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Reliving the Alito Hearings With Verbatim Transcripts

With Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings at an end, and the Senate debate about to begin, you may find yourself trying to recall exactly what Judge Alito or one of his questioners said during the hearings. If so, click over to the Washington Post's Campaign for the Court blog, and particularly to the post that links to each day's transcripts of the Judiciary Committee hearings on the Alito nomination.

[Thanks to beSpacific and SCOTUSblog for the tip!]

Liveblogging the Alito Hearings

Once again the good folks at SCOTUSblog are liveblogging the Alito hearings. For minute-by-minute updates on each day's events, surf on over to SCOTUSblog and look for the "Alito Hearings" posts of January 9th and beyond. To get you started, here are first two posts, from Monday the 9th:

• Alito Supreme Court Hearings: 1/9/2006
• Alito Hearings: 1/9/2006

Alito's Opinions Condensed: Yale's Alito Project

Looking for a way to get up to speed on Judge Samuel Alito's opinions before his confirmation hearings start on Monday? No time to read all 415 majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions he's written? No worries! The Alito Project at Yale Law School has it covered.

In this informal project, a small group of Yale Law School students and faculty read each one of Judge Alito's opinions, summarized their findings in a 62-page report, and delivered a copy of the report to each U.S. senator.

Yale's press release describing the Alito Project links to the full report, The Alito Opinions: A Report of the Alito Project at the Yale Law School (PDF; 62 pages).

[Thanks to the Law Librarian Blog for the tip!]

Alito on Wiretapping - and More: Additional Documents from the National Archives

Late this month the National Archives released two small batches of documents written by Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, Jr. during his 1980s stint at the Department of Justice.

Despite the size of the collections (45 and 17 documents, and less than 1000 pages all told), and despite the holidays, the press has taken note — particularly of two documents released on December 23. In one of these documents Alito argues that the Attorney General should be immune from liability for illegal wiretapping. Given the latest revelations about warrantless NSA intercepts and Senator Spector's plans to question Alito about his views on Presidential powers, this memo is sure to be examined from every angle. The December 23 collection also contains a memo in which Alito asserts that Roe should be overruled.

These and other documents (as well as links to papers from the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidential libraries) are available at the National Archives page Records Pertaining to Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

[Thanks to Howard Bashman's How Appealing for the tip.]

Alito in His Own Words - Judiciary Committee Questionnaire & 1980s Documents

Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee released Alito's questionnaire on its web site. The document, Questionnaire of Samuel A. Alito, Jr., of New Jersey, Nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States, is a 64-page PDF file.

Also yesterday, the National Archives released a collection of memos and other documents written by Alito during his tenure at the Department of Justice. The latest releases in the Archives Alito collection, Records Pertaining to Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., are from the files of Charles Cooper and Attorney General Edwin Meese III. [A tip of the hat to BeSpacific.]

[Update, Jan. 26, 2006] Jurist - Gazette, in a post entitled Alito Responses to Additional Written Questions [US Senate], reports on and links to a letter from Judge Alito to Senator Specter, answering senators' written questions submitted after the confirmation hearings. Alito's letter answering the supplemental questions is a 41 page PDF file.

 

Alito Documents & News on Westlaw - Two Convenient Collections

Westlaw subscribers looking for background information on Samuel Alito can take advantage of Westlaw's new database "Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito Opinions and Papers" (ALITO-NOMINEE). As Westlaw describes it -

The ALITO-NOMINEE database contains coverage of opinions joined or authored by Judge Alito while sitting on the United States Court of Appeals. The database also contains federal or state decisions in which Judge Alito was an attorney of record or party, and briefs filed in cases in which he is a party or judge. Selected coverage of articles written by Judge Alito is also contained in this database. A current resume of Judge Alito by West's Profiler is included, as well as his biography from the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary.

And once Alito's confirmation hearings begin, Westlaw's "Supreme Court Nominee Confirmation Hearings" (SCT-CONFIRM) database will have the transcripts.

[Update, Nov. 20, 2005]
Over the weekend, Westlaw launched "Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito News" (ALITO-NEWS), which complements the Alito documents database by bringing together in one place news articles and columns from scores (if not hundreds) of newspapers, magazines and wire services. Because these articles have been specially culled by Westlaw, researchers can be fairly confident that they will actually be about Alito rather than merely making an offhand mention of the nominee while discussing another topic.

Alito on Alito in 1985

Subscribers to FindLaw's Breaking Documents newsletter today received Alito's "Personal Qualifications Statement" from his 1985 application for the position of Assistant Attorney General. The statement refers in part to positions Alito had taken on affirmative action and abortion.  (The Breaking Documents newsletter alerts readers to new additions to  FindLaw's Feature Documents service.)

Alito by the Numbers: Financial Disclosure Forms

The Law Librarian Blog is reporting that (in a post entitled Adjunct Professor Alito) its sister blog TaxProf Blog links to Supreme Court Nominee Samuel Alito’s latest financial disclosure forms. The two files are:

• Financial Disclosure Report: Calendar Year 2003 [Alito, Samuel A.] (7 page PDF)
• Financial Disclosure Report for Calendar Year 2004 [Alito, Samuel A.] (7 page PDF)

The Nominee as an Undergraduate: Alito's Senior Thesis

When Samuel Alito's nomination was first announced, there was some buzz about his senior thesis, which at the time was missing from the Princeton libraries.  (The conspiracy theories never really got off the ground because the thesis had been missing since 1976.)

Now Alito's thesis adviser has donated his copy, and Princeton University's Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library has made it available for downloading.

You can download Alito's An Introduction to the Italian Constitutional Court [PDF; 137 pages] from the Mudd Library News & Information page.

[Thanks to the Princeton University Library for the document, and to Howard Bashman's How Appealing for the tip!]

Analyzing Alito - Raw Material Via U. Michigan & Library of Congress

The ever-helpful folks at the University of Michigan Law Library and at the Law Library of Congress have wasted no time in creating web pages to keep track of information about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

So far, the University of Michigan Law Library's page, Hot Topics: Information on Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Nominee for Justice of the Supreme Court, covers: biographical information; majority, concurring and dissenting opinions  amicus & party briefs; Supreme Court oral argument transcripts; articles by Alito; New York Times articles about Alito; and various miscellaneous  documents. As the consideration of this nominee proceeds, Michigan's law library staff will add to this page. Space has already been set aside for confirmation hearing transcripts and other congressional documents and debates. [A tip of the hat to U. Michigan's Kincaid C. Brown, Barbara H. Garavaglia, Aimee S. Mangan and Jennifer L. Selby who collaborated on this essential web page.]

Notable features of Law Library of Congress's excellent Supreme Court Nominations - Samuel A. Alito: Selected Resources in the Law Library Reading Room include a PDF excerpt of Alito's 1990 confirmation hearings and citations to memoranda written by Alito during his service in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel.  The Law Library of Congress's page also covers articles and book, congressional documents, selected cases, and web sites.  [Thanks to Emily Carr, Legal Reference Specialist, Law Library of Congress, for the tip!]