Jump to content

Samuel Alito

Add links
From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.

Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. (born April 1, 1950) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and has served on the court since January 31, 2006.

Quotes

[edit]
Windsor and the United States thus ask us to rule that the presence of two members of the opposite sex is as rationally related to marriage as white skin is to voting or a Y-chromosome is to the ability to administer an estate. That is a striking request and one that unelected judges should pause before granting. Acceptance of the argument would cast all those who cling to traditional beliefs about the nature of marriage in the role of bigots or superstitious fools.
For today’s majority, it does not matter that the right to same-sex marriage lacks deep roots or even that it is contrary to long-established tradition. The Justices in the majority claim the authority to confer constitutional protection upon that right simply because they believe that it is fundamental.
Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected. We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.

2000s

[edit]
  • I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.

2010s

[edit]
  • Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights.
  • In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims.
  • Same-sex marriage presents a highly emotional and important question of public policy—but not a diffcult question of constitutional law. The Constitution does not guarantee the right to enter into a same-sex marriage. Indeed, no provision of the Constitution speaks to the issue.
  • It is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition. In this country, no State permitted same-sex marriage until the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held in 2003 that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the State Constitution. Nor is the right to same-sex marriage deeply rooted in the traditions of other nations. No country allowed same-sex couples to marry until the Netherlands did so in 2000. What Windsor and the United States seek, therefore, is not the protection of a deeply rooted right but the recognition of a very new right, and they seek this innovation not from a legislative body elected by the people, but from unelected judges. Faced with such a request, judges have cause for both caution and humility.
  • The family is an ancient and universal human institution. Family structure refects the characteristics of a civilization, and changes in family structure and in the popular understanding of marriage and the family can have profound effects. Past changes in the understanding of marriage—for example, the gradual ascendance of the idea that romantic love is a prerequisite to marriage—have had far-reaching consequences. But the process by which such consequences come about is complex, involving the interaction of numerous factors, and tends to occur over an extended period of time. We can expect something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted. The long-term conse quences of this change are not now known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.
  • At present, no one—including social scientists, philosophers, and historians—can predict with any certainty what the long-term ramifcations of widespread acceptance of same-sex marriage will be. And judges are certainly not equipped to make such an assessment. The Members of this Court have the authority and the responsibility to interpret and apply the Constitution. Thus, if the Constitution contained a provision guaranteeing the right to marry a person of the same sex, it would be our duty to enforce that right. But the Constitution simply does not speak to the issue of same-sex marriage. In our system of government, ultimate sovereignty rests with the people, and the people have the right to control their own destiny. Any change on a question so fundamental should be made by the people through their elected offcials.
  • In asking the Court to determine that § 3 of DOMA is subject to and violates heightened scrutiny, Windsor and the United States thus ask us to rule that the presence of two members of the opposite sex is as rationally related to marriage as white skin is to voting or a Y-chromosome is to the ability to administer an estate. That is a striking request and one that unelected judges should pause before granting. Acceptance of the argument would cast all those who cling to traditional beliefs about the nature of marriage in the role of bigots or superstitious fools. By asking the Court to strike down DOMA as not satisfying some form of heightened scrutiny, Windsor and the United States are really seeking to have the Court resolve a debate between two competing views of marriage.
  • For today’s majority, it does not matter that the right to same-sex marriage lacks deep roots or even that it is contrary to long-established tradition. The Justices in the majority claim the authority to confer constitutional protection upon that right simply because they believe that it is fundamental.
  • This understanding of marriage, which focuses almost entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry, is shared by many people today, but it is not the traditional one. For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite-sex couple can do: procreate.
  • While, for many, the attributes of marriage in 21st century America have changed, those States that do not want to recognize same-sex marriage have not yet given up on the traditional understanding. They worry that by officially abandoning the older understanding, they may contribute to marriage’s further decay. It is far beyond the outer reaches of this Court’s authority to say that a State may not adhere to the understanding of marriage that has long prevailed, not just in this country and others with similar cultural roots, but also in a great variety of countries and cultures all around the globe.
  • Today’s decision usurps the constitutional right of the people to decide whether to keep or alter the traditional understanding of marriage. The decision will also have other important consequences. It will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy. In the course of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.
  • Perhaps recognizing how its reasoning may be used, the majority attempts, toward the end of its opinion, to reassure those who oppose same-sex marriage that their rights of conscience will be protected. We will soon see whether this proves to be true. I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools. The system of federalism established by our Constitution provides a way for people with different beliefs to live together in a single nation. If the issue of same-sex marriage had been left to the people of the States, it is likely that some States would recognize same-sex marriage and others would not. It is also possible that some States would tie recognition to protection for conscience rights. The majority today makes that impossible. By imposing its own views on the entire country, the majority facilitates the marginalization of the many Americans who have traditional ideas. Recalling the harsh treatment of gays and lesbians in the past, some may think that turnabout is fair play. But if that sentiment prevails, the Nation will experience bitter and lasting wounds.
  • Most Americans—understandably—will cheer or lament today’s decision because of their views on the issue of same-sex marriage. But all Americans, whatever their thinking on that issue, should worry about what the majority’s claim of power portends.

