Samuel Alito: The Unwavering Conservative Shaping the Supreme Court

Education and Early Career

Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. was born on April 1, 1950, in Trenton, New Jersey. He attended Princeton University and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1972. Alito then pursued a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and earned his degree in 1975.

Judicial Philosophy and Political Ideology

Justice Alito is widely regarded as a conservative jurist with a strict constructionist approach to interpreting the Constitution. He adheres to the principles of originalism and textualism, believing that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning and the plain text of the law.

Notable Rulings and Important Cases

Since his appointment to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush in 2006, Justice Alito has played a pivotal role in shaping the court's conservative trajectory. Some of his most significant rulings include:

• Upholding the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in Gonzales v. Carhart (2007)
• Ruling in favor of gun rights in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010)
• Dissenting in United States v. Windsor (2013), which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act's definition of marriage as between a man and a woman
• Authoring the leaked draft opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)

Race and Personal Life

Justice Alito is of Italian descent, with his father immigrating to the United States from Italy as a child. He is married to Martha-Ann Bomgardner, and they have two children together. At 72 years old, Alito remains a stalwart conservative voice on the Supreme Court, shaping its jurisprudence with his unwavering commitment to originalism and textualism.