Alito Pleads for Religious Tolerance
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NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Friday issued a plea for religious tolerance, and said the nation must guard against returning to days when a notion prevailed that people of some faiths were unfit for office.
“Unfortunately, we live in a time in which religious intolerance is growing in many parts of the world,” Justice Alito said in his address at graduation ceremonies for the Seton Hall University School of Law.
“We need to ensure that this dangerous trend does not come to the United States,” said Alito, a New Jersey native and Roman Catholic with ties to the Roman Catholic school.
Standing next to a statue of the school’s namesake, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, Alito said that when she was born in New York before the American Revolution it was common to restrict the right to vote and hold office “to people who held prescribed religious views.”
The American Constitution, by barring any religious test for office, changed that, he said.
“It has allowed religion to flourish here and has allowed people to exercise an unprecedented degree of religious liberty; to practice their religion, or not to practice their religion, as they choose,” Justice Alito said.
Justice Alito also received an honorary doctorate in law from the school.
Justice Alito taught from 1999 through 2004 at the Newark law school, which is part of Seton Hall University, of South Orange, a school operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. He received the law school’s St. Thomas More Medal of Honor in 1995 for outstanding contributions to law, and service to the community and the Catholic Church.
He has been a reliable conservative vote, as expected, since joining the nation’s highest court nearly 16 months ago. He sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in every case in which the court has been ideologically divided.
Justice Alito, 57, was born in Trenton, grew up in Hamilton Township and attended Princeton University.
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On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov
Seton Hall law school: http://law.shu.edu/