2020s

[edit]
  • You can't say that marriage is the union between one man and one woman. Until very recently, that's what the vast majority of Americans thought. Now it's considered bigotry.

Misattributed

[edit]

Quotes about Alito

[edit]
I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same. ~ Gustavo Arellano
Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers. History will see Alito's vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place. ~ Gustavo Arellano
  • During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an "extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties" to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country's fabric, from music to politics to food. It's the most American of tales — which is why it's so surprising, yet not, to read Alito's blistering dissent in the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision rejecting President Donald Trump's effort to end birthright citizenship. If there's one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it's how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed. But Alito's stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — "overran," "soared," "exploded," "massive," "a stream," "huge" — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father's time.
  • The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Ronald Reagan's 1986 amnesty "at least in part because of fraud" — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.
    And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.
    I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.
  • My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so. Like Alito's paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs. And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That's why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.
  • The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return. I agree that's a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump's attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He'd rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn't like. Thank God his side lost, yet it's sad that Trump's pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did. Alito concludes by stating that the court's decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is "a mistake that will seriously affect the country's future."
    What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito's family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers. History will see Alito's vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.
  • Justice Samuel Alito minced no words in his public evisceration of the Supreme Court’s 6-3 Murthy v. Missouri decision to greenlight the Biden administration’s flagrant First Amendment violations. …While most of his colleagues mocked self-censorship, Alito and his fellow dissidents accurately classified Big Tech and the Biden administration’s coordinated attempt to suppress online speech, especially during the media-fueled panic over Covid-19, as a “serious threat to the First Amendment” that warrants intervention. …Alito concluded his written thrashing with a warning that the threat of government censorship “did not come with expiration dates” or lose steam “merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis.”
    On the contrary, he wrote that Facebook and other Big Tech companies’ publicized promise to “continue reporting to the White House and remain responsive to its concerns for as long as the officials requested” suggests this will be an ongoing losing battle for Americans who want to speak their minds on social media.
  • Samuel Alito’s inclinations have not been hard to discern lately. At the Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship earlier this month, legal experts identified him without hesitation as the justice likeliest to side with President Trump. “What we’re dealing with here is something that was basically unknown at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, which is illegal immigration,” Alito said. The comment hinted at a desire to sidestep the original understanding of the amendment, which, his fellow justices suggested, was that people born on American soil are U.S. citizens.
    Five months earlier, at a hearing on tariffs, even Alito’s erstwhile admirers at the National Review objected when Alito started referencing other statutes, not cited by Trump, as justifications for the president’s orders. The conservative outlet slapped back that “it is not the Court’s job to opine on powers the president has not invoked”—a notable rebuke from a publication that Alito read avidly as a young man.
  • This, too, was a facet of Alito's jurisprudence: a determination to place the beliefs of social conservatives on the same plane- or higher, if their belief stemmed from their religion- as the antidiscrimination protections enacted on behalf of racial and sexual minorities. "I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes," Alito wrote ruefully, "but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools."
    The Obergefell decision ended a chapter in Supreme Court history. Scalia's death was just the start of a period of turnover that would yield a very different- and far more conservative- judicial majority, one in which Alito himself would reign supreme.
    • Peter S. Canellos, Revenge for the Sixties: Samuel Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement (2026), New York: Simon & Schuster first hardcover edition, p. 201
