Alito, Samuel A Jr

Justice Jackson, a Former Law Clerk, Returns to a Transformed Supreme Court

Less than two hours after the Supreme Court ended a wrenching term last month, it welcomed a new member. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who had been waiting in the wings since she was confirmed by the Senate in April, took two oaths of office — and joined a court in turmoil. “She’s entering the court […]

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Supreme Court Marshal Asks Officials to End Protests at Justices’ Homes

WASHINGTON — The chief security officer of the Supreme Court has asked that Virginia and Maryland officials enforce laws that would prohibit protests outside the homes of justices after weeks of demonstrations favoring abortion rights. In four letters sent to Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland; Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia; Jeffrey McKay, the chairman of […]

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Decades Ago, Alito Laid Out Methodical Strategy to Eventually Overrule Roe

WASHINGTON — In the spring of 1985, a 35-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr., cautioned the Reagan administration against mounting a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that declared a constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court was not ready to overturn it, he said, so urging it […]

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Police Officers Can’t Be Sued for Miranda Violations, Supreme Court Rules

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that police officers may not be sued under a federal civil rights law for failing to administer the familiar warning required by the court’s 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona. The vote was 6 to 3, with the justices dividing along ideological lines. In a second case, […]

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A Battle Over How to Battle Over Roe: Protests at Justices’ Homes Fuel Rancor

But critics say the protesters should not be there at all. Some Republicans have pointed to a 1950 federal statute that says anyone “with the intent of influencing any judge” who “pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied […]

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If Roe Falls, Is Same-Sex Marriage Next?

“Roe’s defenders characterize the abortion right as similar to the rights recognized in past decisions involving matters such as intimate sexual relations, contraception and marriage,” Justice Alito wrote, “but abortion is fundamentally different, as both Roe and Casey acknowledged, because it destroys what those decisions called ‘fetal life’ and what the law now before us […]

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Once Close Allies, Roberts and Alito Have Taken Divergent Paths

WASHINGTON — There was a time when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the author of the leaked draft opinion on abortion that rocked the nation on Monday night, was Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s closest ally on the Supreme Court. The two men are both products of the conservative legal movement, and they were […]

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A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach

WASHINGTON — Sources have motives, and the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade raises a question as old as the Roman Empire. Cui bono? Who benefits? Not the Supreme Court as an institution. Its reputation was in decline even before the extraordinary breach of its norms of confidentiality, with much of the nation persuaded […]

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Leaked Supreme Court Draft Would Overturn Roe v. Wade

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that has guaranteed the right to abortion for nearly a half-century, according to a leaked draft opinion from February published online Monday night by Politico. In the draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a majority of […]

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