Legal expert breaks down Alito’s tendency to 'spar' with Biden’s solicitor general

Of the two conservative U.S. Supreme Court appointments President George W. Bush made during his eight years in office — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — Roberts has been the more nuanced of the two, sometimes agreeing with the Court's Democratic appointees. Alito, in contrast, has earned a reputation for being a hardcore ideologue.

Alito has been butting heads with Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar during the Biden era. CNN's Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic, describes their testy encounters in an article published on November 6.

"Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar is the Biden Administration's top lawyer at the Court, defending the policies that are the source of much of Alito's consternation," Biskupic explains. "She responds to him with a steady pitch and precision, and she is not derailed by what he puts down. Their jousting over issues such as abortion, vaccines, and all manner of regulatory power offers some of the most riveting exchanges heard these days at America's High Court."

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Biskupic adds, "When excerpts from their Supreme Court audio appear on YouTube or other social media, it attracts thousands of views, sometimes hundreds of thousands, as court-watchers debate who got the better of the argument."

The High Court has leaned conservative for a long time. But it moved even more to the right when Donald Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett replaced the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020.

"Any lawyer arguing a progressive position, as Prelogar regularly does, faces an uphill climb, because of the Court's conservative supermajority," Biskupic notes. "For about a half century, the Court was generally 5-4, conservative-liberal. Since 2020, it has been 6-3 conservative-liberal. A few weeks ago, Alito and Prelogar sparred over a federal agency established to protect consumers from risky mortgages, auto loans and credit card deals…. It was a spirited argument."

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Read Joan Biskupic's full CNN article at this link.