Read on Twitter
Alito #FedSoc2020 speech leads off talking about needing a cardboard cutout audience like this year's MLB.
Alito defending the nonpartisan, non-advocacy nature of @FedSoc, which of course is an implicit defense of judges belonging to the organization. Notes the decline of tolerance for debate.
Now, he moves on to a direct response to the effort to ban judges from belonging to @FedSoc. Thanks everyone who stood up to that effort. #FedSoc2020
Now, Alito warning against theories of executive lawmaking via "policy based on expertise," tracing it to the progressive era but without mentioning Woodrow Wilson by name.
Alito discusses Jacobson v. Massachusetts, notes that he's in favor of keeping bad things from spreading out of Cambridge, Mass & spreading across the country. Would have been a great laugh line before a live audience.
Alito: religious liberty "fast becoming a disfavored right." Notes broad bipartisan support for RFRA in 1990s, legal assault on Little Sisters of the Poor.
Alito giving a long disquisition on the many religious minorities who have come before SCOTUS.
Hoo boy, now Alito quoting the now-infamous Mark Tushnet blog post on treating the (expected, Republican) losers of the 2016 election like the conquered in Germany & Japan in 1945.
Humorous barbs aside - Alito is a low-key fantastic speechmaker - this is a thoughtful speech on the importance & endangered nature of free speech & free exercise, & the danger of pandemic-era habits of restriction.
Alito comparing "marriage is a union between one man and one woman" to the seven dirty words in George Carlin's famous 1970s comedy routine. Warns against speech becoming a "second tier Constitutional right."
Alito now moves on to the Second Amendment as the ultimate disfavored Constitutional right. #FedSoc2020
Now, Alito moves on to the open threat to judicial independence in Sheldon Whitehouse's amicus brief threatening the Court "the Senators' brief was extraordinary...it was an affront to the Constitution and the rule of law."
Alito predicts more efforts like Whitehouse's to threaten the Court, notes that this sort of thing is more common in other countries. Talks about a judge from another country facing a tank rolling up to the courthouse. #FedSoc2020
Now, Alito paying tribute to the vast influence of Justice Scalia on today's judiciary & how it reads the Constitution & statutes. #FedSoc2020
Justice Alito sums up with an ode to the importance of the idea of liberty in our hearts, as the ultimate safeguard of our constitutional system. #FedSoc2020
