Action Item: Alito

First read this via the Alliance for Justice. Then contact your Democratic and/or Moderate Republican Senators and ask them to reconsider their acceptance of Alito’s claim to respect stare decisis. Below is the letter I just sent to my senator, Evan Bayh. Feel free to nick it in whole.

Dear Senator Bayh:

I am very concerned about what I'm reading regarding Democratic Senators' meetings with Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito. I understand he has been stressing the importance of stare decisis, by which some Senators are feeling reassured.

Senator, my concern is that during his confirmation hearing in 1991, Justice Clarence Thomas identified stare decisis as providing "continuity to our system. It provides predictability, and in our process of case-by-case decision-making, I think it is a very important and critical concept." But since his confirmation, Justice Thomas has argued against Griswold (Lawrence v. Texas), joined a dissent calling for the seminal case preserving the separation of church and state, Lemon v. Kurtzman, to be overruled (Lee v. Weisman), argued against Miranda (Dickerson v. United States), and the list goes on and on. Justice Thomas does not believe in stare decisis, though such was his claim during his nomination process.

Many of Judge Alito's previous rulings indicate he is engaging in the same bit of trickery. As a pro-choice woman, a supporter of equal rights and justice for all, and a believer in the protection of privacy rights, I have very real concerns about the prospect of Judge Alito on the bench of the Supreme Court.

Senator, I hope you will bring to your fellow Democratic Senators' attention the history of a sitting justice who also claimed to believe in stare decisis, and bear in mind how many American minorities' rights, including women, the LGBT community, and ethnic minorities, may well depend on Judge Alito's confirmation.

Sincerely,
Melissa McEwan