Comparisons to Scalia, But Also to Roberts

"He was known throughout New Jersey as an icon of professionalism," recalled his successor, Albert Porroni. "He had a great shock of white, thick hair, smoked a pipe -- just what you would expect of a research director. He was revered by legislators of both parties for his commitment to the highest-quality research, free of bias and partisanship."

"I don't see how his values could not have influenced young Sam," Porroni added.

Sam and his sister Rosemary -- now a New Jersey lawyer and the author of an influential guide to the state's employment law -- attended public school at Hamilton East-Steinert High, and were partners on the debate team. Sam was the class brain; his sophomore English teacher, Elaine Tarr, realized that the regular curriculum would not challenge him, so she gave him a list of great authors to read on his own: Faulkner, Orwell, Sinclair, Kafka.

"If I made a statement, I had better be able to defend it, because he would come back at me," Tarr said. "But Sam was always very respectful even when he disagreed."

McDonald, Alito's classmate, recalled that teachers often excluded his scores when they graded on a curve, because he was so far ahead of everyone else. "We all knew A's were not the equivalent of Alito A's," he said. But if Alito was a hero among the nerds, the cool kids liked him, too; he was easily elected student council president. He also played in the school band, ran track and was the editor of the Hy-Liter, the student paper.

Alito then attended Princeton, where he spent most of his time in the library. He was admitted to the Woodrow Wilson School's politics program, where he spoke at conferences on arms control and privacy, and wrote a thesis on Italy's constitutional court. His thesis adviser, Walter Murphy, recalled him as "probably the most judicious student I ever had," focused like a laser on a legal career.

Alito also joined the debate team, and won a $100 prize for an argument defending Vice President Spiro Agnew. One of his debate teammates, Mark Dwyer, recalled Alito as a political moderate, which was not as unusual at Princeton as it was at other Ivy League schools during the Vietnam era; one classmate recalled it as "a hotbed of social rest." Still, there were some radical antiwar activists, and Murphy recalled that "Sam, when these things were discussed in seminar, would sort of look at them like, 'Man, you have got to be kidding.' "

In fact, Alito joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps. But Dwyer recalls that decision as a pragmatic response to a low draft number, not a political statement. Dwyer says Alito simply wanted to enter the military as an officer, not as an infantry grunt; he later served in the Army Reserve and was honorably discharged as a captain.

Alito then went on to Yale Law School, where he was known as a quiet, sober, extremely bright law wonk. "If you missed class and needed someone to borrow notes from, Sam was the person," said classmate George Carpinello.

Alito was a conservative, which was not particularly fashionable at Yale, but he was not too vocal about it; many friends were quite liberal. Classmate Peter Goldberger, now an appellate lawyer in Pennsylvania, says he is "left-of-liberal," but he recalls that when Alito did speak, "it was always something that made you sit up and think, 'Wow, what a good idea.' "

"Sam found a genuine intellectual home in the law," said classmate Rabinowitz. "He likes its detail, its care, its exactitude and he likes its fairness."

After Yale, Alito clerked on the 3rd Circuit for Judge Leonard I. Garth, a Nixon appointee with a reputation as a scrupulous appellate craftsman, who is now one of Alito's colleagues. Alito then joined the appellate division of the U.S. attorney's office in Newark, as an assistant under Maryann Trump Barry, who is now another colleague on the 3rd Circuit, but is perhaps best known as Donald Trump's sister. The office's prosecutors called the appellate division at all hours for advice on warrants and subpoenas -- and Alito was their go-to guy.