A word from Susan Sullivan

Yesterday I wrote about Judge Alito’s former law clerk Susan Sullivan (1990-91). Susan has kindly forwarded us a copy of her op-ed on Judge Alito’s nomination. While we don’t share Susan’s political perspective, the recollections of her work for Judge Alito are timely:

Most efforts at evaluating the nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court have fallen along predictable party lines. By opposing the nomination however, my fellow liberals and I run the real danger of shooting ourselves in our own left foot.
I was one of Judge Alito’s law clerks in 1990-1991, the year the Casey decision was decided. I consider myself a social progressive. I am a card carrying member of the ACLU, a liberal pro-choice advocate who supports abortion rights. I favor gun control support gay marriage and oppose the death penalty. I don’t have a problem if you want to take “God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance. In short, no one is likely to mistake me for a conservative any time soon. Yet, I support the nomination of Judge Alito because I know from having worked closely with him that he is not a political ideologue and is not intent on advancing a conservative political agenda.
As a liberal, what scares me is not the prospect of having Sam Alito on the Supreme Court; what scares me is the way my fellow Liberal Democrats are behaving in response to the nomination. I

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