SUPPORTERS of President Bush’s nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court shouldn’t get complacent, but the fundamentals are all in place for Alito to be easily confirmed by the Senate on January 20.
For starters, Alito is a spectacularly well-qualified nominee-among the best-qualified ever. In the Reagan administration, he briefed and argued cases before the Supreme Court and then served as a deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel—the office in the Justice Department, previously headed by Rehnquist and Scalia, that advises the White House on difficult questions involving the Constitution and other federal law. His years as a federal prosecutor, first as a young lawyer and later as a U.S. attorney, give him an invaluable real-world understanding of criminal-law enforcement. And he has been a federal appellate judge for 15 years. In all these capacities, Alito has shined.
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