Bush Taps Alito For Supreme Court

Looking to move swiftly beyond the Harriet Miers fiasco, President Bush on Monday announced his nomination of federal appeals court judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

With Alito at his side, Mr. Bush called him one of the most accomplished and respected judges in America, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports.

"He understands that judges are to interpret the laws, not to impose their preferences or priorities on the people," said Mr. Bush, in a signal to conservatives who brought down the Miers nomination.

Alito himself said federal judges should always be "keeping in mind the limited role the courts play in our judicial system."

In an unspoken contrast to Miers, Mr. Bush said, "Judge Alito has served with distinction on that court for 15 years, and now has more prior judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in more than 70 years."

Mr. Bush said he wanted Alito confirmed by year's end.

Unlike Miers, whose nomination was derailed by Mr. Bush's conservative allies, Alito will face strong Democratic opposition.

"The Senate needs to find out if the man replacing Miers is too radical for the American people," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

The White House hopes the choice mends a rift in the Republican Party caused by the failed nomination of Miers, and puts Mr. Bush's embattled presidency on a path to political recovery.

His approval rating in the polls has tumbled to the lowest point of his presidency, with Americans unhappy about high energy prices, the war in Iraq and the economy. Bush also has been hit by a criminal investigation that led to the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, on perjury and other charges in the CIA leak scandal.

"This is a red-meat conservative choice. The president's base is going to love it; Democrats are going to hate it," said CBSNews.com legal analyst Andrew Cohen.

"We're going to see a knock-down, drag-out fight over the substance of Judge Alito's views and it's going to be bloody."

So consistently conservative, Alito has been dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

"People say he is much more like Scalia but not quite as bombastic, doesn't push the envelope as much. He'll be very different in style on the bench," said the Chicago Tribune's Jan Crawford Greenburg on CBS News' The Early Show.

Alito has staked out positions supporting restrictions on abortion, such as parental and spousal notification. If confirmed by the Senate, Alito would replace retiring justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a decisive swing vote in a host of affirmative action, abortion, campaign finance, discrimination and death penalty cases.

Alito favors more restrictions on abortion rights than either the Supreme Court has allowed or O'Connor has supported, based on a 1992 case in which he supported spousal notification.

Liberal groups were already mobilizing against Alito, accusing the president of giving in to pressure from conservatives.

"Right-wing leaders vetoed Miers because she failed their ideological litmus test," said People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas. "With Judge Alito, President Bush has obediently picked a nominee who passes that test with flying colors."

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America immediately called on the Senate to reject the nomination.

Conservative groups lined up in support of Alito.

"Judge Alito has always been one of our top choices for the Supreme Court," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel Concerned Women for America, a conservative group that opposed Harriet Miers.
Conservative activist Gary Bauer, who also challenged Miers' nomination, said "At least now the president is having a battle with his political opponents and not with his friends. I will help him any way I can."

The White House quickly arranged for Alito to go to the Capitol, where he was to be meet Senate Majority Leader Bill First and accompany him to the Capitol Rotunda to go to the coffin of the late civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

Frist praised Alito, calling him "unquestionably qualified to serve on our nation's highest court."

Miers bowed out last Thursday after three weeks of bruising criticism from members of Mr. Bush's own party who argued that the Texas lawyer and loyal Bush confidant had thin credentials on constitutional law and no proven record as a judicial conservative.

Unlike Miers, who has never been a judge, Alito, a jurist from New Jersey, has been a strong conservative voice on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since Mr. Bush's father, former President George H.W. Bush, seated him there in 1990.

"There is no doubt that this man is very qualified," reports CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger. "People consider him a brilliant jurist. And so you can't argue with qualifications. It's just his judicial philosophy."

White House officials had said Alito was virtually certain to get the nod from the moment Miers backed out. The 55-year-old jurist was the president's favorite choice of the judges in the last set of deliberations but he settled instead on someone outside what he calls the "judicial monastery," the officials said.

Mr. Bush believes that Alito has not only the right experience and conservative ideology for the job, but he also has a temperament suited to building consensus on the court. A former prosecutor, Alito has experience off the bench that factored into Mr. Bush's thinking, the officials said.

Judicial conservatives praise Alito's 15 years on the Philadelphia-based court, a tenure that gives him more appellate experience than almost any previous Supreme Court nominee. They say his record shows a commitment to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, ensuring that the separation of powers and checks and balances are respected and enforced. They also contend that Alito has been a powerful voice for the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

Liberal groups, on the other hand, note Alito's moniker and say his nomination raises troubling concerns, especially when it comes to his record on civil rights and reproductive rights. Alito is a frequent dissenter on the 3rd Circuit, one of the most liberal federal appellate benches in the nation.

In the early 1990s, Alito was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case in which the 3rd Circuit struck down a Pennsylvania law that included a provision requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses. That case went to the Supreme Court, where justices used it to reaffirm Roe v. Wade.

He has not been a down-the-line abortion foe, however. In 2000, Alito joined the majority that found a New Jersey law banning late-term abortions unconstitutional.

Alito is an Italian-American who grew up in Trenton, N.J. He was educated at Princeton University and earned a law degree from Yale University, the president's alma mater.