  • Throughout the summer and fall [of 2025], as the court considered emergency injunctions on numerous presidential orders, Alito was a consistent and often vociferous Trump supporter. While Trump's own appointees- Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavenaugh- appeared willing at times to rein in the president, Alito and Thomas did not. When the court agreed to keep in place a lower court order blocking Trump from withholding the $2 billion in funds owed to USAID contractors whose work was already completed, Alito was outraged.
    "Today, the Court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers," he wrote in dissent.
    • Peter S. Canellos, Revenge for the Sixties (2026), New York: Simon & Schuster first hardcover edition, p. 243
  • Rose Alito, who spent more than three decades in Chambersburg, lived to be ninety-eight. Near the end of her life, her trusted and beloved son, one of the most powerful men in the country, took her on a drive through the old neighborhood. They would have passed by her childhood home at 78 Hudson Street, the remnants of the Roebling plant where her father worked, and the many flats the young Sam Sr. was able to secure for his itinerant family. There is no record of what Rose thought of all this- what she saw through her wizened eyes. Was it a journey down memory lane or a rude awakening?
    Justice Alito, however, shared his reactions. For him, Chambersburg lived mostly in the stories told by Rose and Sam Sr. of their hardships and the faith that overcame them. It also survived in the memory of the nine-year-old boy watching the majestic Columbus statue being raised, with all the music and colors and speeches from priests and Italian diplomats.
    While navigating the streets of his mother's youth, Alito was moved but also depressed. He could find no vibrancy, no hope, in the changed tableau before him. The story of Chambersburg was one of loss and decline, a dirge of sadness and regret.
    "Things have unfortunately changed a lot," he told The American Spectator in one of his many interviews with right-wing publications. "A couple of years ago I drove my mother around the areas of Trenton where she had grown up-" His interviewer interrupted to recite the famous slogan on the lighted sign on the Lower Trenton Bridge spanning the Delaware River: "Trenton Makes, the World Takes."
    The irony was painful as Alito's mind tilted backward. He could find nothing positive to say. "People joke about it, but it was true," he said. "At one point the city was a model for America. It really has deteriorated."
    • Peter S. Canellos, Revenge for the Sixties (2026), New York: Simon & Schuster first hardcover edition, p. 256-257
  • Your record raises troubling questions about whether you appreciate the checks and balances in our Constitution -- the careful efforts of our Founding Fathers to protect us from a government or a president determined to seize too much power over our lives.
    • Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-ILL) at Alito's confirmation hearing.
  • You have obviously had a very distinguished record, and I certainly commend you for long service in the public interest. I think it is a very commendable career and I am sure you will have a successful one as a judge.
    • Sen. Ted Kennedy, speaking on Alito's nomination to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Committee On The Judiciary, U.S. Senate, Hearing, [1990-04-05].
  • I believe Mr. Alito has the experience and the skills to be the kind of judge the public deserves – one who is impartial, thoughtful, and fair. I urge the Senate to confirm his nomination.
    • Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), speaking on Alito's nomination to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Congressional Record, [1990-04-27], p. S5281.
  • The confirmation of Sam Alito as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey is testimony to the commitment he has shown and the success of his efforts as a law enforcement official. I am confident that he will continue to do all he can to uphold the laws of this nation with the kind of determination and vigor that has been his trademark in the past.
    • Former Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ), Congressional Record, [1987-12-08], p. S17427.
  • There was the abortion brief and also the brief in the Wygant case. I had a big hand in writing it, and so did Sam Alito, who had this marvelous phrase saying that a particular African American baseball player would not have served as a great role model if the fences had been pulled in every time he was up at bat, a point which some people were greatly offended by because they thought it to be pamphleteering. I thought it was entirely appropriate.
    • Charles Fried (Solicitor General 1985 to 1989) in 2003.
  • Of course he's against abortion.
    • Rose Alito, Samuel Alito's 90-year-old mother in an Associated Press, "On abortion, a nuanced stand" telephone interview from her Hamilton, N.J., home by Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, (November 2, 2005).
  • The federal right to abortion was predicated on the privacy rights outlined in the 14th Amendment — similar to the legal justification that secured marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. When the conservative majority ended Roe on June 24, 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion arguing for the court to reconsider Obergefell, as well as Griswold v. Connecticut (which codified the right to contraceptives) and Lawrence v. Texas (which legalized homosexuality on June 26, 2003, exactly 12 years to the day before Obergefell). And Thomas isn’t the only justice who worries Obergefell. In his confirmation hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh refused to answer then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ questions about whether Obergefell was decided correctly. In 2024, Justice Samuel Alito, who opposed the decision, said he was worried about how the government could label those opposed to gay marriage “as bigots.” Chief Justice John Roberts also opposed Obergefell in 2015. “Just who do we think we are?” he said from the bench in a blistering dissent.
