Swing Vote?

One response to yesterday's blog suggests that Judge Alito has cast his first vote, to stay an execution, making the responder (who is from NJ as Alito is) think perhaps all the worry about Alito shifting the court to the right may be misplaced.

There is historical precedent for justices surprising people, especially their sponsors who thought they knew how they would vote. I have not waded in against either the Roberts or the Alito nominations because they both pass the basic tests of being able legal minds with at least a semblance of reasonableness.

And one of the spoils of our system is that if you win the Presidency you get to name judges, with advise and consent from the Senate. In recent years the parameters of acceptability seem be about extremism on either end of the political spectrum. But it seems that Republican presidents (two Bushes and Reagan) were more eager to name ideological justices than Clinton was.

I am glad that Alito's first vote has been cast and that it at least confuses all of us who thought we could predict his mind.