Reading Alito Backwards

Michael Pakaluk suggests reading Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s book, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, in reverse order to better understand its contents.

Pakaluk notes that while the beginning of the book focuses on academic debates regarding textualism and originalism, the final chapter, titled The Real Counterculture, serves as an address for the 50th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, California. In that chapter, Alito discusses the college's commitment to truth and civil disagreement in contrast to historical counter-movements such as the 1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco, the first Earth Day in 1970, and student protests against the bombing of Cambodia.

Other chapters in the book include an essay on the necessity of faith in a secular age and a piece titled Four Men of the American Experience, which connects the life of Theodore Roosevelt with the history of Alito's grandparents and Clarence.