Proving His Mettle in the Reagan Justice Dept.

To Meese, Alito was only one of "a group of very talented lawyers," he said. But Reynolds said he told Meese that Alito was the man to back for the U.S. attorney job. With the attorney general on board, the deal was all but sealed. Still, six other candidates had applied for the position, and Alito did not leave anything to chance.

He had the support of some powerful figures in New Jersey, including Gov. Thomas H. Kean (R). Kean knew Alito's father, who had headed the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services and had a reputation for scrupulous nonpartisanship. Alito also lined up the support of two New Jersey congressmen.

His chief opponent was a wealthy lawyer named Peter Sudler, who had GOP cachet as a major donor. Alito decided to do a little digging into Sudler at the Federal Election Commission, remembered David Grais, Alito's friend.

"He looked up his records and found that he'd given a lot to Democrats as well, and he made sure that information got to the right people," Grais said. "Sam is modest, but he is not a political naif."

The Prosecutor

On March 19, 1987, Alito was sworn in as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, an office with a time-honored reputation for political independence. His appointment was cheered as an affirmation of that tradition.

Back home, Alito was known for the quality of the work he did there in the 1970s. No one there saw him as the ideological conservative he had pitched in the letter to the White House just two years earlier.

"He was viewed in New Jersey by the people who knew him as a nonpartisan candidate of excellence -- exactly the opposite of what comes across in that letter," said Dan Rabinowitz, a law school classmate who had worked with Alito in the U.S attorney's office.

Alito took on corrupt public officials and corporate wrongdoers. He prosecuted the country's first international terrorism case. And his office convicted Louis Manna, the consigliere of the Genovese crime family, on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to commit murder.

Federal judges appreciated his willingness to leave to local officials penny-ante narcotics cases that had clogged their courts, despite the high priority the Reagan administration placed on its war on drugs. Internally, Alito was well liked as someone who valued merit above all else.

While he opposed numeric hiring quotas, he took steps to diversify an office that had a reputation as something of a "white boys' club." Alberto Rivas, a criminal defense lawyer and a Democrat, said that when Alito hired him, he was the only Latino lawyer in the office. By the time Alito left, Rivas said, there were four, as well as more blacks.

"His whole experience shows that he has some commitment to diversity," Rivas said.

But the heavily administrative job was not as intellectually challenging as the work Alito had done in Washington. When Judge John J. Gibbons unexpectedly announced his retirement from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit on Sept. 11, 1989, Alito jumped at the opportunity to replace him.

Senators from the president's party typically wield great influence in picking their state's judges. But New Jersey had elected two Democrats, so the choice was left to the White House and the new administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Alito again turned to his Reagan Justice Department allies. Cooper, who by then had left government but had close ties to the administration's decision makers, said he made calls at Alito's request. As the president contemplated his choices, White House counsel C. Boyden Gray asked Reynolds to vouch for Alito. Reynolds said he was "fully supportive of Sam."

Phillips recalled how anxious Alito was, but in the end, the president was sold.

On April 5, 1990, Alito and a 1st Circuit nominee named David H. Souter appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) peppered Souter, now one of the more liberal justices on the Supreme Court, about his views. But the 40-year-old Alito was confirmed with nary a substantive question.

The Judge

In speeches as a judge, Alito has advised law students and legal professionals: "Watch the rhetoric" and "Don't wear your views on your sleeve." In 15 years on the bench, he has practiced what he preaches.

Rather than brandishing his judicial philosophy like a sword, he has tucked it into one tightly reasoned opinion at a time. More methodical technician than theoretical firebrand, Alito has shunned pyrrhic challenges to Supreme Court precedent favored by some of his conservative brethren.

Like the career lawyers in the Reagan Justice Department, his fellow judges speak highly of his skill and collegiality. They see a cautious intellectual who is temperamentally unlikely, in the words of one judge, a Democrat, to "kick long-standing precedent in the teeth."

"He may come out differently than I do," said Judge Thomas L. Ambro, a Clinton appointee, but "I don't see his personal views spilling across the page."

At the same time, Alito has compiled the type of record that his Reagan-era colleagues had hoped for. In his copious opinions on politically divisive issues such as abortion, civil rights and religion in the public square, they see Alito joining a gathering juggernaut of conservative thinking on the nation's highest court.

"He's a Borklette, a Bork without the edge," said Bruce Fein, who was associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department. "I see a judge who reads the statutes as written and interprets the Constitution using its original meaning, instead of assuming the role of platonic guardian and ordaining a society he thinks is enlightened."

Today, Alito will begin to tell the Senate, and the country, how he sees himself.

Research editor Lucy Shackelford and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.