Question for Judge Alito: What About One Person One Vote?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/opinion/03tues3.html

Editorial Observer

Question for Judge Alito: What About One Person One Vote?
By ADAM COHEN

When Samuel Alito Jr. applied for a top job in the Reagan Justice Department, he explained what had attracted him to constitutional law as a college student. He was motivated, he said, "in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment." The reapportionment cases that so upset young Mr. Alito were a series of landmark decisions that established a principle that is now a cornerstone of American democracy: one person one vote.
There has been a lot of talk about the abortion views of Judge Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee. But his views on the redistricting cases may be more important. Senator Joseph Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat who will be one of those doing the questioning when confirmation hearings begin next week, said recently that Judge Alito's statements about one person one vote could do more to jeopardize his nomination than his statements about Roe v. Wade.
Rejecting the one-person-one-vote principle is a radical position. If Judge Alito still holds this view today, he could lead the court to accept a very different vision of American democracy, one in which it would be far easier for powerful special interests to get a stranglehold on government.
Even if Judge Alito has changed his position on the reapportionment cases, the fact that he was drawn to constitutional law because of his opposition to those rulings raises serious questions about his views on democracy and equality.<snip>
<snip>Judge Alito will most likely insist at his hearings that he feels bound by Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims. Even if he can be trusted, it will say a great deal about him if he supports one person one vote only because he believes that respect for precedent, or confirmation politics, requires it. Most Americans know, based on their innate sense of justice and the Constitution, why the pre-1960's way of electing legislators was not acceptable then and is not now.

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1. Advocacy Groups Prepare New Ad Campaigns on Alito (Alito's credibility)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/politics/politicsspecial1/03alito.html

"I think people's greatest fear is that Judge Alito would side with big government. He would side with allowing government to intrude on individual personal lives." - - Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice. ( People involved in the liberal coalition includes People for the American Way, the legal group Alliance for Justice, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the N.A.A.C.P., the Sierra Club and abortion rights groups)

Advocacy Groups Prepare New Ad Campaigns on Alito (Alito's credibility)

by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK Published: January 3, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - In the final days before hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., partisans on both sides are pulling out all the stops in an effort to sway public opinion.

Moving beyond Judge Alito's judicial record, a coalition of liberal groups is preparing commercials attacking his integrity and credibility instead, several people involved in the effort said Monday. They spoke only after being granted anonymity because the plans are supposed to be confidential until their formal announcement on Wednesday.

Conservatives, for their part, are capitalizing on ethnic pride to rally Italian-American support for Judge Alito with public events and newspaper advertisements. The efforts are aimed particularly at the Northeastern States, where some moderate Republican senators have expressed doubts about his confirmation.

And in Arkansas, home to two moderate Democratic senators whose votes are considered to be in play, another group, the Judicial Confirmation Network, is running Christmas-themed commercials beginning this week on African-American gospel radio stations. In them, the Rev. Bill Owens, a black pastor, urges support for Judge Alito to protect public displays of Nativity scenes and menorahs, and to uphold the right of schoolgirls to "draw pictures of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for class projects."<snip>