Justice Alito's Goat--What Gets It? (Part 3: Connecting the Dots)

Haiti
[Just to be clear: No, I'm not there. Just keeping it in mind. And while I'm at it, Chile, Indonesia, New Orleans, and wherever there is suffering that demands assistance and reminding.]
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So let's put it together. Justice Samuel Alito's dissents. In the last 2 posts on New York Court Watcher, we discussed the value of dissenting opinions in providing insights about the author, and we looked at the last 10 dissents that Alito has written. (See Justice Alito's Goat--What Gets It? (Part 1), Feb. 16, 2010; (Part 2: His Dissents), Feb. 22, 2010.)

President Obama's State of the Union criticism of a Supreme Court decision got Alito's goat. Some of the Court's decisions have evoked criticism by Alito himself. They provoked him into writing dissenting opinions. Like Obama's remarks, they got his goat.

Here's a recap of those last 10 dissenting opinions of Alito that we looked at in the last post. They're out of chronological order and reorganized into some general subject matters. Connect the dots.

Justice Alito's Goat--What Gets It? (Part 2: His Dissents)

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Justice Samuel "Not True" Alito.

At the State of the Union last month, President Obama criticized a recent Supreme Court decision. Alito was caught on camera visibly taking offense and verbally taking issue.

Alito did not hide his displeasure or disagreement with the criticism. He had been part of the majority that rendered the deeply divided and widely denounced campaign finance decision in the Citizen's United case. He was evidently in no mood to sit idly by while taking a hit from the President.

The question raised in the last post on New York Court Watcher is: what else gets Alito's goat? As was discussed in that post, one of the best places to look for what really moves or incites an appellate judge is that judge's dissenting opinions. So we're going to look at Alito's. At the dissenting opinions he wrote.

These aren't all the disagreements that he's had with his fellow Justices. But these are disagreements which he considered so important, or where he considered his colleagues so wrong, that he felt it necessary to break with them publicly and to explain why in his own written opinion. These strong disagreements should tell us a good deal about Alito. (All of the foregoing was explained more fully in that last post: Justice Alito's Goat--What Gets It? (Part 1), Feb. 16, 2010.)

So let's take a look at Justice Alito's last 10 dissents. Specifically, what did the majority of his colleagues decide the last 10 times that Alito was provoked into writing a dissenting opinion? Stated otherwise, what rulings really got his goat?

Justice Alito's Goat--What Gets It? (Part 1)

Haiti
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Justice Samuel Alito was really steamed at the State of the Union address a couple of weeks ago. Yes, Obama's criticism of a recent Supreme Court decision clearly got Alito's goat. What else does?

First, a brief recap of the now infamous incident. I say "infamous" because virtually everyone thinks that either the President or the Justice was out of line. The choice is typically pretty revealing. But that's another matter.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Justice Alito apparently believed that the President had mischaracterized the Court's ruling. As readers of this blog surely know, a bare majority of the Justices, including Alito, held that the McCain-Feingold Act's limits on corporate spending for election campaign ads violated free speech.

Obama said that the ruling opens the floodgates for spending by foreign corporations in American elections. A visibly upset Alito was immediately caught on camera openly repeating "Not true."

No doubt, goat got!

So what else really annoys, irritates, even infuriates Justice Alito? What else bothers him, disturbs his tranquility, raises his blood pressure enough that he's willing to express his displeasure so openly?

A good place to look is his dissents. The dissenting opinions he authored. These are the disagreements with his colleagues' rulings where he felt strongly enough that he chose to go public. Strongly enough that he chose to spend his time and use his staff and resources to compose a personal statement to say that his colleagues are wrong. The personal statement does not change the outcome of a case. It only serves to make public the author's disagreements, criticisms, and deeply held beliefs that the majority of his colleagues have made a mistake. A mistake that is so big and so bad that he cannot in good conscience be silent and just go along.

More often than not, despite the near-obligatory "I repectfully dissent," these personal statements are harsh critiques, warnings of untoward consequences, or censures for irresponsible abuse of judicial power. In short, a dissenting opinion is usually the authoring Justice's personal tongue-lashing (pen-lashing?) of his colleagues. And it's one that is so ardently felt that the Justice feels compelled to go public.

So what are the rulings that got Justice Samuel Alito's goat? The decisions reached by a majority of his colleagues that he thought were so wrong that he just had to write a dissenting opinion to tell the world? Now these would tell us at least as much about Alito as they would the decisions of his colleagues.

So let's look.

In the next post on New York Court Watcher, we'll do just that. We'll look at Justice Alito's dissents. To avoid any cherry-picking, unconscious or otherwise, we'll simply look at his last 10. More precisely, we'll look at the last 1o rulings of the Supreme Court that got Alito's goat enough that he wrote a dissent.

(I'm just about finished doing that. So the next post will follow very shortly.)