Here’s a fine summary of 12 rules for demonizing a judicial nominee.
Rule 4–”In any non-unanimous case, cite the opinion of a fellow judge who disagreed with your judge as if that opinion were established fact”–reminded me of this Washington Post article from last week on Alito’s civil-rights cases. For example, in one case in which Alito dissented on very narrow and careful grounds, the article states that “his dissent prompted a rebuke from his normally congenial colleagues,” who opined that Title VII “‘would be eviscerated’” under Alito’s approach. The reader is left to believe that the conclusion and rhetoric of Alito’s colleagues are authoritative, rather than (might it be possible?) fairly contestable and extravagantly hyperbolic.