The Eyes of the Law: Justice Alito Hits South Beach

Well, we’re not sure about that part — nor can we confirm or deny whether the justice was sighted in a “banana hammock.”
But we can report that Justice Alito was recently in MIami, where he swore in Alex Acosta (at right), one of his former clerks, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. From the Miami Herald:

Samuel A. Alito, the U.S. Supreme Court’s newest justice, praised one of his protégés, R. Alexander Acosta, on Wednesday as he swore him in as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

But Alito said that for all his formidable legal talent, Acosta betrayed one ”weakness” when he served as a law clerk in 1994 for the then-federal appellate judge.

”Alex’s knowledge of sports was a little bit lacking,” Alito deadpanned before a standing-room-only gathering of judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers in the historic central courtroom of the Miami federal courthouse.

Alito, a self-professed baseball fan, joked that Acosta probably didn’t know the difference between the Florida Marlins and the Miami Dolphins.

Even if his sports knowledge may be deficient, Acosta is a young superstar of conservative legal circles (as well as “pretty cute,” too). At the tender age of 37, he was nominated by President Bush as Miami’s U.S. Attorney — a position he was already occupying in an acting capacity.
Prior to returning to Miami, where he has deep roots in the city’s Cuban-American community, the brilliant Acosta served as head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. His roughly two-year tenure as Assistant Attorney General was rumored to be somewhat rocky. Acosta’s fairly conservative civil rights agenda apparently did not sit well with some of the more liberal lawyers in the division, who had a different vision of what they’d be doing when they signed up for civil rights work at the Justice Department.
(If you can enlighten us further on these matters, please drop us a line.)
Alito protégé sworn in as U.S. attorney in Miami [Miami Herald via How Appealing]

Sponsored