Surprising number support Alito

WASHINGTON – Samuel Alito was quickly branded a hard-core conservative after President Bush announced his nomination, but a surprising number of liberal-leaning judges and ex-clerks say they support his elevation to the Supreme Court.

Those who have worked alongside him say he was neither an ideologue nor a judge with an agenda, conservative or otherwise. They caution against attaching a label to Alito.

Kate Pringle, a New York lawyer who worked last year on Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign, describes herself as a left-leaning Democrat and a big fan of Alito’s.

She worked for him as a law clerk in 1994 and said she was troubled by the instant reaction to his nomination. “He was not, in my personal experience, an ideologue. He pays attention to the facts of cases and applies the law in a careful way. He is conservative in that sense, his opinions don’t demonstrate an ideological slant,” she said.

Jeff Wasserstein, a Washington lawyer who clerked for Alito in 1998, echoes her view.

“I am a Democrat who always voted Democratic, except when I vote for a Green candidate, but Judge Alito was not interested in the ideology of his clerks,” he said. “He didn’t decide cases based on ideology, and his record was not extremely conservative.”

As an example, he cited a case in which police in Pennsylvania sent out a bulletin that called for the arrest of a black man in a black sports car. Police stopped such a vehicle and found a gun inside, but Alito voted to overturn the man’s conviction because that general identification did not amount to “probable cause.”

“This was a classic case of `driving while black,’ ” Wasserstein said, referring to the complaint that black motorists are targeted by police. Though Alito “was a former prosecutor, he was very fair and open-minded in looking at cases and applying the law,” Wasserstein said.

It is not unusual for former law clerks to have fond recollections of the judge they worked for. And is it common for judges to speak respectfully of their colleagues. But for a judge being portrayed by both the right and left as a hard-right conservative, Alito’s enthusiastic backing by liberal associates is striking.

Former federal judge Timothy Lewis said he consulted his mentor, Judge Leon Higginbotham, when he joined the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992. The late Higginbotham, a legendary liberal and a scholar of America’s racial history, was the only other black on the Philadelphia-based court at the time.

“As he was going down the roster of colleagues, he got to Sam Alito. I expressed some concern about (him) being so conservative. He said, `No, no. Sam Alito is my favorite judge to sit with on this court. He is a wonderful judge and a terrific human being. Sam Alito is my kind of conservative. He is intellectually honest. He doesn’t have an agenda. He is not an ideologue,’ ” Higginbotham said, according to Lewis.

“I really was surprised to hear that, but my experience with him on the 3rd Circuit bore that out,” added Lewis, who had a liberal record during his seven years on the bench. “Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a `home run’. He is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference.”

Some of his former clerks say they were drawn to Alito because of his reputation as a careful judge who closely followed the text of the law.

Clark Lombardi, a law professor at the University of Washington, became a clerk for Alito in 1999.

“I grew up in New York City, and I’m a political independent. But I liked Judge Alito because he was a judicial conservative, someone who believed in judicial restraint and was committed to textualism,” he said. “His approach leads to conservative results in some cases and progressive results in other cases. In my opinion, he is a fantastic jurist and a good guy.”