CQ Press : Current Events In Context : Future of the Supreme Court : Kenneth Jost Interview

January 31, 2006

CQ Press In Context - Senate Confirms Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court

Speakers: Kenneth Jost, CQ Press Supreme Court Editor
Scott Kuzner, CQ Press Interviewer

SK: Good afternoon and welcome to CQ Press In Context. Today is Tuesday, January 31, 2006. I'm Scott Kuzner and I'm here again with Kenneth Jost, CQ Press Supreme Court editor, and today we'll be discussing the confirmation of Justice Samuel Alito and what implications this might have on the Supreme Court in the future. First off, Ken, tell us about the vote. How close was it?

KJ: Well, Judge Alito won confirmation by a vote of 58 to 42. That's the second closest in recent history. Justice Clarence Thomas won confirmation, 52 to 48. But those two were the only two really close votes in this entire century. It was also the most party-line vote in recent history. Five people crossed party lines; four Democrats voted for Judge Alito, one Republican voted against. But contrast, there were 11 Democrats that voted for Justice Thomas.

SK: What are the political implications for this vote, for the President, the Senate Republicans, and Senate Democrats?

KJ: Well, for President Bush, it shows that he's not a lame duck president. Whatever the polls show, whatever problems he may be having in Iraq, with domestic policy, he still has the power of the President to appoint and he has a unified Republican party in the Senate to back his appointment, even in the strong face of criticism. And it's worth noting that Judge Alito did well in the polls, by a 2 to 1 margin or so. People favored his confirmation. Senate Republicans learned the advantages of being unified — 55 votes — and they held all but one. They held all of them for Chief Justice Roberts. For the Democrats, they ended with egg on their face. The filabuster at the end was a failure, what can one say. They got 25 votes, barely half of their caucus, to support the filabuster. They tried very hard in the hearing and thereafter to make the case against Alito and it simply didn't go anywhere.

SK: What about interest groups? How did they respond to the vote?

KJ: Well, the conservative interest groups were cheering, as one can readily imagine, and they were immediately looking toward the possibility of future retirements and in effect saying, 'We have to stay unified and we have to keep the Republicans on task to support a conservative nominee that we would expect the President to choose'. The liberal interest groups did the best they could. They issued press releases saying, 'We had a moral victory of sorts by getting 42 votes against the nominee, against strong odds'. But they also said, 'We have to do better, we have to work harder to get the grassroots support' for what they call "progressive" nominees to the Supreme Court.

SK: How soon can we expect Judge Alito to join the court?

KJ: Well, Judge Alito watched the confirmation vote in the White House with President Bush and within an hour was whisked to the Supreme Court where he took the constitutional oath and the judicial oath from Chief Justice Roberts. So, he became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States barely an hour after the Senate vote. The first official function at the court will be a private conference of the justices on Feb. 17th, where they will decide what cases to hear for, not the rest of this term, but for the beginning of the next term. And the court hears arguments on Feb. 21.

SK: Are there any important cases that Alito will be voting on? What's on tap for the court in the months coming up?

KJ: Absolutely. The first two cases he'll hear are significant environmental cases. Then later, the next week, he will hear an important case testing whether a state can establish campaign spending limits, not contributions, but overall expenditure limits by political candidates. And the next day, he will hear a very significant congressional redistricting case from Texas that raises both civil rights issues, voting rights issues affecting minorities and the question of political gerrymanders. There's also the question of whether any of the cases that the court has heard but not yet decided will be split, 4-to-4, with Justice O'Connor gone, and possibly require reargument. We'll have to wait and see on those.

SK: Well, Ken, we thank you for your time once again. And we thank you for visiting CQ Press In Context and for joining us in the "Future of the Supreme Court" series.