Transcript: 1988 Alito Comments on Bork Nomination

Below is a transcript excerpt from a 1988 interview in which Samuel A. Alito Jr. commented on the defeat of Robert H. Bork as President Reagan's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Alito was interviewed on Front Page New Jersey, a public affairs television program of NJN News, New Jersey's public television network. Alito, who at the time was U.S. attorney for New Jersey, was interviewed by NJN News senior political correspondent Michael Aron.

Michael Aron: Are you part of what liberals call the Meese-Bork-Charles Fried-William Bradford Reynolds crowd running the Justice Department?

Samuel Alito: I think that's kind of a pejorative way of putting it. I agree with many of the things that they attempted to do, but I'd prefer to discuss it issue by issue rather than in terms of labels.

Aron: Do you think Robert Bork should have been confirmed?

Alito: I certainly thought he should have been confirmed. I think he was one of the most outstanding nominees of this century.

Aron: Why? How?

Alito: He is a man of unequalled intellectual ability, understanding of constitutional history, someone who had thought deeply throughout his entire life about constitutional issues and about the Supreme Court and the role that it ought to play in American society. I think that if the public had accurately understood the positions that he holds and had made those wishes known to their elected representatives that he would have been overwhelmingly confirmed. But I think that through a sort of a fluke about the way the nomination came up and the kind of campaign that was mounted against him, he was unjustifiably rejected.