51 Facts About Samuel Alito

Samuel Alito was nominated by President George W Bush on October 31,2005, and has served since January 31,2006.

Samuel Alito's grandparents came from Roccella Ionica, Calabria and Palazzo San Gervasio, Basilicata, in southern Italy.

Samuel Alito's father earned a master's degree at Rutgers University and was a high school teacher and later the first Director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, a state government position he held from 1952 to 1984.

Samuel Alito grew up in Hamilton Township, New Jersey, a suburb of Trenton.

At Princeton, Samuel Alito chaired a student conference in 1971 called "The Boundaries of Privacy in American Society" which, among other things, supported curbs on domestic intelligence gathering and anticipated the need for a statute and a court to oversee national security surveillance.

Samuel Alito led the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel during his time at Princeton.

Samuel Alito avoided Princeton's eating clubs, joining Stevenson Hall instead.

Samuel Alito was a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which was formed in October 1972 at least in part to oppose Princeton's decisions regarding admitting women.

Apart from Samuel Alito's written 1985 statement of membership in CAP on a job application, which he says was truthful, there is no other documentation of Samuel Alito's involvement with or contributions to the group.

Samuel Alito has cited the banning and subsequent treatment of ROTC by the university as his reason for belonging to CAP.

Samuel Alito was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Army Reserve in 1972.

Samuel Alito began his military duty after graduating from law school in 1975 and served on active duty from September to December while attending the Signal Officer Basic Course at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Samuel Alito was promoted to first lieutenant and captain, and completed his service obligation as a member of the inactive reserve before receiving his honorable discharge in 1980.

At Princeton, Alito was "almost alone" in his familiarity with the writings of John Marshall Harlan II and was much influenced by the course on constitutional interpretation taught by Walter F Murphy, his faculty adviser.

Samuel Alito then attended Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and earned a Juris Doctor in 1975.

Samuel Alito interviewed with Supreme Court Justice Byron White for a clerkship but was not hired.

Between 1977 and 1981, Samuel Alito was Assistant United States Attorney, District of New Jersey.

From 1981 to 1985, Alito was Assistant to US Solicitor General Rex E Lee.

Samuel Alito lost only two of the cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

From 1985 to 1987, Alito was Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Charles J Cooper in the Office of Legal Counsel during the tenure of Attorney General Edwin Meese.

Between 1986 and 1987, Samuel Alito authored nearly 470 pages of memoranda, in which he argued for expanding his client's law enforcement and personnel authorities.

Samuel Alito expressed concern about Warren Court decisions in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment.

From 1987 to 1990, Samuel Alito was the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

In March 1988, Samuel Alito sought a rehearing of extradition proceedings against two Indian men, represented by Ron Kuby, who were accused of being terrorist assassins, after Samuel Alito discovered that the death threats his prosecutor had received had been sent to her by herself.

In 1989, Samuel Alito prosecuted a member of the Japanese Red Army for planning a terrorist bombing in Manhattan.

Samuel Alito is a member of the Federalist Society, a group of conservatives and libertarian lawyers and legal students interested in conservative legal theory.

Samuel Alito was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate on April 27,1990, and received his commission three days later.

Samuel Alito was unanimously rated "well qualified" to fill the Associate Justice post by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, which measures the professional qualifications of a nominee.

Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing was held from January 9 to 13,2006.

Samuel Alito responded to some 700 questions over 18 hours of testimony.

Samuel Alito rejected the use of foreign legal materials in the Constitution, did not state a position on cameras in courtrooms, said Congress could choose to outlaw LGBT employment discrimination in the United States if it wished, and told then-Senator Joe Biden that he endorsed a weak version of the unitary executive theory.

Samuel Alito professed reluctance to commit to any type of ideology, stating he would act as an impartial referee.

Samuel Alito said he would look at abortion with an open mind but would not state how he would rule on Roe v Wade if that decision were to be challenged.

In 2022, Alito wrote the opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v Wade.

Samuel Alito became the 110th justice, the second Italian-American, and the 11th Catholic in the history of the Supreme Court, and the fifth Catholic on the Court at the time he assumed office.

Samuel Alito wrote for a unanimous court in ordering a new trial for Bobby Lee Holmes due to South Carolina's rule that barred such evidence based on the strength of the prosecution's case, rather than on the relevance and strength of the defense evidence itself.

Samuel Alito further voted with the conservative wing of the court on Sanchez-Llamas v Oregon and Rapanos v United States.

In 2013, Samuel Alito was considered "one of the most conservative justices on the Court".

In two higher-profile cases, involving the constitutionality of political gerrymandering and campaign finance reform, Alito adopted narrow positions, declining to join the bolder positions advanced by either philosophical side of the Court.

Samuel Alito sided with the liberal bloc of the court, inferring protection against retaliation in the federal-sector provision of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act despite the lack of an explicit provision concerning retaliation.

On November 12,2020, Samuel Alito made headlines for comments about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The membership of the Court changed after Stenberg, with Roberts and Samuel Alito replacing Rehnquist and O'Connor respectively.

On May 2,2022, Politico published a leak of a first draft of a majority opinion by Alito that circulated among the justices in February 2022 for the upcoming decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Samuel Alito mocked several foreign leaders for criticizing the decision, particularly UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, referencing his pending resignation, and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, who had compared the ruling to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Samuel Alito wrote that he had been informed of the outcome of Burwell v Hobby Lobby weeks before the June 2014 decision, authored by Alito and favorable to anti-abortion conservatives, was officially announced.

Samuel Alito resided with his family in West Caldwell, New Jersey before his Supreme Court nomination.

Samuel Alito was a captain when he received an honorable discharge in 1980.

Samuel Alito is the only military veteran on the Court following Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022.

Samuel Alito is an avid baseball fan and a longtime fan of the Philadelphia Phillies.

Samuel Alito delivered the Supreme Court Historical Society's 2008 Annual Lecture "The Origin of the Baseball Antitrust Exemption", which was published in two journals.

Samuel Alito attended Game 5 of the 2022 World Series in Philadelphia.