January 2006

Judge Alito is now Justice Alito, confirmed in the Senate today by a vote of 58-42. With Alito now presumably taking up a position on the Court’s right flank, many court watchers believe Justice Kennedy will be the new swing vote. Some Democrats hastily mounted a sloppy filibuster effort yesterday, but cloture ended that effort by a vote of 72-25. As Prof. Rick Hasen writes, “Thanks to Sen. Kerry, Democrats have two losses rather than one in a 24-hour period.” A few bits of trivia:

• Justice Alito’s confirmation ends Justice Breyer’s eleven-year run as the junior Justice on the Court, second only—by a hair—to Justice Story.
• The Senate’s confirmation actually decreased the number of sitting Justices, because Justice O’Connor’s resignation became effective on confirmation. For the short period between confirmation and Alito’s judicial oath, we had only eight officially sitting Justices.
• Justice McKinley was the first Justice to hold Alito’s seat, confirmed in 1837. Alito is the eleventh Justice to hold the seat.

A beautifully-crafted fan video [embedded .mov] for Grandaddy’s Jed’s Other Poem, programmed in Applesoft II on a 1979 Apple ][+ with 48K of RAM. Awesome. In not so good news, the band brokeup today.

Some Cure-ish indie rock from Nemo:

• Metropolitan
• Northern Light

The Senate hearing on Judge Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court begins in about an hour, so I thought a quick round-up of some relevant material on Alito was called for. I did a round-up on Alito just after he was nominated, but in the last two-months an enormous volume has been written about the judge.

• Both the New York Times and the Washington Post have comprehensive coverage of the nomination. The Times will have live streaming video and David D. Kirkpatrick will be liveblogging the hearing. Similarly, the Post will be liveblogging at its Campaign for the Court blog.
• C-SPAN has video coverage of the hearing, as well as the video of several other related programs on Alito.
• SCOTUSblog will be liveblogging the hearing, and I expect them to provide the most insight of any of the livebloggers.
• The folks at Law Librarian Blog has a handy list of document archives, including compilations, analyses of judicial opinions, and briefing books. They also have a round-up of coverage on the Law Professor Blogs Network, including a significant number of posts on Alito and federal sentencing law from Doug Berman.
• The Truth Laid Bear monitors blog activity on Alito, and you can search for more on Technorati.
• For the point-counterpoint on the most controversial issues to be addressed at the hearing, compare the recent New York Times editorial and the response from Professor Bainbridge.

I expect the hearings to be relatively heated, especially given the current political climate. Normally, I would expect the most controversial issue to be abortion, but this time around, I expect that judicial review of executive power to be a very hot topic. Interestingly, the Senate will hear from seven of Judge Alito’s current and former colleagues on the Third Circuit. The testimony of sitting federal judges at a confirmation hearing is unusual, to say the least, and to hear from seven of them is probably unprecedented.