Democratic leaders plan to spend the next few weeks reviewing the voluminous legal opinions of Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, although they’re already questioning Alito’s commitment to upholding longstanding civil rights precedents.

As Alito prepares for his confirmation hearings next month, his critics are scrutinizing Alito’s views of a landmark case that established the legal principle of "one man, one vote."

Several lawyers said they are reviewing Alito’s 1985 memo in which he wrote that he disagreed with decisions by the Warren Court in the 1960s involving reapportionment. Those rulings required legislative districts to have equal populations and were designed to increase the representation of minority lawmakers.

Alito wrote his 1985 opinion while applying for a political appointment in the Reagan administration.

Civil rights activists say they are concerned that Alito may have signaled his intent to reverse the Warren Court’s reapportionment decisions, but the White House said Alito assured senators last week of his commitment to the principle of 'one person, one vote.'

Still, Democrats say they are suspect of Alito.

"I think there will be substantial opposition to Alito by Democrats," David Bositis, a senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Tuesday.

Bositis said that, unlike Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, who kept much his legal opinions private, many of Alito’s opinions are on record.

"He has said exactly what he’s felt and he does have a pretty hostile record on civil rights," Bositis said. "He even criticized 'one person, one vote,' which is totally out of the mainstream. If he finds those decisions objectionable, he probably finds other areas of the Voting Rights Act objectionable."

Alito’s confirmation hearings in January come at a time when Republicans are trying to reshape the high court to a more conservative panel for the next 20 years.

But black Democrats warned they are already lobbying for an extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which is set to expire in 2007, and said more civil rights protections for black Americans could be in jeopardy if Alito is appointed to the Court.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) appeared on "Fox News Sunday" last week and said Alito’s 1985 memo about the Warren Court's reapportionment rulings have raised the possibility that Democrats might filibuster his nomination.

"If he really believes that reapportionment is a questionable decision ... you'll find a lot of people, including me, willing to do whatever they can to keep him off the court," Biden said.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Alito is a threat to civil rights.

"Alito's record suggests an activist judicial philosophy bent on rolling back the rights and freedoms that all Americans value," Dean said in a recent statement. "Alito has sought to limit the rights of women and people with disabilities in discrimination cases, demonstrated an open hostility to women's privacy rights even in basic reproductive health matters, has a record of hostility toward immigrants, and tried to immunize employers from employment discrimination cases.

"It is particularly troubling," said Dean, "that President Bush would nominate a judge who would reverse American progress and make the Supreme Court look less like America ...[while] most Americans are honoring the life and legacy of Rosa Parks."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-CA) said Alito faces opposition over his decisions and an array of positions and statements on issues such as abortion that he made as a Reagan administration attorney in the 1980s.

"But even more serious for many people -- many people -- is the fact that he opposed the 'one person, one vote' decisions on drawing legislative districts, she said on "Fox News Sunday."

Eva Paterson, president of the Equal Justice Society, and Kimberly Thomas Rapp, its director of law and public policy, wrote a recent essay analyzing Alito’s views on civil rights and suggested that Alito is an extreme conservative.

"We face the possibility of the confirmation of a U.S. Supreme Court nominee who would turn the clock back on our hard-won civil rights," Paterson and Rapp wrote. "Samuel A. Alito's record demonstrates that, if confirmed, he will prove a friend to those seeking to reverse civil-rights protections."

Paterson and Rapp wrote that it is possible that Alito's "hostility to victims of discrimination" stems from his disagreement with our government's historic efforts to provide redress for some of the harm caused by centuries of sanctioned racism, particularly against blacks.
 
"In his 1985 application for a senior Justice Department position, Alito wrote, 'In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with [the decisions of the Supreme Court during the 1950s and 1960s], particularly in the areas of ... reapportionment,'" they wrote.

"The 'reapportionment' with which Alito disagrees is the Supreme Court's 1964 decision that resulted in the fundamental concept of 'one person, one vote,'" they said.

"In that case," they argued, "the court prohibited the then-common practice of drawing congressional districts in a way that diluted the influence of people of color by scattering minority voters among numerous districts, essentially drowning them in a sea of white votes."

"The Supreme Court thought this improper, explaining that Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution demands that "as nearly as is practicable one man's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's."

"According to Alito's own statements," the writers concluded, "he disagrees particularly with this holding."