One of the Noblest Americans

There is a tradition that Supreme Court police must stand up whenever a justice walks by. After Justice Samuel Alito was confirmed to the Supreme Court in 2006, he would himself make copies at the printer in the hallway, rather than having his aides do it. Thus, akin to a character in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, Court police were ceaselessly standing up and sitting down outside Alito’s office, until the police asked his staff to make the copies themselves.

As journalist Mollie Hemingway relates in her new book Alito: The Justice Who Reshaped the Supreme Court and Restored the Constitution, this humble and unassuming New Jersey-born Catholic is perhaps the most brilliant mind currently serving on the Supreme Court. Catholic writer Matthew Walther once wrote of him: “In his unspectacular way, [Alito] is one of the noblest men in American public life today.” Yet apart from developing a reputation for virtue and intellectual acumen, one of the least recognizable members of the Court is also one of the foremost defenders of religious liberty. It’s a quality for which all Catholics can be grateful.

All four of Alito’s grandparents were Catholic Italian immigrants. His parents were active members of their New Jersey parish, Our Lady of Sorrows. His father, an unassuming state bureaucrat who held his political opinions close to his chest, impressed upon the young Alito a passion for quiet, professional public service. In college at Princeton, Alito joined ROTC, where his commander was classmate Andrew Napolitano, who would in time make his own name as a legal correspondent on Fox News. (Alito is the only current member of the Supreme Court to have served in the armed forces.)

His sterling reputation did not preserve Alito from a brutal Supreme Court confirmation process in 2005, during which the usual leftist organizations sought to defame his character while Democratic senators, such as Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, risibly accused him of believing there are no limits to the power of the executive branch. In response to these attacks, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham apologized for the Left’s name-calling and character assassination. In an exchange that would come to define that confirmation, Graham declared: “I am sorry that you have had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this.”

Prior to his ascension to the Court, Alito had already proved himself a stalwart advocate of religious freedom. He once ruled in favor of Muslim policemen in Newark who resisted a requirement that officers be clean-shaven; on another occasion, he ruled in favor of an American Indian who had two black bears in his backyard for “religious ceremonies.” Far more important determinations have been required of him on the bench of the highest court in the land.

For example, Alito was a prime force in the Court’s decisions on the ministerial exception, which he argued was not determined by ordination but applied to anyone who “leads a religious organization, conducts worship services or important religious ceremonies or rituals, or serves as a messenger or teacher of its faith.” This ensures that religious institutions such as Catholic schools can fire employees who refuse to teach Catholic doctrine. For example, in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, Alito wrote:

The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission.

This same jurisprudence was on display during oral arguments in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Alito effectively placed the state’s solicitor general on her heels by forcing her to acknowledge that a baker had a right to refuse making a cake celebrating Kristallnacht—which doesn’t sound particularly different from refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding. The justice accomplished much the same rhetorical victory during oral arguments for the abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Pressing the U.S. solicitor general on her claim that a case cannot be overruled simply because it was demonstrably erroneous, Alito queried her about Plessy v. Ferguson, the notorious 1896 decision that established “separate but equal.” Backed into a corner, the lawyer (falsely) asserted that the Court had never overruled a decision on the grounds that it was simply wrong.

Tearing apart such totems did not endear Alito to the Left. New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in July 2024, raised impeachment articles against Alito (and fellow justice Clarence Thomas), citing the two men’s “widely documented financial and personal entanglements.” Hemingway, in her book, carefully dissects these allegations and proves them to be embarrassingly selective—while liberal media and Democrats were inflamed over Alito accepting an invitation to a luxury fishing resort by billionaire businessman Paul Singer, they showed little interest in 233 trips taken by Justice Stephen Breyer, all of them paid for by third parties, including one by billionaire and former Democrat-appointed federal official David Rubenstein. Nor did liberal media express concern that after Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave a favorable decision to Israeli Morris Kahn, the billionaire gave her a private tour of Israel in 2018.

Even more absurd were the flag “controversies” involving Alito’s wife, who flew an upside-down American flag in 2021 at their residence and, a few years later, flew an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their vacation home in New Jersey. Because of this, 25 separate left-wing advocacy groups demanded the Senate Judiciary Committee investigate Alito’s refusal to recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Alito responded to Democratic inquiries by saying that he had asked his wife to take down the upside-down American flag but that she refused. “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” he explained. (Fair enough, though it is admittedly odd she did not relent given her husband’s very public profession and the tendency for the Left to seek any excuse to tar and feather him.)

The impressively researched Alito is based on the interviews of almost one hundred people—including Supreme Court justices, federal judges, senators, former White House and cabinet officials, and friends and family of Alito. Though one will learn plenty about the inner workings of the American legal establishment, Hemingway deserves particular credit for introducing readers to a man often overshadowed in the public imagination by his late friend, colleague, and fellow New Jersey Italian Catholic Antonin Scalia. As much as we are indebted to the wisdom and Catholic faith of the great “Nino,” it is Alito who ultimately penned the decision that defeated Roe.