Alito Distances Himself From 1985 Memos
Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. yesterday tried to tamp down criticisms of several past statements -- including his assertion that the Constitution does not protect the right to abortion -- by saying they were personal views or an advocate's work and not necessarily indications of how he might rule if confirmed, according to a key senator who quizzed him for more than an hour.
It needs to be understood--and most legal scholars on TV these days agree--that the role of advocate and judge are vastly different. It's hard to come up with an analogy for the 1985 memos, but they can roughly be analogized to trying to figure out whether a potential MLB baseball manager will be good based on his days as a MLB player. There's a little relevancy there, but just a little.
