Alito strong conservative on liberal court

Recent financial gains
Alito’s net worth got a major boost last year when a family friend died and left him Exxon Mobil Corp. stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000, according to his 2004 financial disclosure statement.

Alito did not disclose the name of his benefactor, and White House officials could not immediately provide the identity. The oil company stock raised the value of Alito’s holdings at the end of 2004 to between $615,000 and $1.6 million. Five years earlier, his disclosure form valued his holdings at between $455,000 and $1.17 million.

O’Connor, whom Alito would replace, listed holdings worth between $2.7 million and nearly $6 million in her 2004 disclosure statement.

Alito’s mother, Rose, who will turn 91 in December, spent Monday fielding congratulatory telephone calls from her home in Hamilton, N.J., a Trenton suburb. “I’m so excited I can’t even express myself,” she said.

More blunt than her son might wish, she said, “I think he was upset that he didn’t get there in the first shot, that Miers got it.” That was a reference to Bush’s choice of Harriet Miers, since withdrawn.

‘Of course he’s against abortion’
If confirmed, Alito would be the fifth Catholic on the Supreme Court. “Of course he’s against abortion,” his mother said, another comment supporters in Washington might wish she’d held back.

On the bench, Alito is known to be probing, but more polite than the often-caustic Scalia.

Among his noteworthy appeals court opinions was his lone dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

In 2000, though, Alito joined the majority that found a New Jersey law banning late-term abortions unconstitutional. In his concurring opinion, Alito said the Supreme Court required such a ban to include an exception if the mother’s health was endangered.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, struck down the spousal notification, but Chief Justice William Rehnquist quoted from Alito’s opinion in his dissent.

Former appellate judge Timothy Lewis, who served with Alito, has ideological differences with him but believes he would be a good justice.

“There is nobody that I believe would give my case a more fair and balanced treatment,” Lewis said. “He’s open-minded, he’s fair and he’s balanced.”

In a May 2005 profile in The Newark Star-Ledger, Alito said, “Most of the labels people use to talk about judges, and the way judges decide (cases) aren’t too descriptive. ... Judges should be judges. They shouldn’t be legislators, they shouldn’t be administrators.”

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