Alito Benefits from Colleague's 50-Year Friendship

Judge Edward Becker secures Arlen Specter's support

Personal connections can play an unexpectedly large role in smoothing a Supreme Court nominee’s path to confirmation. Samuel Alito’s nomination benefited tremendously from the deep friendship between Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter and Alito’s Third Circuit colleague Edward R. Becker.

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Based on the public record, there was little reason to expect that Arlen Specter would be strongly supportive of George W. Bush’s nomination of Samuel Alito in 2005. Specter was a liberal Republican who had long been especially vocal in his support of Roe v. Wade. Alito was a legal conservative whose record invited doubts about his view of Roe.

Alito had been a senior political appointee in the Department of Justice in the Reagan administration, which called for Roe to be overturned. His judicial record in his 15 years on the Third Circuit included his partial dissent in an abortion case. Alone on the panel, he construed the Supreme Court’s abortion cases to allow a spousal-notification provision. The justice he was nominated to replace, Sandra Day O’Connor, was part of the Supreme Court majority that rejected his position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

On top of deterring a filibuster, the White House needed to secure Specter’s support for Alito. As committee chairman, Specter could make many decisions, large and small, that could help or hurt Alito—e.g., when the hearing would take place, what records from Alito’s service in the Reagan administration the committee would demand, who would be invited to testify as witnesses. What’s more, if Specter was tepid or worse on Alito, that would open the door for the handful of other moderate or liberal Republicans to oppose Alito and thus imperil the majority needed to confirm his nomination.

It turns out, though, that Specter had volunteered to the White House that he would welcome Alito’s nomination. Indeed, by his own account, he had first done so way back in mid-July, before George W. Bush had announced his selection of John Roberts. It is difficult to imagine that he would have done so without Ed Becker’s strong recommendation.

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Specter dedicates Never Give In, his memoir on his struggle with cancer, to Ed Becker, whom he hails as “a brilliant, warm, outgoing, caring, supremely friendly individual whom people liked instantly.” By 2005, he “had known Ed for over fifty years and considered him one of my best friends.” The two had first met in 1950 “when we rode the Frankford elevated train together each morning from our homes in Northeast Philadelphia to the University of Pennsylvania.” They were debate teammates at Penn, they were one year apart at Yale law school in the mid-1950s, and their wives had even been high-school classmates. Becker, who was active in Republican politics before becoming a federal district judge in 1970, represented Specter in 1967 when his eligibility to run for mayor was challenged.

Third Circuit judge Edward R. Becker

Specter developed an even stronger bond with Becker in early 2005. Becker was “fighting a grueling battle with prostate cancer,” but nonetheless tirelessly assisted Specter on the thorny issue of asbestos litigation reform. It was not long after a hearing on the topic in January 2005 when Specter learned that he had Hodgkin’s disease. He and Becker called each other the “chemo kids,” and Becker gave him valuable advice on the day-to-day challenge of living with cancer.

Ronald Reagan appointed Becker to the Third Circuit in 1981, and George H.W. Bush appointed Alito to that court in 1990, so Becker and Alito had been colleagues for fifteen years. Becker was very fond of Alito and greatly admired him as a judge, and he made sure to connect Specter with Alito: Specter recounts that it was at Becker’s invitation that the three of them and their wives enjoyed a dinner together.

In his dealings with the White House on possible nominees, Specter consulted closely with Becker, “whose knowledge of the federal judiciary was encyclopedic.” What Becker had to say to Specter about Alito is easy to glean from Becker’s own testimony at Alito’s confirmation hearing, where he offered effusive praise for “Sam Alito’s temperament, his integrity, his intellect and his approach to the law”:

First, temperament. Sam Alito is a wonderful human being. He is gentle, considerate, unfailingly polite, decent, kind, patient and generous. He is modest and self-effacing. He shuns praise…. In hundreds of conferences, I have never once heard Sam raise his voice, express anger or sarcasm, or even try to proselytize. Rather, he expresses his views in measured and tempered tones….

Second, integrity. Sam Alito is the soul of honor. I have never seen a chink in the armor of his integrity, which I view as total….

Third, intellect. Judge Alito’s intellect is of a very high order. He is brilliant, he is highly analytical, and meticulous and careful in his comments and his written work. He is a wonderful partner in dialog. He will think of things his colleagues have missed. He is not doctrinaire, but rather is open to differing views and will often change his mind in light of the views of a colleague….

Fourth, approach to the law…. The Sam Alito that I have sat with for 15 years is not an ideologue. He is not a movement person. He is a real judge deciding each case on the facts and the law, not on his personal views, whatever they may be.

You might find it odd—you should find it odd—that Becker testified at Alito’s hearing. Never before had a judicial colleague of a Supreme Court nominee appeared as a witness on the nominee’s qualifications. What’s even more remarkable is that Becker was just one of seven of Alito’s Third Circuit colleagues who testified. So did Anthony Scirica, Maryanne Trump Barry, LBJ appointee Ruggero Aldisert, Leonard Garth, John Gibbons and Timothy Lewis. How did this happen?

The short answer is Ed Becker. It was Judge Becker’s idea to testify on behalf of Alito. It was Judge Becker who determined that judicial ethics rules allowed him to testify if he were invited by Specter to do so. It was Judge Becker who enlisted the participation of the six other judges.

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Specter was solidly in support of Alito’s nomination from the outset and never showed any sign of wobbling. One reason for that, as we have seen, was that Specter understood that as committee chairman he had an institutional responsibility to Senate Republicans that overrode his own particular views. But another big reason was Ed Becker.

Becker died in May 2006, four months after his testimony, at the age of 73.