WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- When President Bush promised to appoint Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito was on his short list.
Alito has much in common with Scalia. Both men were born in Trenton, N.J., although Scalia grew up in New York.
Their biggest difference is in manner. Unlike the aggressive Scalia, Alito is modest, diffident and sometimes very funny. As U.S. attorney for New Jersey from 1987 to 1990, he held many news conferences at a table with reporters around him and allowed investigators and lawyers involved with a case to do most of the talking.
Alito graduated from Princeton and Yale Law School. He has spent his entire career on the federal payroll, starting as clerk to a federal judge and working his way up to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1990. As an assistant solicitor general in the Reagan administration, he argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court.
He has made some controversial decisions. In the landmark abortion case U.S. vs. Casey, he was the only dissenter on the 3rd Circuit, upholding a provision in a Pennsylvania law that required married women to consult their husbands before obtaining abortions.
