Alito's Smoking Gun

Cal Thomas | Syndicated columnist | Published: Nov 16, 2005

Alito's Smoking Gun

November 17, 2005

Liberals think they’ve found the smoking gun to dispatch Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. It’s a memo he wrote as part of a job application in the Reagan administration.

In that memo, Alito said he did not believe the Constitution supports the right of a woman to abort her child. Now he and his defenders say the memo was hyped to get the job and that as a judge he has respect for precedent.

The New York Times – the most pro-abortion newspaper in America – suggests the memo may disqualify Alito for the Supreme Court. But Alito is not alone in his opinion that the constitution does not support abortion. Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, who believes in the outcome of Roe v. Wade, but not the legal process that created it, has called roe a “verbal smokescreen” and the “substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.”

Associate Justice Ruth Ginsburg referred to Roe as “heavy-handed judicial intervention” in a 1985 North Carolina law review article. Harry Blackmun’s former law clerk, Edward Lazarus, said Roe “borders on the indefensible.” So, Alito is not alone, which should be mentioned at his confirmation hearings.


Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.

Alito's Smoking Gun