Alito’s Alma Mater Doesn’t Want Him on the Supreme Court

Yale Law School has a history of sending controversial nominees to the Supreme Court. Among Samuel Alito’s predecessors in the hot seat are failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and now associate justice Clarence Thomas.

According to this New York Times Thomas, who was confirmed by a vote of only 52 to 48 in the full Senate, severed ties with his Alma Mater after its students vociferously opposed his nomination. Bork has a similarly frosty relationship with the school - whose leanings are decidedly progressive.

According to the Times:

The mood [at Yale Law] appeared to be cautiously hostile. A few students who supported Judge Alito tended to make strategic or structural arguments. Some said, for example, that ideology alone should not derail a candidate who was otherwise qualified.

But the dominant view, based on a day of interviews at the law school, appeared to be that Judge Alito’s jurisprudence represented a betrayal of the law school’s liberal values.

What does it tell us that students at his own law school - a school whose students have previously rallied in opposition to two highly problematic nominees - oppose Alito’s nomination?

It may not be enough to hold up in the Senate Judiciary hearings, but it’s one more reason why we should be working to defeat Sam Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court