Though neither has committed to voting for or against Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito, senators Lincoln Chafee '75, R-R.I., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., have both expressed concerns about his 15-year record as a federal appeals court judge.
"There's no doubt that this is a critical seat - the balance of the court is an issue," Chafee told The Herald, noting that the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor often cast the court's deciding vote, particularly against abortion restrictions.
Chafee said he "certainly" has reservations about Alito on three primary issues - in addition to abortion rights, he is concerned about interpretation of the commerce clause and the separation of church and state. The lattermost of these concerns is "something that Rhode Islanders have a special interest in because of Roger Williams and his staunch belief in (the separation of church and state)," Chafee said.
Reed has said that he would not rule out joining a Democratic filibuster to prevent the Senate's approval of Alito's nomination but emphasized the need to "stop and do it the old-fashioned way" through Alito's confirmation hearings, which are set to begin Jan. 9.
"Those hearings will be really the first time many of us will hear Judge Alito give his feelings about the Constitution," Reed said. "(We will) analyze all the cases to get a sense of where he's coming from, but also we have to ask him, 'Listen. You're on the court, you don't have to follow so dramatically the precedent ... what are you going to do?' "
Reed said he is curious about Alito's reading of the commerce clause as narrow or expansive and his views on the right to privacy.
Reed added that he wants to know if Alito will restrict rights granted to Congress in the commerce clause such as passing environmental and consumer product safety regulations, which Reed thinks are important to uphold "because we have a national economy."
Chafee echoed Reed's concerns about maintaining Congress's right to regulate commerce among states through the commerce clause, in part because of legislation like the Clean Air and Water Act that protects downwind states from pollution.
Reed also expressed concern about Alito's dedication to individual rights - specifically, his potentially narrow interpretation of the Voting Rights Act and his "views on a woman's right to choose."
Like Chafee, Reed questioned Alito's record regarding abortion rights. He said that Alito's 1991 vote to uphold a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to tell their husbands will be one of the "front and center" cases used to examine Alito's interpretations of the law but emphasized that there has not yet been a full analysis of Alito's opinion in the case.
Chafee's vote in favor of Chief Justice John Roberts disappointed abortion-rights supporters such as the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League Pro-Choice America, an organization that earlier this year granted him early re-election support. This endorsement is particularly important for Republican Chafee in an election campaign against abortion-rights backing Democrats.
NARAL was among the first groups to announce its opposition to the Alito nomination.
Democrats have not directly indicated that they will filibuster to prevent Alito's nomination, and Chafee has warned against it. He said the Republican party leadership might counter the filibuster by invoking a rule change called the "nuclear option," which would cut back permanently on the Senate tradition of unlimited debate and change the required margin of defeat to 50 votes.
"Although it's very early, I'm not sure that the minority will invoke the filibuster on this nominee," Chafee said.
Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, who is running against Chafee in the Republican primary for Senate, declined to comment for this story but issued a statement last week on Alito's nomination.
In his statement, Laffey warned against unnamed "extremists on both sides who would look to jeopardize judicial independence" and emphasized the importance of the Senate giving Alito a fair hearing.
"He appears to be well-qualified for the Supreme Court - and I look forward to hearing more about his judicial philosophy," Laffey added.
Democratic candidate for Senate and former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse is much less optimistic about Alito's nomination.
"I look out at the landscape from which (Alito's) nomination emerges and I see a hard conservative activist right wing of the Republican party that claims that it intends to turn the Supreme Court (into) an ultra-conservative political bastion," Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse said that Chafee's tendency is to defer to President Bush and vote with the Republican party.
"People like Alito get put up as judges when the Republicans have a monopoly on power in Washington and believe they can push pretty much anyone they want through the Senate," he said. "So far, not many have been stopped."
Though Whitehouse would not come out in open opposition to Alito, he said the nominee would "have a hill to climb with me to get support."
"It's clear to me that (Alito) is not committed to the protection of basic constitutional rights, and therefore I would oppose him," said Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown, who is also running in the Democratic race for Senate in 2006.
"In this appointment President Bush has made clear that he's got an agenda to replace Sandra Day O'Connor with a right-wing ideologue," Brown said. "I believe it's important to stand up against that effort by President Bush."
