Just got off the phone with someone who knows Alito well, and whose perspective I value. Alito, according to him, is “really nice”, with a “reserved” personality. Unlike Scalia, there is nothing acerbic about Alito, and his questioning in oral argument tends to be minimal but penetrating. There is “no way” he will become another Souter, or even Kennedy; Alito is devoted to the idea that the role of the judge is to apply the constitution and law faithfully and without embellishment, and he is very principled in his devotion to this idea. Overall, a “great judge.”
And from a post of mine on Saturday:
Via the Supreme Court Nomination Blog, I’ve come across Saxe v. State College Area School District, 240 F.3d 200 (3d Cir. 2001): “There is no categorical ‘harassment exception’ to the First Amendment’s free speech clause…. When laws against harassment attempt to regulate oral or written expression on such topics, however detestable the views expressed may be, we cannot turn a blind eye to the First Amendment implications.”
Good to know he takes at least a somewhat Volokhian (and Bernsteinian) view of such issues.
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