In an office two doors away from Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Samuel A. Alito Jr. found himself at the heart of the
Reagan revolution. He was a 35-year-old deputy assistant attorney general and it
was 1985. He was working 12- to 14-hour days in the Office of Legal Counsel in a
period of what colleagues describe as extraordinary intellectual ferment that
marked them for life.
It was a time of re-examination of basic principles. Mr. Meese was focused on
reorienting the law toward a more conservative interpretation of the
Constitution. The office, which advises the attorney general, was fired with
zeal. But Mr. Alito, after eight years as a civil servant, brought something
else, friends say: a respect for stability and continuity in the law, as well as
deep admiration for President Ronald Reagan's emphasis on family, neighborhood and
work.
Mr. Alito, the analytical, circumspect son of an analytical, circumspect
father, who rose to become a federal appeals court judge and is now President
Bush's nominee to become the next justice of the Supreme Court, is remembered
from those days in the Office of Legal Counsel for his superior research powers,
his probing brain, his wrestling with the questions and his disinclination to
see any issue as a slam dunk.
It remains to be seen what kind of justice Judge Alito might turn out to be,
if he gets the chance: whether, for instance, he is the upper-case conservative
that the right may hope for and many on the left fear. An examination of several
chapters in his life suggests he is conservative by temperament, upbringing and
experience - conditions that appear to have shaped his approach to life and his
work more than any narrow ideological niche.
"There are people in Washington who become a kind of tight political circle,
in the sense of almost the secret handshake," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor
of constitutional law at Pepperdine University who worked with Judge Alito in
the office in the mid-1980's and became a close friend.
"I would put Sam and myself outside of that circle - not in the sense that we
disagreed with anything in particular but that we were less willing to sign on
for the fraternity," he said. "The one thing about fraternities is that they
take on missions or causes that may be all right in themselves but you have to
sign onto them in advance. Neither of us, by personality, would want that."
Throughout his life - at Yale Law School, as a government lawyer, as a judge
on the United States Court of Appeals - Judge Alito has earned
respect, even friendship, across the political spectrum. Some who describe
themselves as liberals say they admire what they call Judge Alito's
meticulousness and fair-mindedness - traits he appears to have come by early in
life.
In high school, classmates called the studious youth Mr. President - and not
simply because he was student council president. In the Reserve Officers
Training Corps, he smudged his Princeton University affiliation off his helmet
to avoid standing out. At Yale, his powers of artful argument were such that he
won a moot court contest taking one side of a case that was before the Supreme
Court. A few weeks later, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 for the other side.
Friends describe Judge Alito as disinclined toward small talk but brilliant
in debate. He lives in suburban West Caldwell, N.J. - a quiet homebody with
simple tastes married to a live wire and occasional practical joker.
When his neighbors Alex Panzano and his wife, Susan, invited Sam and Martha
Alito over for dinner recently, Judge Alito complimented Mr. Panzano on the
wine; it turned out to be a $7 bottle from Chile.
J. L. Pottenger Jr., a friend of Judge Alito's at Princeton and Yale who is
now a professor at Yale, said: "The reason I'm hoping he gets confirmed, even
though I am a liberal, maybe an ultraliberal, is because I think he's an honest,
well-intentioned guy who believes in judicial restraint in the model of Supreme
Court Justice John Harlan and I can't really argue with that as a judicial
philosophy. I don't think he's an ideologue. I don't think he's going to be out
there trying to roll back the clock."
Amid Change, a Voice for Stability
In the early 1980's, conservative lawyers who had been languishing in the
political wildnerness gravitated toward the Department of Justice under
President Reagan to focus on reversing course on issues like affirmative action
and abortion. The Office of Legal Counsel, where Judge Alito went to work in
1985, is sometimes known as "the conscience of the Justice Department."
The office advises the attorney general, who advises the president and the
executive branch. It fashions executive orders, considers the constitutional
implications of proposed legislation and renders opinions in disputes.
Government officials turn to the office for an honest answer as to what the law
requires, which may or may not mean that they can do what they want to do.
"As a lawyer in that office, your responsibility is to keep the government
from making mistakes," said John. F. Manning, a Harvard law professor who worked
there with Judge Alito. "It really puts the question of 'Is there legitimate
authority for government to do what it wants to do?' right in the forefront of
your mind. I think any time you're spending a couple of years doing nothing but
thinking about the separation of powers and the structure of government, it's
bound to change the way you think about the world."
Mr. Meese, now a conservative icon, whom President Reagan appointed as
attorney general in 1985, served as "instructor at large getting us all to
re-examine every basic proposition to see what was and was not true," Professor
Kmiec said. John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern who worked in the
office too, shared that memory.
"Meese had just moved over to the Justice Department and he of course was one
of the thoughtful proponents of originalism and federalism," Professor McGinnis
said, referring to the conservative ideals of deciding cases based on the
framers' understanding of the meaning of the Constitution and on deference to
the role of the states in the federal system.
