Justice Samuel Alito
Supreme Court of the United States
Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., was born in April 1950 in Trenton, New Jersey. He earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, then received his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. While at Princeton, he studied in Italy and wrote a thesis on that country’s legal system. He was a member of the school’s Army ROTC program, attending a six-week basic training camp at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps and assigned to the U.S. Army Reserve. He served on active duty after graduating from Yale and was a captain when he received an honorable discharge.
After law school, Alito clerked at the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, before becoming an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, a position he held for four years. He was named Assistant to the U.S. Solicitor General, where he argued a dozen cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government. Four years later, he became Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the tenure of Edwin Meese, later becoming the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey. He taught classes in constitutional law as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark.
Alito was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be a judge on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He was confirmed by unanimous consent in the Senate and received his commission in April 1990. In 2005, President George W. Bush nominated Alito to a seat on the United States Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. After a failed filibuster attempt, the Senate confirmed him. He assumed office on January 31, 2006.
He is married to Martha-Ann Bomgardner Alito, and they have two children. He is Catholic.
In the News…
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision to allow abortion pills to be ordered via telehealth through the mail as lawsuits proceed in lower courts. The ruling overturns the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals order that blocked abortion drugs from telehealth prescribing and delivery by mail during the lawsuits.
Justice Alito called the decision “remarkable.“ He stated, “What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U. S. 215 (2022), which restored the right of each State to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders. Some States responded to Dobbs by making it even easier to obtain an abortion than it was before, and that is their prerogative.“
“Other States, including Louisiana, made abortion illegal except in narrow circumstances,“ Justice Alito continued. “But Louisiana’s efforts have been thwarted by certain medical providers, private organizations, and States that abhor laws like Louisiana’s and seek to undermine their enforcement. These medical providers and private organizations have developed an operation enabling women in Louisiana and other States that restrict abortions to place an online order for a pill called mifepristone that induces abortion.“
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Justice Alito today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Justice Samuel Alito
Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543
