A reader looks into one of Alito’s rulings:
I linked to the website listing Alito cases and picked one at random – Doe v. Groody. Take a look at Alito’s dissent.
What’s interesting about it is that it reaches a statist result (i.e., he believed that a search warrant authorized the search of two persons who were living in the residence to be searched but who were not listed among those persons to be searched) by ignoring the plain text of the warrant and relying, instead, on the equivalent of “what the legislature (in this case, the officers who drafted the application for the warrant and the proposed warrant) meant the warrant to say”.
The warrant appears not to conform to the application – it was drafted more narrowly (perhaps by mistake), but c’est la vie. That’s not “strict constructionism” at all; it’s pure originalism. He didn’t decide the case strictly according to the text, using “originalism” to determine the meaning of an ambiguous provision. Instead, he overrode the text by reference to intent.
From a brief look, the reader looks correct. Check it out. It cuts to the core of someone’s judicial philosophy.
The Dish 