(From 1981 to 1986, another young lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr., now the chief
justice, worked in the Reagan administration, first as a special assistant to
Mr. Meese's predecessor, William French Smith, and then as a junior lawyer in
the White House counsel's office.)
Judge Alito had been recruited by Charles J. Cooper, the assistant attorney
general in charge of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and a
dynamic proponent of those goals. "Our views were simpatico," Mr. Cooper said on
Friday. "His philosophy of the law was a philosophy about the proper, limited,
restrained role of the courts."
But colleagues remember Judge Alito bringing other strengths to the job,
including what Professor McGinnis calls "some of the virtues of the Civil
Service." He had worked as an assistant United States attorney and then as an
assistant to the solicitor general. Those virtues, Professor McGinnis said,
included a focus on continuity of the law and an appreciation of the importance
of stability.
Professor Manning said: "In the Justice Department, there was definitely a
sense of a real kind of enthusiasm or headiness, however you want to
characterize it. He was a very dispassionate lawyer. He struggled over issues.
He didn't think of things as slam dunks or easy. He wrestled with things."
Judge Alito was something of a stickler about how opinions and other
documents were researched and prepared. And colleagues in Washington remember
him as a person with impressive powers of concentration who would head off to
the law library and not return for hours.
"Somewhere in his past, this guy learned to do research like nobody I know,"
said Carter G. Phillips, a Washington lawyer who first met Judge Alito in 1981.
"Obviously, if you're a lawyer and you have real powers of concentration and an
ability to do research, then those are enormous gifts to have for the practice
of law."
Son of a Rigorous Father
One place where Judge Alito learned that skill was as a child at home in
Hamilton Township, N.J. His father, Samuel A. Alito, was the soft-spoken and
rigorously nonpartisan director of the Office of Legislative Services, an agency
that advises the New Jersey Legislature. He was widely respected for his
judiciousness and analytical habits of mind.
Judge Alito's father was an expert in drafting legislation; he seemed to know
everything there was to know about every statute. In the partisan culture of
Trenton, he is said to have remained unfailingly impartial. Arthur S. Applebaum,
a former colleague, said Mr. Alito received delicate assignments, including work
on a commission that looked into whether legislators were too close to figures
in organized crime.
One legislator took to calling him "the professor." Mr. Applebaum said of Mr.
Alito, who had emigrated from Italy as a child: "He would never hesitate to correct
anyone's English. He'd come right out and say, 'Don't use the word 'presently.'
Use the word 'currently.' "
Years later, lawyers working in Washington would get documents kicked back to
them by Mr. Alito's son with what Professor Kmiec describes as "arrows and
cross-outs and rewritings that reflect this senior Alito's instruction on how to
write a good, clear sentence, an organized, structured paragraph, not to bury
the lead, as it were, so as not to keep your client guessing as to what he can
or cannot do."
Mr. Alito and his wife, Rose, an elementary school principal, were involved
parents. They instilled in their two children - Judge Alito's sister, Rosemary,
is an employment lawyer in New Jersey - a respect for education and aspiration.
Years later, at a family gathering, Ms. Alito regaled Professor Kmiec with the
story of how Sam's grammar school work was so good, his teachers suspected that
she had done it.
"They were not necessarily intellects but they were achievers," Joseph L.
Bocchini Jr., the Mercer County prosecutor and a former state assemblyman, said
of Judge Alito's parents. "They didn't subscribe to 'Go do your homework now and
then watch TV later on.' It was, 'Go do your homework now and, after you do it,
go find some other way to improve yourself.' "
David J. Grais, who had the bottom bunk and Judge Alito the top when they
roomed together at Princeton, said the ideal of public service ran in the
family. "He always knew he was headed for public service because he always
looked up to his father," Mr. Grais said.
The senior Mr. Alito never advertised his children's accomplishments, said
William E. Schluter, a former state senator. But Mr. Schluter got him to reveal
Sam's SAT scores. "I dragged it out of him," Mr. Schluter said. "In those days,
there were four tests and a perfect score was 800. He said he got two 800's, one
796 and he slipped on the fourth one and got a 780."
John R. Lacey, a former Hamilton Township councilman, said Mr. Alito would
respond to any compliments about his son with a smile and a simple " 'thank
you,' and that's it." Mr. Alito and his son shared many traits, Mr. Lacey added.
"It's an inherited personality," he said. "There was no flamboyance in the
family. Just very solid, very detail-oriented, very sure of who they were."
At Steinert High School, Samuel Alito Jr. was intensely focused on school and
family, former classmates say. He was class valedictorian and notable on the
debate team for his ability to synthesize ideas. If he had political views at
that time, said Andrew W. Spisak, a fellow debate team member, they were not
terribly apparent.
