Specter goes to bat for high court nominee

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., sent strong signals Monday that he would use all his clout to help federal appeals court judge Samuel Alito win confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Time and again Specter used his Monday afternoon press conference to defend President Bush’s nominee to the high court and to justify some of his controversial rulings.

“I think he’ll be an excellent witness,” Specter predicted. Drawing an implicit contrast with ex-nominee Harriet Miers, who withdrew last week after getting a tepid reception from the Senate, Specter said “he’s a real legal scholar beyond any question.”

Specter did not say he'd vote for Alito, but all his other comments were positive.

The Judiciary Committee chairman brushed off Democratic charges that Bush’s nomination of Alito was a sop by a weakened president to appease his social conservative base.

“I do not think that the charge by the Democrats that this is a nomination out of weakness has any validity at all. That spin game is par for the course in this city,” he told reporters.

Assurances to abortion rights supporters
Specter seemed to go out of his way to try to persuade abortion rights supporters, of whom he is one, that Alito is not beyond the pale.

He said Alito’s dissent in a 1991 abortion case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, "does not signify disagreement with Roe v Wade” the 1972 ruling which legalized abortion nationwide. Specter said that nothing in what Alito had written in that case “suggests disagreement with the underlying decision in Roe v. Wade."

Specter called Alito’s dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey “a very narrow ruling, very carefully crafted on the basis of Justice O’Connor’s decisions in previous cases about what would constitute an undue burden for the woman.”

He also seemed to aim to re-assure gun control activists, calling a 1996 dissent by Alito which said Congress didn’t have the power to ban sales of machine guns within states "very, very narrowly tailored.”

He said Alito’s dissent had followed the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling in U.S. v. Lopez which said the federal government had no power under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to ban the carrying of guns near schools.

The chairman said he had met with Alito for an hour and 15 minutes Monday and that the veteran appeals court judge assured him “he believes there is a right to privacy under the liberty clause of the United States Constitution” and “he accepts Griswold v. Connecticut as good law.”

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