Alito Rulings

Here's an article from the Washington Post from Jan 1 that reviews Alito's judicial rulings. The Post looked at how Alito voted on all 221 cases he has helped to decide in which the 3rd Circuit issued a divided ruling. It's an interesting read but if you want the short summary:

"Instead, the analysis, along with interviews of scholars who study the courts, shows that Alito takes consistently restrictive stances on some social issues and criminals' rights but does not differ substantially from the typical judge in other areas. Overall, the analysis shows, Alito does not disagree with majority opinions more frequently than most federal appeals judges do in similar cases. Yet a closer look finds that he dissents most often in areas where his views are least typical of the average judge: cases in which he has favored religion and largely sided against immigrants and one group of convicted criminals: prisoners facing the death penalty"

Some things bother me. The article says that in all the death sentence appeals he voted against sparing the prisoner. It says that on average, judges vote to spare about 1/3 of the time. But if you read it carefully you see Alito voted in a total of 4 of these cases, so the average would be to spare 1, which doesn't seem statistically significant.

Not in the summary statements of the article is this: "Alito voted in favor of workers nearly half the time -- about the same as judges nationwide and more often than the average Republican-appointed judge."

I found this a bit troubliing: Alito's views differ from those of most appellate judges and all the current members of the Supreme Court, Lupu said, because "he is on the side of whoever is trying to include or advance a religious message."

Obviously, move to come...