Alito

In 1972, at the height of one of the most tumultuous times in higher education, a group of Princeton University graduates staged their own form of protest against the changes they saw around them. As college campuses roiled with demonstrations over the Vietnam War, feminism and free speech, Concerned Alumni of Princeton -- co-chaired by wealthy alumni from the classes of 1921 and 1930 -- had a narrower agenda: fighting the admissions policy that opened classrooms to women and minorities.

Twenty years ago, a Reagan administration lawyer proposed that when the president signed a bill passed by Congress, he should use the occasion to declare how he interpreted it. "The president's understanding of the bill should be just as important as that of Congress," wrote Samuel A. Alito Jr. in a 1986 memo. Spelling out those thoughts "would increase the power of the executive to shape the law," he added.

Twenty-five years ago, President Reagan came to Washington with bold plans to move the Supreme Court to the right. He and his lawyers wanted a high court that would uphold state laws that impose the death penalty, restrict abortion and allow a greater role for religion in public life. They favored property rights over environmental regulation, states' rights over broad federal authority and executive power over Congress and the federal courts.

ONCE UPON A TIME, Americans lived by a few simple maxims: God, country and family. Children respected their parents; students listened to their teachers; citizens followed the law. Then along came the 1960s, when liberal elites undermined traditional sources of authority. College kids smoked dope, feminists burned their bras and black militants burned down the cities. So now we have welfare, divorce, crime and a sick society that has lost its moral compass.

He held the gun aloft for the jurors to see and urged them to take it into the jury room. He dared them to try to "accidentally" fire the trigger on the 9-millimeter semiautomatic Beretta. It was 1987 and Samuel A. Alito Jr. was the new U.S. attorney in New Jersey. He was assembling a staff and running the office, administering the budget and assigning assistant prosecutors to handle the caseload. But he took this one for himself -- apparently the only time he has tried a case before a jury.

Until a few days ago, the nearly decade-old case of Sheridan vs. E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. was barely known outside legal circles. Now it is evidence in the battle over whether U.S. Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. will gain a seat on the Supreme Court. It is one of several cases being cited by liberal groups as evidence that Alito holds little sympathy for workers who claim they were discriminated against by employers because of their race, sex or age.

If there is a sure winner in the cases decided by Samuel A. Alito Jr., it is freedom of religion -- any religion. During his 15 years as an appellate judge, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee has written decisions in favor of Muslim police officers in Newark, N.J., who wore beards; a Native American from Pennsylvania who raised sacred black bears; and a Jewish professor who said she was pushed out of her job for refusing to attend faculty events on Friday evenings and Saturdays, her Sabbath.

Senate Democrats emerged from a strategy meeting Wednesday saying that most members appeared inclined to vote against the nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court, but that they were unlikely to mount a filibuster to halt his confirmation. "Arguments were being made pro and con, but mostly con at the moment," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which vets the nomination before it goes to the full Senate for debate.