Alito, The Prince and Murphy

The blog at The Washington Post notes that The Daily Princetonian has corrected its erroneous report that Sam Alito's thesis advisor, Professor Walter Murphy, had stated that both he and Alito had agreed that Roe was wrongly decided. As a former editorial chairman of The Prince, I hesitate to criticize, but it seems that the mistake was a not-insignificant one. Here's the correction:

The original article mistakenly reported that Walter Murphy said he and Alito agreed that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. The error was a result of a misinterpretation of an earlier quote. In an interview Tuesday morning, Murphy said: "Sam and I have never talked about Roe v. Wade that I recall."

Wow.

In any case, I've been meaning to note how significant Professor Walter Murphy's commendation of Judge Alito is. Professor Murphy's "Constitutional Interpretation" class was known to be one of the toughest and best on campus. Interestingly, when I was there, one of the preceptors was Robert George.

In any case, for someone to win the respect and enthusiastic endorsement of Professor Murphy is really something. He's not a man given to easy grading or easy praise.