Sam Alito’s word has the same value as Donald Trump’s
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One reason to not believe Alito when he asserts in Dobbs that his holding that there is no fundamental right to privacy in the Constitution will not actually be applied to any future cases is that he’s a huge liar:
Senator Edward M. Kennedy looked skeptically at the federal judge. It was Nov. 15, 2005, and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was seeking Senate confirmation for his nomination to the Supreme Court, had just assured Mr. Kennedy in a meeting in his Senate office that he respected the legal precedent of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that legalized abortion.
“I am a believer in precedents,” Judge Alito said, in a recollection the senator recorded and had transcribed in his diary. “People would find I adhere to that.”
In the same conversation, the judge edged further in his assurances on Roe than he did in public. “I recognize there is a right to privacy,” he said, referring to the constitutional foundation of the decision. “I think it’s settled.”
But Mr. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and longtime supporter of abortion rights, remained dubious that November day that he could trust the conservative judge not to overturn the ruling. He brought up a memo that Judge Alito had written as a lawyer in the Reagan administration Justice Department in 1985, which boasted of his opposition to Roe.
Judge Alito assured Mr. Kennedy that he should not put much stock in the memo. He had been seeking a promotion and wrote what he thought his bosses wanted to hear. “I was a younger person,” Judge Alito said. “I’ve matured a lot.”
The answer did not assuage Mr. Kennedy, who went on to vote against Judge Alito’s confirmation. If the judge could configure his beliefs to get that 1985 promotion, Mr. Kennedy asked in a notation in his diary, how might he dissemble to clinch a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court?
Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion this past June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the momentous Supreme Court decision that put aside 50 years of precedent and overturned Roe. Respect for longstanding precedent “does not compel unending adherence to Roe’s abuse of judicial authority,” he wrote. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
As Kennedy seeing through him makes clear, the fact that he lied is no excuse for passing off as some kind of moderate who would vote to overrule Roe — his record was crystal clear and provided abundant evidence that he would be exactly the kind of robotic reactionary he in fact has been. But the idea that it was somehow dirty pool to judge him based on the specific arguments he had made in writing about Roe became a remarkably successful sales job on the part of the Republican propaganda machine. It’s not true that after Bork you couldn’t nominate judges with a paper trial — you just needed to use Rehnquist’s old trick of denying that the things you say and write actually reflect your beliefs and hope enough media types who are always looking for the next Moderate Republican Daddy will help you launder their bullshit.
The Alito of 2005 was a smooth enough liar to even fool people who should know better, not just willfully gullible media types. During the confirmation hearings I was at a university function with an affable Republican DOJ veteran who was doing some adjunct teaching. He was a conservative but not a movement true believer, someone who had drifted away from the party somewhat even then; I would guess he voted for Biden. He was absolutely, 100% sincerely convinced that I was wrong about Alito and that I would turn out to be grateful that Bush had nominated someone who strengthen the Court’s moderate center rather than another Scalia or Thomas. I don’t know how a knowledgeable person could have believed that, but a moderate tone can go a long way to reassure people who really want to be reassured.