While Roberts has impeccable credentials, he didn't have nearly the amount of rulings on record as Alito. Therefore, there was much more to find issues with.

While Roberts has impeccable credentials, he didn't have nearly the amount of rulings on record as Alito. Therefore, there was much more to find issues with.

Ok, Find them. List them. I am not asking for a complete litnany, just the ones where he did not rule like Roberts that has a bee in the Liberals bonnet.

Well, for one--in addition to Davad's--Robert's was replacing Rhenquist; Alito is replacing the Sandra O' Conner swing vote. Further, I doubt Robert's would agree with Alito on the bodily search of little girls.

Ok, Find them. List them. I am not asking for a complete litnany, just the ones where he did not rule like Roberts that has a bee in the Liberals bonnet.

I'll give you a few examples, but it's all speculation with regards to how Roberts would have ruled on the same case.

U.S. v. Rybar, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996),, was a case considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, a federal appeals court that has jurisdiction over Pennsylvania, Delaware, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Judge Alito's home state of New Jersey.

A three-judge panel of the Court heard the case, and Alito disagreed with his two colleagues. Alito argued in a dissenting opinion that the federal ban on the possession of fully automatic, repeating machine guns - a law that has been on the books in some form since 1934 - is unconstitutional. The Rybar case involved a gun dealer, Raymond Rybar, who unlawfully possessed a "Chinese Type 54, 7.62-millimeter submachine gun" and a "U.S. Military M-3, .45 caliber submachine gun." Id. at 275. In his dissent, Alito argued that Congress may have no power to regulate "the simple possession of a firearm," as this "is not 'economic' or 'commercial' activity..." Id. at 292.

The two appeals judges who formed the majority in the Rybar case dismissed Alito's dissent in harsh terms. Noting that Alito's opinion would require that Congress make specific findings as to a link between possessing a machine gun and its effect on interstate commerce, the majority said that "making such a demand of Congress or the Executive runs counter to the deference that the judiciary owes to its two coordinate branches of government, a basic tenet of the constitutional separation of powers." The law, the majority wrote, did not require Congress or the executive branch "to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute." Id. at 282.

All but one of the other federal appeals courts to have considered the law in the wake of the 1995 Supreme Court decision that Alito extrapolated from, United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), have agreed with the Rybar majority - and not Alito. The one court that arguably disagreed with the Rybar majority (based on slightly different facts) later had its judgment vacated by the Supreme Court. The courts in these cases have overwhelmingly rejected Alito's cramped view of Congress' law-making authority - and his over-inflated view of the power of judges to strike down laws. These many decisions represent a consensus - to which Alito apparently does not subscribe - that Congress can enact laws limiting the possession and transfer of dangerous weapons and thereby protect public safety.

See United States v. Franklyn, 157 F.3d 90 (2nd Cir. 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1112 (1999); United States v. Kirk, 70 F.3d 791 (5th Cir.1995), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 808 (1997); United States v. Knutson, 113 F.3d 27 (5th Cir. 1997); United States v. Beuckelaere, 91 F.3d 781 (6th Cir.1996); United States v. Kenney, 91 F.3d 884 (7th Cir.1996); United States v. Pearson, 8 F.3d 631 (8th Cir.1993), cert. denied, 511 U.S. 1126 (1994); United States v. Rambo, 74 F.3d 948 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 819 (1996); United States v. Wilks, 58 F.3d 1518 (10th Cir.1995); United States v. Haney, 264 F.3d 1161 (10th Cir. 2001), cert. denied, 536 U.S. 907 (2002); United States v. Wright, 117 F.3d 1265 (11th Cir. 1997). (Another panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the interstate commerce power did not reach a machine gun that was actually built by its inventor and thus was never sold. United States v. Stewart, 348 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 2001). But the Supreme Court vacated the Stewart decision and directed the 9th Circuit to reconsider in light of a subsequent Supreme Court decision, Gonzales v. Raich, 125 S.Ct. 2195 (2005).)

In Doe v. Groody, 361 F.3d 232 (3d Cir. 2004), cert. denied, 125 S. Ct. 111 (2004), Judge Alito wrote in dissent that police officers did not violate the Constitution when they strip-searched a 10 year-old girl - who was not a criminal suspect - while executing a warrant that only authorized the search of the target of their investigation. The facts, as described in the majority opinion, were as follows: "Once inside, however, the officers found no visitors, but only John Doe's wife, Jane, and their ten year old daughter, Mary... They were instructed to empty their pockets and lift their shirts. The female officer patted their pockets. She then told Jane and Mary Doe to drop their pants and turn around. No contraband was found." Doe, 361 F.3d at 236.

