2005



In his 1985 job application for the Reagan Justice Department, Samuel Alito asserted "disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause and reapportionment." The first two areas -- where a liberal Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren imposed rules to deter police misconduct and struck down state-directed prayers -- are familiar targets of conservatives.

But reapportionment is a chapter of Warren Court jurisprudence rarely disputed since the 1960s, when Southern states fought decisions that effectively ended rules that had diluted the voting power of African-Americans. Now legal scholars are puzzling over what Judge Alito, President Bush's choice to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, meant in disagreeing with cases that enforced the doctrine of "one person, one vote" as the basic structure for American elections.

"A constitutional issue is never settled until the losers acquiesce, and to this day there's been no acquiescence on Miranda," the 1966 opinion requiring police to warn suspects of their constitutional rights, says Lucas Powe, a University of Texas law professor and author of "The Warren Court and American Politics." Likewise, polls suggest most Americans still disapprove of the 1962 opinion that ended recitation in public schools of a prayer drafted by New York state officials. But the reapportionment cases "became settled by the end of the decade," Mr. Powe says, and criticism of them in 1985 is "absolutely amazing."

The last Supreme Court nominee who publicly expressed opposition to the reapportionment cases was rejected by the Senate. During confirmation hearings in 1987, Robert Bork told Sen. Edward Kennedy that "one man, one vote ... does not come out of anything in the Constitution" -- a direct challenge to the Massachusetts Democrat, whose brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, first used the phrase in a 1963 Supreme Court argument.



http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB113252961872202600.html

But even so... I'll bet Bush and Co. can't wait till they start so that all attention is diverted on Alito and off of Iraq, polls, the leak, etc....

Judge Robert Bork.

This guy has very similar radical views. He should be filibustered.

Alito is more than likely going to be filibustered.It is clear he is a danger to our court system.