“what is clear, is that the voters themselves, along with the legislators that enacted the law,”

This is sound

It will be interesting how things unfold in regard to Alito.

This is a perfect example of why one should be skeptical about polls, what the majority of people are afraid of is not Roe Vs. Wade being overturned, but a complete ban on abortion, which is what they equate overturning Roe vs. Wade with. If you ask the average joe if States, as opposed to the Supreme Court, should decide their own abortion laws, the results of those polls would be very different. In addition, the vast majority of Americans would support a much more regulated form of abortion, than is allowed with Roe vs. Wade.

One more thing on the Casey case, I did some more searching around, and check out this little tid bit I found by Karlyn Bowman in Roll Call,

In 1992, when Gallup asked people whether they favored or opposed a law requiring that the husband of a married woman be notified if she decides to have an abortion, 73 percent said they were in favor. In 1996, 70 percent were in favor, and in 2003, 72 percent were. In each survey, about a quarter were opposed.

So clearly, whether you, I, or Alito like the law is irrelavant, what is clear, is that the voters themselves, along with the legislators that enacted the law, strongly supported the law, and a Judge has no place, unless the circumstances are extreme, preventing such moral decisions from being enforced.

“know they can no longer forcefully pass their liberal theocracy on the rest of us, and knowing that the voters would never approve of their ideas, they are now left with nothing.”

According to a Gallup poll released this morning an overwhelming majority believe that Alito should not be confirmed if he plans on overturning Roe v Wade.

“And when in doubt, as I’ve said before, I would always err on the side of voters and legislators deciding the moral issues, not judges”

This is a myth too, all of the consevative judges over the past 10 judges have overruled acts of legislatures more often than the liberal judges. It is all rhetoric and soundbytes.

Your point is taken on partial birth abortions. I respect him for his interpeation.

Look at this point based upon the limited information that I know about him, he should probably be confirmed. He seems qualified and his views are not so outside the mainstream to not sit on the court.

Also, I think that the “liberal justices on the court” also base their opinions on the rule of law and not personal opinion as Justice Stevens cited in his dicussion of how much it hurt him to vote as he did in the Eminent domain case in CT.

This is not true, and in fact, the links I point to above specifically rebuke this. Remember Michael, he struck down a ban on partial birth abortion, specifically because it contradicted the Supreme Courts ruling. As I said above, there are a few things pro-lifers agree on more, than a partial birth abortion ban, yet Alito specifically ruled a specific partial birth abortion ban was unconstitutional.

In addition to the above, a closer look at Alito’s record shows that he has voted more in favor of the pro-choice side than the pro-life side, The Christian Science Monitor writes,

The best evidence of his work as a judge are his published opinions. They contain a few surprises and some ammunition - for both the left and the right.

For example, of the four abortion cases in which he participated as an appeals court judge, he voted on the pro-choice side in all but one. A 1995 Alito vote striking down a Pennsylvania abortion restriction in particular is raising eyebrows among some legal scholars.

“That [1995 case] strongly seems to indicate that Alito is not a policy-driven true-believer who’s used every possible opportunity to advance one side’s preferred outcome, but instead a judge who has indeed come down on both sides, in different cases,” says David Garrow, a constitutional historian and expert in reproductive rights cases at the high court. …

His four abortion cases include:

• A 1991 challenge to a Pennsylvania law requiring married women to notify their husbands before seeking an abortion. The court struck down the restriction. Alito dissented.

• A 1995 challenge to a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking to use Medicaid funds to abort a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest to report the incident to law enforcement officials and identify the offender. Alito provided the decisive vote striking down the abortion restriction.

• A 1997 challenge to a New Jersey law that prevents parents from suing for damages on behalf of the wrongful death of a fetus. Alito ruled that the Constitution does not afford protection to the unborn.

• A 2000 challenge to New Jersey’s ban on so-called partial-birth abortions. Alito struck down the law based on a recent Supreme Court decision.

Analysts are divided over the meaning of Alito’s votes and his various writings while on the bench.

Now as far as the specific case you mentioned, the article writes,

The Alito case receiving the most attention is his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In his 15-page dissent, Alito said that while the provision might impose some limitation on a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion it was not so severe as to rise to the level of an “undue burden.”

The judge based that conclusion on his study of Justice O’Connor’s writings on the issue.

Alito’s dissent says that the potential implications on women in abusive relationships were “a matter of grave concern” to him.

But he added that it was for state lawmakers, not judges, to decide the wisdom of such measures. “Whether the legislature’s approach represents sound public policy is not a question for us to decide,” he wrote. “Our task here is simply to decide whether [the abortion law] meets constitutional standards.”