Alito wrote that he agreed with the majority opinion's "visceral dislike of the intrusive search" of the child. Nevertheless, Alito insisted that his colleagues in the majority were wrong and that the search was allowed by the Constitution.

Current U.S. Homeland Security Secretary and long-time Republican federal prosecutor Michael Chertoff, who was then Alito's colleague as a judge on the Third Circuit, wrote the majority opinion disagreeing with Alito. Chertoff asserted that if the court were to accept Alito's position, it would "transform the judicial officer into little more than the cliche 'rubber stamp.'" Id. at 243. Moreover, the Chertoff majority described the facts of the case as "a particularly bad instance" for the court to allow a wide interpretation of the search warrant. Id. at 242. Alito's dissent was out of the mainstream of Fourth Amendment law.

Doe v. Groody is just one of a series of cases in which Alito pushed to narrow the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Alito has filed more than a dozen dissents in criminal cases and cases involving the Constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure - nearly always voting against individual rights (except, in the Rybar case described in Fact Sheet #1, the right to possess a machine gun). (Slate, 11/1/05.)

Law professor Goodwin Liu has noted that during Alito's tenure as a federal appeals judge he has participated in ten death penalty cases: "Five were decided unanimously by three-judge panels and involved fairly straightforward issues. The other five provoked strong differences of opinion between Alito and his colleagues. In every one of the five contested cases, Alito voted against the inmate and issued an opinion. Individually and especially as a whole, these opinions show a troubling tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings. Whatever one may think of the death penalty, Alito's record should give pause to all Americans committed to basic fairness and due process of law." (Los Angeles Times, 11/27/05)

A three-judge panel of the Court heard the case, and Alito disagreed with his two colleagues. Alito argued in a dissenting opinion that the federal ban on the possession of fully automatic, repeating machine guns - a law that has been on the books in some form since 1934 - is unconstitutional. The Rybar case involved a gun dealer, Raymond Rybar, who unlawfully possessed a "Chinese Type 54, 7.62-millimeter submachine gun" and a "U.S. Military M-3, .45 caliber submachine gun." Id. at 275. In his dissent, Alito argued that Congress may have no power to regulate "the simple possession of a firearm," as this "is not 'economic' or 'commercial' activity..." Id. at 292.

The two appeals judges who formed the majority in the Rybar case dismissed Alito's dissent in harsh terms. Noting that Alito's opinion would require that Congress make specific findings as to a link between possessing a machine gun and its effect on interstate commerce, the majority said that "making such a demand of Congress or the Executive runs counter to the deference that the judiciary owes to its two coordinate branches of government, a basic tenet of the constitutional separation of powers." The law, the majority wrote, did not require Congress or the executive branch "to play Show and Tell with the federal courts at the peril of invalidation of a Congressional statute." Id. at 282.

All but one of the other federal appeals courts to have considered the law in the wake of the 1995 Supreme Court decision that Alito extrapolated from, United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), have agreed with the Rybar majority - and not Alito. The one court that arguably disagreed with the Rybar majority (based on slightly different facts) later had its judgment vacated by the Supreme Court. The courts in these cases have overwhelmingly rejected Alito's cramped view of Congress' law-making authority - and his over-inflated view of the power of judges to strike down laws. These many decisions represent a consensus - to which Alito apparently does not subscribe - that Congress can enact laws limiting the possession and transfer of dangerous weapons and thereby protect public safety.

In Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 110 F.3d 986 (3d Cir. 1997), Beryl Bray, a hotel employee, sued under the federal Title VII law, claiming that her employer discriminated against her because of her race. Judge Alito's dissent would have created a difficult, if not insurmountable burden of proof for Bray that would have kept the case from being heard by a jury and would have gutted the statute for future victims of discrimination. Alito's colleagues in the Court majority sharply criticized his dissent; they wrote, "[Alito's] position would immunize an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer's belief that it had selected the 'best' candidate, was the result of conscious racial bias." Bray, 110 F.3d at 993. The majority concluded that "Title VII would be eviscerated" if Alito's view prevailed. Id.