    Following the marriage equality case, whenever Obergefell walked past the Supreme Court, a feeling of solemn pride swelled in his chest. “Our legal system worked the way we’re told it’s supposed to,” he says. “I don’t feel that anymore. When I walk past this building now, I feel fear.”
  • There's an outside chance that Roberts might assign [the opinion] to Alito, but, you know, [it's] Alito's second year on the Court; he should still do the tax and ERISA cases for a few more years. I think this case is too intersting for him.
    • Georgetown University law professor Richard Lazarus, in a panel discussion on Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, C-SPAN2, [2006-11-29] (at approx. 60:00).
    • The panel, held a few hours after oral argument, was asked which justice would write the controlling opinion when the case was decided.
  • The people's right to have their day in court is being foreclosed. Corporate victories in federal and state elections work hand in hand with this mission by assuring the nomination of more commercially-responsive judges such as Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Scalia and Alito, with the same being true in many states.
  • Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have opened the court's term by calling for the overturning of its 2015 marriage equality decision. The Obergefell v. Hodges decision threatens religious liberty, Alito wrote in a statement in which Thomas concurred. The statement accompanied the court's order deciding not to review an appeals court decision that went against Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who famously closed down marriage license operations rather than serve same-sex couples.
  • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, one of the court’s most conservative members, finds it regrettable that potential jurors in a lesbian’s discrimination case were dismissed for their homophobic religious beliefs. Alito joined the court majority in declining to hear an appeal of the matter by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, because the case “is complicated by a state-law procedural issue,” he wrote in an order issued Tuesday. “But I write because I am concerned that the lower court’s reasoning may spread and may be a foretaste of things to come,” he added.
    Jean Finney had sued her employer, the Missouri Department of Corrections, alleging discrimination because she is a masculine-presenting lesbian and retaliation over a relationship. During jury selection, Finney’s lawyer asked if any of the potential jurors went to a conservative Christian church where it’s taught that homosexuality is a sin and that gay people don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else. Two of the would-be jurors said they did consider it a sin, although they said they supported equal rights for all. The lawyer moved to have them taken off the case. The trial court judge agreed, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed this. “The state ultimately lost the case, prompting its lawyers to seek a new trial based on the jury selection process,” NBC News reports. “The Missouri Court of Appeals ruled against the state, and the Missouri Supreme Court declined to hear the case, prompting Bailey to turn to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
  • While agreeing that the procedural issue would keep the high court from taking the case, Alito expressed concern about discrimination against people with anti-LGBTQ+ religious beliefs. “The court below reasoned that a person who still holds traditional religious views on questions of sexual morality is presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is a lesbian,” he wrote. “That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in [the marriage equality decision] Obergefell v. Hodges … namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.”
    “When a court, a quintessential state actor, finds that a person is ineligible to serve on a jury because of his or her religious beliefs, that decision implicates fundamental rights,” the justice continued. He would have favored taking the case “were it not for the fact that the Court of Appeals concluded that the Department of Corrections did not properly preserve an objection to dismissal of the two potential jurors,” he wrote. So he “reluctantly” agreed to reject it.
    Alito had dissented from the Obergefell ruling and has gone on to say he’d like to see it overturned. In another example of his ideology, he wrote the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and its national guarantee of abortion rights.
  • When Justice Samuel Alito wrote the leaked draft of his opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, he cited the conservative argument that someone who places a newborn for adoption today will likely find the baby a good home because of high demand.
In a footnote, he cited a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report from 2008 describing the domestic supply of infants available for adoption as “virtually nonexistent.”
  • Samuel 'no ladies at Princeton' Alito

See also

[edit]
[edit]
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wikisource
Wikisource
Wikisource has original works by or about:
Retrieved from "https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Samuel_Alito&oldid=3975214"