Alito on Privacy
Posted by Brian Bennett
The initial reports on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's views on privacy rights are mixed. In Third Circuit cases involving search warrants, Judge Alito has voted in dissent to uphold intrusive searches of women and children who were not named in search warrants and were not the subjects of any investigation. Judge Alito assured Senator Arlen Specter, on the other hand, that he endorses a constitutional right to privacy as cited by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). In Griswold, the Supreme Court invalidated a Connecticut law that outlawed contraception, stating that the Connecticut law violated a constitutional right to privacy. Conservative Justices such as Antonin Scalia, with whom Judge Alito has been compared, have criticized the concept of a constitutional right to privacy.
