The Thursday New York Times has a very interesting report on Judge Alito’s meeting with Senator Durbin, and in particular Alito’s views about his Casey dissent:
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, told a pivotal Democrat that he had wrestled intensely with a 1991 opinion favoring an abortion restriction that has become a flashpoint in the debate over his confirmation.
Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said that in a private meeting he had asked Judge Alito about his dissent in the appeals court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The majority opinion in the case struck down a law requiring a married woman to notify her husband before having an abortion. Judge Alito, in dissent, would have upheld that provision.
“He said he had spent more time worrying and working over that decision than over any other decision he made when he was a judge,” Mr. Durbin said.
Mr. Durbin’s account of the conversation . . . was not disputed by a spokesman for the White House . . .
Mr. Durbin . . . said Judge Alito had told him that, rather than addressing the broader subject of abortion, he had struggled to interpret Justice O’Connor’s opinions about prohibiting an “undue burden” on a women’s right to have the procedure.
“He said it happened in the first year he was on the bench, and he said it was a tough decision to write because he had to decide what was an ‘undue burden’ on a woman seeking an abortion,” Mr. Durbin said.
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