The Washington Post reports that President Bush will today nominate Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, following the failed nomination of Harriet Miers.

(Who? Already she fades….)

Alito is apparently nicknamed “Scalito” for his philosophical resemblance to conservative justice Anton Scalia.

His most controversial case is sure to be his opinion in the famous 1991 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which a Third Circuit panel ruled on the legality of a Pennsylvania law imposing numerous restrictions on abortion, mandating, for example, that doctors warn women of the dangers of abortion and abide by a 24-hour waiting period.

The law in question also mandated that women seeking an abortion must notify their husbands—a stipulation Alito thought legal.

As the Post puts it, Citing previous opinions of O’Connor, Alito wrote that an abortion regulation is unconstitutional only if it imposes an undue burden on a woman’s access to the procedure. The spousal notification provision, he wrote, does not constitute such a burden and must therefore only meet the requirement that it be rationally related to some legitimate government purpose.

This is a tough one. If I were married and my pregnant wife got an abortion without telling me, I’d be pretty pissed. (Though I’m not sure why marriage would be the test here. If the principle involves notifying the father, who cares whether the prospective parents are married or not?)

On the other hand, I’m skeptical that marriage gives one spouse the right to veto another spouse’s physical decision. What if, for example, a woman was married to an abusive husband? How, exactly, would she notify him that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy?

The Supreme Court eventually heard the case and disagreed with Alito. Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that “spousal notification requirement is . . . likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion,”

My prediction: There’s going to be a big, ugly fight over this pick. Washington must be a grim place right now.
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P.S. For you media-watchers, this constitutes a big scoop for the Post. The Times is embarrassingly reduced to running this AP story on its website. Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick has an already-late piece about the looming fight over potential nominees, including Alito.

P.P.S. The Times has replaced its wire story with this one by David Kirkpatrick and Christine Hauser. Whoops! Score one for the Washington Post.