Judge Alito did not seem to go so far in his confirmation hearings two months later, in January 2006. He was pressed then by senators on whether Roe was settled law but would not say. “It is a precedent that has now been on the books for several decades,” he said. “It has been challenged. It has been reaffirmed. But it is an issue that is involved in litigation now at all levels.”
Mr. Kennedy kept a diary from the time he was a child, and often during his years in public office he would speak into a tape recorder while on trips to Vietnam, after meetings with American presidents or in sessions with his fellow senators. Transcriptions were made and stored at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
When Mr. Kennedy needed to refresh his memory, whether for interviews with reporters or historians, or for his own oral history projects, his staff was assigned the job of combing the diaries and preparing briefing material. The diary entries for his meetings with Justice Alito were included in a briefing book prepared for the senator for an oral history session on Supreme Court nominations.
An aide to the senator provided a copy of the briefing book for use in “Ted Kennedy: A Life.” There are no announced plans to open, or publish, the senator’s diaries themselves.
A July 21, 2005, diary entry from the briefing book contains an exchange between Mr. Kennedy and another judicial nominee, John G. Roberts Jr., now the chief justice, who was seeking the senator’s support.
Mr. Kennedy began with a cry from the heart. He told Judge Roberts that American history was an unfolding saga, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the enactment of the civil rights, voting rights and immigration legislation of the 1960s to more recent struggles to secure the rights of women, disabled people and gay Americans. Through it all Mr. Kennedy said the country had progressed in one direction toward freedom and equality.
“That has to be our continuum,” he told Chief Justice Roberts. Without it, America would be “a lesser country, a lesser land.”
Source: NY Times
