The Yale Law Journal

VOLUME
126
2016-2017
Forum Collection

Justice Alito: A Decade on the Court

24 Jan 2017

Forum

Sam Alito: The Court’s Most Consistent Conservative

Brianne J. Gorod

Only two weeks before Justice Samuel Alito marked his tenth anniversary on the Supreme Court, the Court struck down Florida’s death penalty scheme. It held that the scheme violated the Sixth Amendment jury right because it permitted judges to sentence individuals to death based on facts not found by…

Forum

The Unitary Executive and the Scope of Executive Power

John Harrison

In the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the 1980s, “unitary” meant unitary, as in e pluribus unum. When Deputy Assistant Attorney General Samuel Alito and his colleagues in OLC used the phrase “unitary executive,” they used “unitary” to convey two kinds of oneness. The executive…

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The Distinctive Role of Justice Samuel Alito: From a Politics of Restoration to a Politics of Dissent

Neil S. Siegel

Justice Samuel Alito is regarded by both his champions and his critics as the most consistently conservative member of the current Supreme Court. Both groups seem to agree that he has become the most important conservative voice on the Court. Chief Justice John Roberts has a Court to lead; Justice A…