Samuel Alito

Justice Alito on the Sopranos: Fuhgeddaboudit!

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Earlier this month, some controversy was generated when it was reported that Senator John McCain, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, said he’d be happy to nominate justices in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts — but Justice Samuel Alito, not so much.
This resulted in speculation over exactly what Senator McCain meant by this. Several observers were confused, since JGR and SAA are jurisprudential buddies. As noted SCOTUS advocate Tom Goldstein pointed out, in the Court’s last full Term, Roberts and Alito “had the highest proportion of agreement of any members of the Court, 89 percent in pure agreement, that is to say, not just in the result but in absolute, complete agreement, every word.”
So here’s one theory. Maybe McCain doesn’t like Alito because of the justice’s taste in television? From the AP:

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. has convicted “The Sopranos” of spreading what he says are stereotypes about Italian-Americans. During a visit to Rutgers University on Wednesday, Alito complained that the hit HBO television drama not only associated Italian-Americans with the Mafia, but New Jerseyans, as well.

“You have a trifecta — gangsters, Italian-Americans, New Jersey — wedded in the popular American imagination,” Alito said at an event sponsored by the Italian studies program at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey.

But it was such a great show, Your Honor!
A bit more, after the jump.


More from the AP article:

Alito, himself an Italian-American, lived for nearly two decades in a West Caldwell home in the same area of New Jersey where the fictional Tony Soprano lived.

Alito told the gathering of about 100 people that a friend in California once sent him a map of “Sopranos”-related locations. “He wanted me to put down where my house was on the map,” Alito said to laughs.

Perhaps “The Sopranos” hits a little too close to home — quite literally — for Justice Alito. As we noted in our review of Justice Alito’s real estate listing for his West Caldwell home:

Based on [the house’s] interior decor (“vaguely expensive European”), as well as the exterior photograph — center-hall colonial, perched on a hill — the Alito house reminds us of the home of another famous Italian-American living in the Caldwells: Tony Soprano.

(But Tony and Carmela Soprano’s house was (1) larger and more lavish than the supreme judicial abode, and (2) located in North Caldwell rather than West Caldwell.)

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Anyway, friends of Justice Alito, take note — and do NOT get Justice Alito that Sopranos boxed set for Christmas.
Justice Alito sounds off on ‘Sopranos’ [AP via Yahoo! News]
Did McCain say he’d pick judges like John Roberts but he draws the line at Samuel Alito? [Althouse]
Alito Is Neato [Slate]
Earlier: Lawyerly Lairs: Justice Alito’s House, Under Contract

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