Thanks, I just read that article by Slate: it actually made me feel better about Alito (some of the glowing reviews by a few liberals have me wondering).
I like how the writer explains that if Alito had ruled in favor of minorities or criminals "most of the time" he wouldn't have conservative credentials. Which seems to me a statement that it doesn't matter what the facts of a case are, just the number of minorities and criminals he ruled against. I would personally still consider a judge conservative if they mostly ruled in favor of minorities and criminals...IF in each and every case the judge relied soley on the FACTS of the case which bore out their side.
The writer believes a conservative is essentially a bigot.
A jurist is not there to "tear up the rule book," or provide novel theories that can be broadly applied to create a new, heretofore nonexistent class of rights.
He or she is there to interpret the law as it's written, and to give each party to a case a fair, impartial hearing.
The problem with people like Bazelan, and Lithwick, and the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is that they think we would be a better-perhaps more just-nation if we replaced equality of opportunity with equality of results.
When the truth is that this would not make society more fair-as has been demonstrated by the disastrous results of racial quotas-but less.
How does a judge determine who the "little guy" is?
Is it the petitioner asking for redress because of a discriminatory admissions policy to law school that prevented her from being admitted because she is white?
Or is it the law school defending that policy?
Well, liberals would see the law school as the "little guy," or in this case, little institution, even though their policy benefits upper middle-class African-Americans and other relatively upwardly mobile minorities, while discriminating against non-minority applicants who may in fact come from much more humble backgrounds, as was the case in Grutter.
That's why justice has to be blind, because these sorts of determinations are entirely subjective, and once you start creating ad hoc standards that predetermine which party is right and which party is wrong-before the they even present their briefs-you create an inherently unfair system of jurisprudence.