The Daily Princetonian (Princeton)
(U-WIRE) PRINCETON, N.J.-The senior thesis of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito ’72, which along with some 300 others was lost during the 1970s, resurfaced Monday when Alito’s thesis advisor provided a copy to the University.
Walter Murphy, the McCormick Professor in Jurisprudence Emeritus, sent a copy of the thesis to the University’s Mudd Manuscript Library.
While much of the document deals with how the court came to be and the history of Italy’s justices, one chapter focuses specifically on the court’s work on questions of church and state.
“I chose to investigate the Court’s work in this area because it is important, because it has probably been the most controversial, and because it is the area in which the clash of interest groups can be observed most clearly,” Alito wrote.
Alito’s ruling in the 1991 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which challenged Pennsylvania’s requirement that women seeking abortions notify their husbands, has become a focal point in the debate.