Samuel A. Alito jr

US Supreme Court justice since 2006

Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. (/əˈliːtoʊ/ ə-LEE-toh ; born April 1, 1950) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States . He was nominated to the high court by President George W. Bush on October 31, 2005, and has served on it since January 31, 2006. After Antonin Scalia , Alito is the second Italian American justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court .

Alito was raised in Hamilton Township, New Jersey , and graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School . After law school, he worked as an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel and served as the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey . In 1990, Alito was appointed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit , where he served until joining the Supreme Court. He has called himself a "practical originalist" and is a member of the Supreme Court's conservative bloc .

Alito has written majority opinions in the landmark cases _McDonald v. Chicago _ (2010) on firearm rights, _Burwell v. Hobby Lobby _ (2014) on insurance coverage, _Janus v. AFSCME _ (2018) on public-sector union security agreements, and _Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization _ (2022) on abortion.

Early life and education

Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey , on April 1, 1950. He was the son of Samuel A. Alito Sr., born Salvatore Alati (1914–1987), a Calabrian immigrant from Saline Joniche , a town in the municipality of Montebello Jonico , in the province of Reggio Calabria . . His mother was Rose Fradusco (1914–2013), an Italian-American whose parents came from Palazzo San Gervasio in Basilicata .

Alito's paternal grandfather, Antonino Alati (1880–1963; anglicized to Anthony Alito), sailed from Italy to Philadelphia in 1913 aboard the SS Ancona . Alito's father earned a master's degree at Rutgers University and was a high school teacher and later the first director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, a state government position he held from 1952 to 1984. Alito's mother was a schoolteacher.

Alito in the Princeton University yearbook, 1972

Alito grew up in Hamilton Township, New Jersey , a suburb of Trenton. He attended Steinert High School , where he graduated in 1968 as the class valedictorian , subsequently matriculating at Princeton University . In 1972, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts , _summa cum laude _, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs . His senior thesis, supervised by political scientist Walter F. Murphy , was entitled "An Introduction to the Italian Constitutional Court". …

Abortion

• On a Third Circuit panel, the majority in _Planned Parenthood v. Casey _ overturned one part of a law regulating abortion, the provision mandating that married women first inform their husbands if they sought an abortion. Alito, the third judge on the panel, disagreed, arguing that he would have upheld the spousal notification requirement along with the rest of the law.

Federalism

• A dissenting opinion in _United States v. Rybar _, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), arguing that a U.S. …