Alito, do we really want this guy on the Supreme Court ?

[sarettah]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/13084046.htm

Alito shows a different side in his dissents

WASHINGTON - The facts of the case were stunning: A 10-year-old was strip-searched in her home by police officers whose warrant authorized only the search of her father, a suspected drug dealer.

To the other judges who heard the case, the law seemed clearly on the girl's side: The very purpose of a warrant is to limit the scope of permissible searches.

But Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito saw it differently. And his ruling opens a window onto one facet of his judicial philosophy.

Alito said the girl's search, while unfortunate, was justified because supporting documents broadened the warrant's sweep. It was a technicality, he said, that the particulars were left out of the warrant itself, and that was no reason to punish good cops who were just doing their jobs.

He was the only judge hearing the case who thought the police acted properly.

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Those opinions reveal more of a conservative activist, a judge who'd make it harder to prove race- and gender-discrimination claims, limit Congress's regulatory reach and - as the strip-search case suggests - lower the bar for search and seizure standards.

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Alito could have a harder time defending his record than did Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Roberts advocated similar positions when he was a government lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. But he asked the Senate to recognize the difference between things he said as an advocate and the restraint he'd exercised as a judge.

Alito, whose attempts to push the law came during his time on the bench, won't be able to make that distinction.

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In the strip-search case, the 3rd Circuit majority said the police had overstepped their bounds. The opinion was written by then-judge Michael Chertoff, who like Alito was a former prosecutor. He's now homeland security secretary.

Police in the case had requested a warrant to search the suspected drug dealer's home, noting that he often had others present. The warrant named only the suspect.

When police found the man's wife and 10-year-old daughter in the home, they searched them, too. A female officer took them to a bathroom, where they were instructed to disrobe so the officer could search them for drugs.

Chertoff's opinion was blunt: The "face of the warrant ... does not grant authority" to search the girl or her mother, he wrote. Citing a recent Supreme Court precedent, Chertoff said police rarely could exceed the bounds of a warrant. And courts mustn't read a warrant in a way that "violates its fundamental purposes."

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In another search case, Baker v. Monroe Township, Alito disagreed with a ruling that said a woman and her daughters were detained illegally - handcuffed and held at gunpoint - when they happened to walk into a drug bust at a friend's home.

Alito said police had reasonable suspicion, given that "there was a good likelihood that visitors to the apartment were drug buyers." His opinion in that case also turned on fine legal points, but he was attempting to move the law in a direction that was more sympathetic to authorities.

His dissents in other areas reflect a similar strategy: finding a technical basis for disagreement and using that to push the law in a new direction. The question, experts said, is how that might influence Alito's behavior on the high court.