Bloodless Coup

Professor Murphy on Judge Alito and Justice Thomas

For what it's worth, here is how Walter Murphy, the McCormick Professor in Jurisprudence Emeritus at Princeton University, evaluates Judge Alito, and his comments on comparing him to Justice Clarence Thomas.

Murphy, who has kept in touch with Alito over the years and has invited him to guest lecture in classes, also offered some impressions of Alito's stances on key judicial questions.

Murphy said he and Alito agree that the 1973 landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

"He is much more an Anti-federalist where state and national authority clash, more libertarian on issues such as gun control, and much tighter on some matters as the rights of the criminally accused than I," Murphy said in an earlier email message.

"We, however, agree on other important issues, such as finding no constitutional barrier to bans on late term abortions and requiring spousal and parental notification of impending abortions."

...

"Sam is his own man," Murphy said. "He'll never be 'Scalito.' And then it's a gross insult to say in the mold of [other conservative and constructionist justice] Clarence Thomas. Their IQs are so radically different ... We're not talking about someone in Sam's intellectual league."