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Alito's dissenting opinions attract attentionFrom Bill Mears  "He's conservative to be sure," one attorney said of Judge Alito. "But he has a real sense of stability of the law." RELATED
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSWASHINGTON (CNN) -- Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito has what his supporters say is the perfect legal background to become a leader on the Supreme Court bench: he has been a federal judge, a U.S. attorney and a top Justice Department official. Privately, friends and colleagues say the 55-year-old federal judge is a low-key, intense but friendly man who is devoted to his family. He long had been mentioned as a potential high court nominee. However, the federal appeals court judge's extensive record as a government lawyer and jurist has provided fuel for intense opposition, including complaints that he is rigidly conservative and prone to subvert judicial oversight in favor of broad executive power. Detractors call him "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite," a comparison to Justice Antonin Scalia, who shares his conservative judicial philosophy and Italian-American and Catholic roots. But legal analysts say the two are quite different. (Read a summary of key Alito rulings) "The 'Scalito' moniker is totally misleading," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington appellate attorney who has argued many times before the high court. "Judge Alito is really someone who doesn't seem [to be] aggressively trying to change the law. He's conservative to be sure. But he has a real sense of stability of the law. He seems to be really just trying to do the job of the judge applying the law." More like Roberts than ScaliaA CNN analysis of some 300 opinions by Alito reveal a careful, often cautious approach to the law, devoid of the often provocative, sharp-elbowed rhetoric for which Scalia and other judges are known. Some legal scholars compare Alito more favorably to Chief Justice John Roberts. They both share a conservative philosophy, but it is not considered a rigid stance. And analysts say they both have exercised strong consensus-building skills that could prove invaluable on a divided Supreme Court that has fractured along unpredictable ideological lines in recent years. Alito's 15 years on the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals will be the major focus of scrutiny over his judicial philosophy. He is viewed as the most conservative member of the Philadelphia-based court. Nominated in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, Alito at the time was U.S. attorney for New Jersey. Previously, he served seven years as a lawyer in the Reagan White House. The CNN survey of his record found he has ruled on many hot-button issues: the death penalty, discrimination complaints, church-state disputes, gun control, police searches. It is his record of dissents that has attracted the greatest scrutiny: "When they touch on issues that split people along political lines, Alito's dissents show a remarkable pattern: They are almost uniformly conservative," said Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor, who conducted a thorough analysis of Alito's record. "In the overwhelming majority of cases, he has urged a more conservative position than that of his colleagues. In his dissents, at least, he has been a conservative's conservative -- not always in his reasoning, which tends to be modest, but in his ultimate conclusions." Planned Parenthood v. CaseyNot surprisingly, Alito's most talked-about ruling, a case from early in his judicial career, deals with abortion. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1991), Alito was the only dissenter in a case that, among other things, threw out a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. The ruling was later upheld by the Supreme Court, which partially affirmed the overall right to an abortion. Alito disagreed with the legal rationale used by the woman he could replace: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. In overturning the law, O'Connor applied her then-new legal standard on abortion laws, that they impose no "undue burden" on women seeking the procedure. "The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems -- such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition -- that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion," Alito wrote. "The Pennsylvania legislature presumably decided that the law on balance would be beneficial. We have no authority to overrule that legislative judgment even if we deem it 'unwise' or worse." People for the America Way, which opposes Alito's nomination, said in a statement: "He has demonstrated hostility toward the principles undergirding a woman's constitutionally protected right to govern her own reproductive choices." But in another case from 2000, Alito agreed with other judges who found unconstitutional a New Jersey law banning late-term abortions. The court said states needed to provide exceptions if a woman's health is endangered. In a concurring opinion, Alito said the Supreme Court required such a ban to include that exception. The high court will issue an opinion in coming months on a similar case involving a New Hampshire parental notification law that also did not include a health exception. ABA's highest ratingFew court watchers and political activists would contest that Alito has the intelligence and professional stature to sit on the Supreme Court. The American Bar Association on Wednesday gave him its highest rating for "integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament." But senators who will vote on his nomination will be guided by their own criteria. "From a legal viewpoint, you have to distinguish the substance from the tone when judging Judge Alito," said Neil Siegel, a Duke law professor. "He has demonstrated he is analytical, reasoned, understated, even scholarly in his approach to the law. But can we say he would be a reliably predictable conservative on the court? "I would say yes, his rulings clearly show that," Siegel said."Whether qualifications or philosophy is the barometer, that is ultimately up to the Senate." 
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