# Samuel Alito *Associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States* Samuel Anthony Alito Jr. (born April 1, 1950) is an American jurist and an associate justice of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]], a seat he has held since January 31, 2006.[^1] President George W. Bush named him on October 31, 2005, to succeed [[Sandra Day O'Connor]], who had announced her retirement that July.[^1][^2] He is the Court's second Italian American justice; [[Antonin Scalia]] was the first.[^1] Alito's earlier career included service as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey and in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.[^1] From 1990 until his elevation, he sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.[^1][^3] He calls himself a "practical originalist" and belongs to the Court's conservative bloc.[^1] He wrote the majority opinions in four landmark cases: *McDonald v. Chicago* (2010) on firearm rights, *Burwell v. Hobby Lobby* (2014) on insurance coverage, *[[Janus v. AFSCME]]* (2018) on public-sector union security agreements, and *Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization* (2022) on abortion.[^1] ## Early life and education Alito was born on April 1, 1950, in [[Trenton]], New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Hamilton Township.[^4] His father, Samuel A. Alito Sr., born Salvatore Alati, emigrated from Calabria, earned a master's degree at Rutgers University, taught high school, and from 1952 to 1984 was the first director of the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services.[^4] His mother, Rose Fradusco, was a schoolteacher.[^4] He finished Steinert High School in 1968 as valedictorian.[^4] At Princeton University he earned a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1972, with a senior thesis supervised by Walter F. Murphy on the Italian Constitutional Court.[^4] In 1971 he chaired a Princeton student conference on privacy whose report backed limits on domestic intelligence gathering and called for decriminalizing sodomy and ending hiring discrimination against gay people.[^4] He then attended Yale Law School.[^1] ## Early legal career After law school, Alito clerked in Newark for Third Circuit judge Leonard I. Garth in 1976 and 1977; he interviewed for a clerkship with Justice [[Byron White]] but was not hired.[^5] As an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 1977 to 1981, he worked under appeals chief Maryanne Trump Barry and prosecuted drug trafficking and organized crime cases.[^5] Between 1981 and 1985 he assisted Solicitor General Rex E. Lee, arguing 12 cases for the federal government before the Supreme Court and losing two.[^5] In that office he wrote a memo urging Solicitor General Charles Fried not to attack the constitutional right to an abortion directly; Fried rejected it, and the government lost *Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists* (1986).[^5] From 1985 to 1987 he was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel under Charles J. Cooper, during Edwin Meese's tenure as Attorney General.[^5] In 1986 and 1987 he wrote close to 470 pages of memoranda arguing for broader law enforcement and personnel authority for his client.[^5] His 1985 application for the post cited William F. Buckley Jr., *National Review*, Alexander Bickel and Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign as major influences.[^5] ## Court of Appeals judge ### Nomination and confirmation Garth and Barry recommended Alito to President George H. W. Bush, who on February 20, 1990, nominated him to the Third Circuit seat John Joseph Gibbons had left.[^3] The American Bar Association rated him "Well Qualified."[^3] The Senate approved him by unanimous consent on April 27, 1990; his commission followed three days later, and he kept chambers in Newark.[^3] ### Opinions On the Third Circuit panel in *Planned Parenthood v. Casey*, the majority struck the law's requirement that married women notify their husbands before an abortion; Alito, the third judge, would have upheld that provision along with the rest of the statute.[^3] In a dissent in *United States v. Rybar*, 103 F.3d 273 (3d Cir. 1996), he argued that the federal ban on private ownership of submachine guns resembled the law struck down in *United States v. Lopez* and exceeded Congress's Commerce Clause power.[^3] He wrote the majority opinion in *Chittister v. Department of Community & Economic Development*, 226 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2000), a Family and Medical Leave Act wrongful-termination claim against Pennsylvania that turned on state sovereign immunity.[^3] ## Nomination to the Supreme Court O'Connor announced on July 1, 2005, that she would retire once a successor was confirmed.[^2] Bush first chose John Roberts for her seat; after Chief Justice [[William Rehnquist]] died on September 3, Bush withdrew that nomination and named [[John Roberts]] to be Chief Justice instead.[^2] His next choice, Harriet Miers, was announced on October 3 and withdrew on October 27 amid widespread opposition.[^2] Bush announced Alito on October 31 and sent the nomination to the Senate on November 10.[^2] The ABA's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary unanimously rated him "well qualified."[^2] Leonard Leo was chosen to help guide the appointment through the Senate.[^2] The Senate Judiciary hearing lasted from January 9 through January 13, 2006.[^2] Across 18 hours, Alito answered roughly 700 questions; Third Circuit judges Maryanne Trump Barry and Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica testified, along with five senior and retired circuit judges.