Judge Alito's record

Editorial - The Boston Globe: "IN FEDERAL Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush has a Supreme Court nomination that can unite restive conservatives even as it threatens to divide the rest of the country. Yesterday Alito was being described as ''a grand slam" for conservatives, not least because of his dissenting opinion in the 1991 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey -- the last time the Supreme Court affirmed the essential core of abortion rights under Roe. v Wade. The choice seems designed to provoke a confrontation with Democrats and moderates while galvanizing Bush's political base.

Alito, 55, will not likely be undone by doubts about his experience, temperament, or fitness for the court. Unlike John Roberts, he has a paper trail of written opinions over 15 years on the bench. Unlike Harriet Miers, he has solid credentials, including a dozen years' service in the Justice Department and the US attorney's office in New Jersey. What remains at issue is his judicial philosophy: the direction in which he would steer the court as a replacement for the crucial swing vote held by Sandra Day O'Connor. This has always been the most important question, and it would be encouraging, after the politics-besotted Miers episode, if the fight now concentrates on matters of substance.

In that regard, Alito is doubtless a judicial conservative, devoted to the Constitution's original intent and wary of concentrated power in the federal government. In 1996 he was the sole dissenting vote when the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, on which he sits, upheld the authority of Congress to ban automatic machine guns. He has repeatedly warned against the ''unwarranted extension of antidiscrimination laws." In 2001 he wrote a majority opinion that a Pennsylvania public school district's antiharassment policy was a constitutional violation of free speech because it would have prohibited students from expressing their view that homosexuality is a sin. ''There is no 'harassment exception' to the First Amendment's free speech clause," he wrote. And in Casey, which came before him on its way to the Supreme Court, he ruled that requiring a pregnant woman to notify her husband before getting an abortion is not an undue burden on her right to privacy.

Badly scarred by the Meirs experience, the White House spent the weekend testing reactions to Alito and other names with key conservative groups. And the Republican National Committee has launched a phone campaign to social conservatives, state party leaders, and Web loggers to drum up support. So far, Alito has passed the conservative litmus test.

The Senate will need to vigorously engage the profound questions posed by Alito's nomination. After alienating conservatives, Bush has reached for someone who is just right for them, but may be too right for the nation."