Knight Ridder news service published an independent review of Alito's 311 published opinions as a Third Circuit judge. One of its conclusions: "Alito has been particularly rigid in employment discrimination cases. Many conservative jurists set a high bar for plaintiffs who allege racial, gender or age bias in the workplace, but Alito has seldom found merit in a bias claim." (Knight-Ridder, 12/1/05)

Alito's dissent in Bray is particularly troubling given some of his other opinions on matters involving racial bias. In Grant v. Shalala, 989 F.2d 1332 (3d Cir. 1993), Alito authored an opinion that raised barriers to bringing discrimination claims. In the case, Alito overruled a District Court decision that would have allowed a trial on the bias claims. In a dissent in the case, Judge Leon Higginbotham criticized Alito's opinion: "What [Alito] proposes to do in [his] holding is effectively have courts take a back seat to bureaucratic agencies in protecting constitutional liberties. This... is a radical and unwise redefinition of the relationship between federal courts and federal agencies..." Grant, 989 F.2d at 1359 (Higginbotham, J., dissenting).

Alito has also offered out-of-the-mainstream views on racial bias in the context of criminal justice. In Riley v. Taylor, 277 F.3d 261 (3d Cir. 2001) (en banc), Alito sided against an African-American defendant after a trial in which government prosecutors struck all three black prospective jurors from the jury pool. Alito dismissed statistical evidence of racial motivations for striking jurors, noting that although only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, left-handed candidates had won five of the last six presidential elections. He added, "But does it follow that the voters cast their ballots based on whether a candidate was right- or left-handed?" Riley, 277 F.3d at 327. The majority opinion in Riley pointedly disagreed with Alito's analogy to left-handers: "To suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants." Id. at 292.

In June 2005, in Miller-El v. Dretke, the Supreme Court granted relief to a black man sentenced to death after the prosecutor had struck 10 of 11 qualified black jurors. The Court, in an opinion joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Alito would replace if confirmed, said - contrary to Alito's argument in the Riley case - that excluding so many black jurors could not be viewed as "happenstance."

In Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 226 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2000), Judge Alito held that Congress did not have the authority to give the country's nearly five million state employees the right to sue their employers for damages for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act's guarantee of personal unpaid sick leave. Alito, who has stressed his commitment to judicial restraint and deference to other branches of government, stepped up to strike down a law Congress enacted to provide assistance to Americans at critical periods in their lives - when a worker or family member is ill.

Facing a similar set of facts in Nevada Dept. of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721 (2003), the Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion from Alito's: it found that state employees can enforce their rights under the part of the law requiring employers to provide for family leave. In the Hibbs decision, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, writing for the 6-3 majority, envisioned a world still shaped by the "pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women's work." Hibbs, 538 U.S. at 731. The court accordingly held Congress empowered to enact family leave legislation to "dismantle persisting gender-based barriers to . . . women in the workplace." Id. at 734.

In Public Interest Research Group v. Magnesium Electron, 123 F.3d 111 (3d Cir. 1997), Judge Alito sided with the corporate polluter in a 2-1 ruling that wiped a $2.62 million fine off the books and restricted citizens' access to the courts. The plaintiffs proved that the defendant corporation had violated the Clean Water Act 150 times, discharging pollutants into a stream used by the plaintiffs for fishing and swimming. But Alito supported erecting new obstacles for environmental plaintiffs to have their day in court.

Three years later, in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw, 528 U.S. 167 (2000), the Supreme Court essentially rejected the burden on environmental plaintiffs supported by Alito, voting 7-2 with only Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

Alito displayed a similar deference to corporate polluters in W.R. Grace & Co. v. U.S. EPA, 261 F.3d 330 (3d Cir. 2001). Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has emergency powers that allow it to protect a public water source from imminent threats to public health and safety, including terrorist attacks. In W.R. Grace, a polluter challenged an emergency order issued by the EPA to protect the public health from a large ammonia plume that threatened the drinking water of Lansing, Michigan. Alito joined a 2-1 opinion which overturned this emergency order and imposed a stiff burden on the EPA to prove that the order was "the only way" to protect public health. The ruling could affect how the EPA and other federal agencies are able to react to environmental emergencies.

Alito's votes in these environmental cases are consistent with the stance he took as a lawyer in the Reagan administration, when he urged that President Reagan veto a piece of consumer protection legislation, offering this explanation: "It is the states, and not the federal government, that are charged with protecting the health, safety and welfare of their citizens." If this extreme view became the law of the land, it would endanger environmental protections.