[^2] Alito rejected reliance on foreign legal materials in constitutional interpretation, took no position on courtroom cameras, and said Congress could, if it chose, prohibit LGBT employment discrimination.[^2] ## Supreme Court (2006–present) ### Tenure His first written opinion for the Court came on May 1, 2006, in *Holmes v. South Carolina*, which concerned a defendant's right to present evidence that someone else committed the crime.[^6] By custom from the start of the Rehnquist Court to the nomination of [[Elena Kagan]], each new justice's first opinion was a unanimous one.[^6] Speaking for all nine justices, Alito ordered a new trial for Bobby Lee Holmes because South Carolina had excluded such evidence based on the strength of the prosecution's case rather than the defense evidence itself.[^6] He also wrote first-term majority opinions in *Zedner v. United States*, *Woodford v. Ngo* and *Arlington Central School District Board of Education v. Murphy*.[^6] In the three reargued cases of that term, *Garcetti v. Ceballos*, *Hudson v. Michigan* and *Kansas v. Marsh*, his vote with Roberts, Scalia, [[Anthony Kennedy]] and [[Clarence Thomas]] produced 5–4 majorities.[^6] He sided with the same wing in *Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon* and *Rapanos v. United States*, and joined Scalia and Thomas in dissent in *Hamdan v. Rumsfeld*.[^6] He gave the Supreme Court Historical Society's 2008 Annual Lecture, *The Origin of the Baseball Antitrust Exemption*, later published in two journals.[^6] Martin–Quinn scores for 2023 ranked him as the Court's most conservative justice.[^6] ## Personal life Alito married Martha-Ann Bomgardner, a law librarian, in 1985; they have two children.[^7] In early 2025, the second Trump administration appointed his son Philip as general counsel of the Treasury Department.[^7] The family lived in West Caldwell, New Jersey, before his nomination and later moved to Fairfax County, Virginia.[^7] Since [[Stephen Breyer]] retired in 2022, Alito has been the only military veteran on the Court.[^7] In 2013, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice stated that the agency had targeted the phones of Alito, his staff and his family for surveillance in 2002 and 2003.[^7] ### Teaching Alito taught constitutional law and a course on terrorism and civil liberties as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law from 1999 to 2004, and the school awarded him its Saint Thomas More Medal in 1995.[^7] He gave Seton Hall Law's commencement address on May 25, 2007, and received an honorary degree.[^7] At Duke University School of Law he taught as a visiting professor in fall 2011 and summer 2012.[^7] ## Ethical questions ### Accusations of accepting gifts A ProPublica investigation published June 20, 2023, examined Alito's ties to businessman Paul Singer, centering on an Alaska fishing trip the two took, and suggested Alito "violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts," including private jet travel.[^8] It said he should have recused in cases involving Singer and should have reported certain benefits on his 2008 Financial Disclosure Report.[^8] Before the piece appeared, Alito answered it in a *Wall Street Journal* op-ed asserting that the source "misleads its readers" and citing a "personal hospitality" exemption in the Court's reporting rules as the reason private air travel for social trips need not be disclosed.[^8] The op-ed drew criticism inside the *Journal* and from media critics, partly for lacking fact-checking.[^8] ProPublica's reporting on undisclosed gifts to Alito and Thomas prompted several members of Congress to seek Supreme Court ethics reform, among them a Senate Judiciary Committee proposal for a code of ethics.[^8] Alito wrote in a July 2023 *Wall Street Journal* opinion column that "Congress did not create the Supreme Court."[^8] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, lead section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — birth date, appointment dates, education, career outline, landmark majority opinions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^2]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Nomination to the Supreme Court" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — vacancy sequence, nomination dates, ABA rating, hearing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^3]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Court of Appeals judge" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — Third Circuit nomination, confirmation and opinions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^4]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Early life and education" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — birth, parentage, schooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^5]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Early legal career" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — clerkship, prosecutorial and Justice Department posts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^6]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Supreme Court (2006-present)" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — first opinion, first-term votes, lecture, Martin–Quinn scores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^7]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Personal life" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — family, residence, veteran status, surveillance claim, teaching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito [^8]: Wikipedia contributors, *Samuel Alito*, "Ethical questions" section (revision 1379704042, retrieved 2026-10-26) — ProPublica reporting, op-eds, congressional response. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Alito