"There was a lot of stuff going on with the Vietnam War and the assassination
and such," Mr. Spisak said. "Martin Luther King was assassinated and Robert Kennedy
was killed just a few days before graduation. I don't think his reaction was any
different than anyone else's - shocked."
As a parent, Judge Alito appears to follow his parents' model. Hilary Monaco, a friend and neighbor, said she and Judge Alito
spent many hours coaching the high school mock trial team. He taught the
students, including his son, Philip, the rules of evidence and how to write
opening and closing statements. In 2001, the team made it to the county
semifinals - its best performance, she said.
Judge Alito, who drives an aging Ford Taurus to work, is more likely to talk
about his two children - Philip, a student at the University of Virginia, and
Laura, a star high school swimmer - than about his career or himself.
Recently, he and his wife, Martha-Ann, had dinner at the home of Mr. Panzano,
a retired technology executive who lives nearby. They talked about food,
children, theater and baseball. When Mr. Panzano's wife, Susan, raised the
subject of Harriet E. Miers, then the Supreme Court nominee, Mrs.
Alito suggested that her husband's chances of reaching the court had dissipated,
Mr. Panzano recalled.
True to form, Mr. Panzano said, Judge Alito said nothing.
"I've known him 15 years, I don't think he's ever once mentioned anything
about his work," Mr. Panzano said. He also said, "Sam doesn't talk politics. I
have no idea which way he votes."
As for his Roman Catholicism, Professor Kmiec said Judge Alito rarely brings
it up.
"I think faith for Sam is a regularizing experience in the sense of bringing
order to the world," said Professor Kmiec, who is also Catholic. "It's a
community in which you obligate yourself to others and therefore feel part of
something that's outside of yourself. I think that understanding of faith is not
much different from the understanding of faith that I would bet that Rose and
Sam Alito, his parents, had."
'Another Level of Smart'
At Princeton, classmates recall, Samuel Alito welcomed the arrival of women
on campus shortly after starting his studies there. "We were quite pleased to
see the change," said Clyde E. Rankin, a lawyer in Manhattan who was a
classmate. Later, Mr. Alito helped several classmates write a report supporting
a right to privacy that extended to one's bedroom.
But one fellow student recalled that Mr. Alito advised against canceling
campus activities to protest the Vietnam War, arguing it would limit people's
right to go on with their lives. "People are understating how deeply
conservative he is - deeply in his bones," said the classmate, Samuel L.
Lipsman.
Mr. Alito arrived at Yale Law School in 1972, toward the end of the antiwar
movement, a clean-cut, studious young man with a close circle of sometimes
clean-cut, studious Princeton friends. The campus was overwhelmingly liberal.
Among the handful of identifiable conservatives on the faculty was Robert H.
Bork, whom President Reagan later nominated unsuccessfully for the Supreme
Court.
Mr. Alito, then, stood somewhat apart from many of his classmates.
"The law school pretty much marches on its own," said Steven B. Duke, a
longtime professor at Yale. "I think probably it's always been a bit
left-leaning, maybe for the last half-century."
Whether Samuel Alito's politics were apparent or not, his brains certainly
were.
"This was 33 years ago, but I'm sitting in the back of a classroom and this
guy sitting in the front who never opened his mouth in the first two or three
months raises his hand and is called on," recalled Peter Goldberger, who is now
a lawyer in Ardmore, Pa. "And I said, 'Oh my God. That's what smart is about.'
You're in a room of 75 people you don't know and then you realize there's
another level of smart."
Mark Dwyer, a former Yale roommate who is now an assistant Manhattan district
attorney, recalled that Mr. Alito seemed put out when they were assigned to
different constitutional law classes in their first year. Mr. Alito got Charles
A. Reich, who in his best-seller, "The Greening of America," had seemed to
suggest that hippies would save the world. Mr. Dwyer got the impression that
"Sam was jealous I had Bork."
Roe v. Wade was decided the following year. "I had Bob Bork for my
constitutional law class and I remember him railing at how unprincipled, how
unconnected to the language of the Constitution, that decision was," said Dennis
M. Grzezinski, a former classmate who is now a lawyer in Milwaukee. "But I can't
recall what either I or the others had to say about it."
Samuel Alito racked up prize after prize for his research, his writing, his
skill at oral argument. He published an award-winning note in The Yale Law
Journal that argued against reading too much about a justice's philosophy into
his rulings. Commentators had misinterpreted two rulings, he wrote, "because
they attempted to discern the motivations or long-term intentions of the
justices from the written opinions."
Any advice for Judge Alito as he begins the confirmation process? Judge Bork
was asked recently.
He laughed.
"He doesn't need my advice," he said. "The important thing for him to do is
remain calm and don't promise his vote on any issue. But I'm sure he knows
that."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Alison Leigh Cowan,
Richard Lezin Jones, Patrick McGeehan and David E.
Rosenbaum.
