Alito Hearing LiveBlogging in the 4 O’Clock Hour
on Jan 10, 2006 at 4:08 pm
4:38 Sessions finishes. The group takes a breaks until 4:50.
4:33 Sessions is happy to hear that Alito doesn’t think it is helpful to look at foreign court decisions to interpret U.S. Constitution.
4:30 Alito thinks conservatives can be activities just as much as liberals.
Sessions agrees. But real problem is with the liberal activists.
4:29 We get to Sessions point: President can’t reduce his pay or fire him; Congress act as a check on the president by refusing to fund programs. So the assertion that an act of the President is not reviewable in Court isn’t the end of the world, is it?
4:27 Alito doesn’t know how much he’ll make as a Supreme Court Justice but promises he can live on it. He sounds sad.
4:26 Sessions thinks courts have been arrogant and dismissive of State rights on abortion.
4:21 Sessions thinks Garrett was correctly decided (which, he notes, arose from Alabama). Wants to be on the record as agreeing with Sen. DeWine’s analysis of Roe and precedent.
Sessions argues that to the extent Alito’s SG memos reflect a desire to overrule Wade, he was furthering the policy of the Regan Administration, which had made clear that it thought Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled.
4:18 Sessions moves on to machine guns. He notes that the federal machine gun possession statute is unusual in that it doesn’t have a jurisdictional element. He asks Alito to explain to the audience why this is important.
Alito obliges. Describes that Congress has this power to regulate interstate commerce and that Congress has used that power to enact lots of criminal statutes. The statutes, however, have to fall within Congress’s power and the way to make sure that happens is to include a jurisdictional element.
Notes that the Court has said that it is enough to show that the gun had travelled in interstate commerce. Alito refers back to his job at a US Attorney and notes that proving that a gun had travelled in interstate commerce is an easy thing.
Sessions (also a former US Attorney) agrees. “Maybe we ought to check this law out” and insert a jurisdictional element “rather than fussing with it.”
4:15 So this, Sessions explains, is why Alito doesn’t want to voice an opinion about particular important cases — he hasn’t gone through the same sort of briefing, argument, etc. process.
Sessions asks for assurance that Alito will be independent. Alito says he will. Sessions is satisfied.
4:08 Sen. Sessions begins his questioning commending Alito on giving very candid answers. He notes that Alito got some flack for not expressing an opinion on the validity of the Supreme Court’s Lopez decision. Sessions wants to know what a judge should do before reaching a conclusion on a question like that.
Gives Alito a chance to give the viewers a sixth grade civics lesson on how appellate courts work — adversaries present briefs, etc. Sessions interrupts to break it down to a fourth grade level.
Alito notes that on occasion, in writing an opinion he has changed his mind and changed his vote.
