Clarification appended
Samuel Alito '72, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said Wednesday that he has "no recollection" of being a member of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), a group that made headlines in recent weeks after critics said it has advocated far-right, anti-coeducational and anti-affirmative action views.
Alito's statement was made in a document released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings on his nomination in January. It comes following scrutiny of comments he made two decades ago in an application for a high-level job in President Reagan's Justice Department.
Alito wrote at the time that he was "a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group." The revelation drew sharp criticism from some observers, who see Alito's past membership in the group as evidence of an extreme conservative perspective.
Though Alito conceded in the judiciary committee statement that the "document I recently reviewed reflects that I was a member of the group in the 1980s," he said: "Apart from that document, I have no recollection of being a member, of attending meetings, or otherwise participating in the activities of the group. The group has no current officers from whom more information may be obtained."
See all of the 'Prince' coverage of the Alito nomination here.
Andrew Napolitano '72, a former CAP board member and friend of Alito's, said the new statement should end debate on the issue. "In my opinion, it's a dead issue, because this was not the type of organization where one attended meetings, or rallies, or participated," Napolitano said Wednesday. "One was either on the board of directors — which was six of us — or one was a contributor, which was thousands of alumni, and that was really it."
Napolitano, a Fox News analyst and former New Jersey superior court judge, previously told The Daily Princetonian he had "zero recollection" of Alito participating in the group. He guessed that Alito's involvement, if any, was probably limited to a financial contribution, but said he does not remember Alito ever making a donation. "His recollection and mine — which is that there's no recollection of him attending any of this stuff — are the same."
But Marsha Levy-Warren '73, a member of the University's first coeducational class and student government vice president, remembers things differently. In an earlier interview, she recalled Alito, Napolitano and T. Harding Jones '72, another CAP member, as "part of a group of extremely conservative undergraduates."
Though Levy-Warren did not recall Alito being involved with CAP as an undergraduate, she said the group "stated explicitly that they were not in favor of coeducation and that they weren't in favor of affirmative action. Implicitly, they were opposed to any form of diversity on campus."
Judicial activism
In the document released Wednesday, Alito also discussed his view on "judicial activism," noting a "paradox inherent in our constitutional structure."
"The framers of the Constitution generally did not think that government institutions and actors could be trusted to refrain from unduly extending their own powers, but our constitutional system relies heavily on the judiciary to restrain itself," Alito wrote.
"Judges must also have faith," he added, "that the cause of justice in the long run is best served if they scrupulously heed the limits of their role rather than transgressing those limits in an effort to achieve a desired result in a particular case."
Because the executive and legislative branches of government have more "democratic legitimacy" and a "comparative advantage" in judging issues and devising and administering policy solutions, Alito wrote, "judges must be appropriately modest in their estimation of their own abilities; they must respect the judgments reached by predecessors; and they must be sensibly cautious about the scope of their decisions."
Alito's comments indicate that he "absolutely" fits Bush's image of an effective justice, University politics professor and constitutional scholar Ken Kersch said.
"I think a statement like this suggests that Judge Alito does believe that it's a problem for a judge to have a broad ambition — even for a good cause," Kersch said.
Kersch noted that Alito shares some of the philosophies of recently-confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts, but contrasted him with arch-conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
"[J]ustices Thomas and Scalia are very much focused on original intent" — the philosophy that the Constitution should be interpreted based on the framer's original point of view — "as their ultimate guiding principle for interpreting the constitution," Kersch said. "It is not clear that that is the case with Roberts and Alito. It's not that they're opposed to that, but they might be more eclectic."
At the same time, Alito's remark that judges must "respect the judgments reached by predecessors" should not necessarily be construed as saying that he would not seek to overturn past precedents — including the landmark abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade, Kersch said.
"Respect for precedence doesn't necessarily mean upholding it," he said, "and that's the way that [Alito] can say that and different people will read the statement to get what they want out of it."
Clarification
An earlier version of this article did not clearly identify Marsha Levy-Warren's quote regarding Concerned Alumni of Princeton's stance on coeducation and affirmative action as relating to the organization specifically.
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