Comments Of Sen. Patrick Leahy,
Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee,
At The Conclusion Of The Hearings
On The Nomination Of Judge Samuel Alito
To The U.S. Supreme Court
Friday, January 13, 2006

For the public and for a nominee, the hearings are the one accountability moment before a lifetime on the Supreme Court.  After these hearings many question marks remain about Judge Alito.   

Judge Alito responded to numerous questions, but he fell short of adequately answering far too many of them.

At this stage, the concerns that I had at the start of the hearings have not gone away -- about his views on the importance of the court’s role as an effective check on overreaching presidential power, and on government intrusion into the lives and the privacy of Americans.  More concerns have arisen during the hearings – such as his refusal Thursday to flatly agree that Congress cannot take away the Supreme Court’s ability to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.  It is troubling – and frankly, astonishing – that a nominee to our highest court would refuse to give that basic assurance about protecting some of Americans’ basic rights: freedom of speech, religion, assembly and of the press.  The Constitution clearly makes the Supreme Court, not Congress, the ultimate protector of our constitutional rights, and Congress should not be able to take them away by passing a law.

As I did after the hearings for Chief Justice Roberts, I will review my notes and in some cases the transcript and will make my decision before the committee votes.

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