The US Supreme Court took up the case the following year and used the case to broaden the “undue burden” standard, in a way that rejected Alito’s analysis.

But his work was not totally cast aside. Then Chief Justice William Rehnquist embraced and quoted the Alito dissent in his own dissent, which was joined by three other members of the court.

Critics say Alito’s dissent suggests he is not sensitive enough to the concerns of women. They see it as an example of his personal views on abortion influencing his approach to the law.

Supporters say he made an honest effort to identify and apply O’Connor’s “undue burden” standard as it existed at the time.

In the 1995 Medicaid case, Alito cast the deciding vote striking down a Pennsylvania abortion restriction. Analysts say it was a close legal question and Alito could have decided the case either way.

“If he has antiabortion philosophical leanings he did not let that warp his judgment in the case,” says Seth Kreimer, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and co-counsel on the winning side in the 1995 case. “But there are a lot more degrees of freedom at the Supreme Court level than at the court of appeals.”

Clearly Alito is a judge who takes being a Judge, and only a judge, not a legislator, seriously, and it is THIS that scares the hard left the most, with judges like this, they know they can no longer forcefully pass their liberal theocracy on the rest of us, and knowing that the voters would never approve of their ideas, they are now left with nothing.

And when in doubt, as I’ve said before, I would always err on the side of voters and legislators deciding the moral issues, not judges. Whether I personally agree with those morals or not.

The partial birth ban is the law that I am most uncofortable with and i am a pro-choicer.

“a Supreme Court justice who puts the constitution above his personal views on the matter”

I think you are stretching it with this claim. He has never voted against restricting abortion in any case he has decided upon and it is pretty much assumed that he is anti-abortion personally outside of the legal issues. He may disagree with abortion on both constitutiional grounds but this is not in conflict with his own beliefs. This is hardly a case of putting the law above his personal beliefs.

In the Casey case he was in fact rebuked by the upper court for twisting the previously decided “undue burden” principle in deciding the constitutionality of proposed abortion laws to fit his needs. Despite testimony of multiple experts on domestic abuse who stated the alarming number of women in abusive relations with their husbands, he somehow came to the conclusion that since 95% of married women consult their husbands and the majority of abortions are performed upon single women anyway. Their really was not an undue burden in seeking an abortion. This was rebuked by the upper court who correctly ruled that “The fact that § 3209 may affect fewer than one percent of women seeking abortions does not save it from facial invalidity, since the proper focus of constitutional inquiry [505 U.S. 833, 838] is the group for whom the law is a restriction, not the group for whom it is irrelevant.”

If this guy is a true judicial originalist, and I have no reason to suspect he is not, than his ruling in that case had to do with the law on the books, not his personal opinion. And since I am not a lawyer, I don’t know if the law implied that or not, but again assuming he is an originalist, I would agree with his ruling, provided the law really did imply that.

Now, before anyone assumes that it was his personal opinions getting in the way, it is important to note his other abortion rulings, most notably Planned Parenthood v. Farmer (2000), the Wall Street Journal writes:

Placing Judge Alito’s Casey dissent in the context of his other abortion-related decisions further demonstrates his commitment to law over predetermined policy outcomes. In Planned Parenthood v. Farmer (2000), he joined the court in striking down New Jersey’s ban on partial-birth abortion as inconsistent with prevailing Supreme Court precedent. Five years earlier, he joined a majority opinion that deferred to an executive branch agency’s interpretations of federal law, even though doing so meant blocking a state from limiting government funding of abortions. In short, his record is neither that of a “pro-life” or “pro-choice” judge, but of a “pro-law” judge.

Another Wall Street Journal article states:

It’s worth noting that Judge Alito does not automatically rule in favor of laws limiting abortion. In Planned Parenthood v. Farmer, he cited the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion to explain his vote to invalidate a similar law in New Jersey. It is the “responsibility” of judges, he said, “to follow and apply controlling Supreme Court precedent.” At least one pro-life group was rumored yesterday to be considering withholding support for Judge Alito over Farmer–which would be an example of the results-based jurisprudence that conservatives criticize when it is practiced by the left.

As a proud pro-lifer myself, I can safely say that there are few laws we feel more passionately in favor of, than partial birth abortion bans, yet Alito specifically struck down a partial birth abortion ban, precisely because it violated the Supreme Courts clear ruling, in other words Alito is exactly what I have been waiting for, a Supreme Court justice who puts the constitution above his personal views on the matter, a Judge who acts like a Judge, not a legislator.

HP-

Curious about your thoughts on his opinion that a wife must get consent from her husband in order to have an abortion.