Judge Alito

It wasn’t that long ago that if you were a Catholic and aspired to run for a national political office your chances in getting elected were slimmer than a foreigner becoming president. Even though there were a handful of token Catholic Supreme Court Justice appointments in the eighteen hundreds, I believe that President Kennedy, in 1960, broke the anti-Catholic barrier that surfaced in 1928 when Alfred E. Smith ran for President.

Fast forward to today, 2005, and you read, "At the very least, it's a victory over historic prejudice, and it shows that Catholics have come fully into their own in the United States." This quote by M. Cathleen Kaveny, a professor of theology and law at the University of Notre Dame, comes at the heels of President Bush’s nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the position of Supreme Court Justice. If confirmed, Mr. Alito would join Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., the four Catholics currently sitting on the Supreme Court. Not only would there be a five member Catholic majority but it would also mark for the first time that there are two men of Italian descent on the Supreme Court.

• Alito was born in Trenton, New Jersey, as was Antonin Scalia, to Samuel A. Alito Sr., an Italian immigrant, and his wife, the former Rose Fradusco. ("Of course he's against abortion" Samuel Alito's 90-year-old mother Rose told reporters at her home in Hamilton, N.J.)
• He attended Steinert High School in Hamilton, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University with an A.B. in 1972, and attended Yale Law School, where he served as editor on the Yale Law Journal and earned a J.D. in 1975. Alito's father, who is now deceased, was a high school teacher and then became the first Director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, a position he held from 1952 to 1984. Alito's mother is a retired schoolteacher. Alito's sister, Rosemary, is regarded as one of New Jersey's top employment lawyers.
Some lawyers call the judge "Scalito." Roughly translated, the nickname means "Little Scalia," suggesting that Alito, a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has modeled himself after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. would be the 11th Catholic Supreme Court justice and the fifth currently seated on the court.

Good Luck