Alito, Samuel A (1950– )

Associate justice of the US Supreme Court from 2006. A judge on the US Court of Appeals from 1990, he replaced the retiring Sandra Day O'Connor as associate justice on the US Supreme Court in 2006, having been nominated by the Republican president George W Bush. A conservative jurist, he had held senior legal positions in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan.

Born in Trenton, New Jersey, into an Italian-American Roman Catholic family, he studied at Princeton University and Yale Law School, where he became editor of the Yale Law Journal. During the conservative Reagan administration, in 1981–85 he was assistant to the Solicitor General and in 1985–87 was deputy assistant to Attorney General Edwin Meese.