It looks like Sam “The Justice” Alito is on a faux walk back tour. From Reuters:
WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of a blockbuster ruling that revoked nationwide abortion rights, said on Tuesday that his Catholic faith requires him to consider the real-world implications of his decisions on the nation's highest court.
Speaking to a sympathetic audience shortly before the court begins its next term, the conservative justice did not discuss the abortion ruling or other landmark decisions on guns and federal power issued earlier this year.
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"It's important to keep in mind that these decisions are not abstract discussions - they have real impact on the world," he said at the Catholic University of America in Washington.
Alito said his faith also "affects the way you treat all the people that you work with, when you're serving as a judge."
No doubt Alito felt compelled to try to come to terms with the real world impact of his evisceration of the US Constitution (and various laws thereunder such as the voting rights Act). Let’s contrast that with what he said in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, 597 U. S. _____, 67 (2022):
But we cannot exceed the scope of our authority under the Constitution, and we cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work. Cf. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397 (1989); Brown, 347 U. S. 483.
So this arrogant hyper-Catholic authoritarian asshole felt compelled to clarify this disconnect in the face of unrelenting criticism of the Court for failing to consider (or accept any responsibility for) the impact of its decisions. “ Just applyin’ the law to the facts, mam.” His own facts, by the way, to which he applies his own law per the teachings of Opus Dei.
OMG, who knew laws were supposed to have some connection with human conduct? Here I thought laws existed in a vacuum – mere words applied per the dictionaries of 1789, 1864, 1911 or whatever date the law was adopted. The impact on humans is irrelevant, I took Sam to mean.
Nope, that is not what he confessed to—only that “his Catholic faith requires him to consider the real-world implications of his decisions,” certainly not that one should take the impact of a decision in the real world into account as a foundational principle of law.
Fuck you, Sam, and the archbishop you rode in on.