Marking his 15th year on the Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito defended his Nov. 12 remarks to the Federalist Society, calling coronavirus lockdowns a "constitutional stress test" on American freedom.
"Virtually every substantive point in the Federalist Society speech was taken from one of my published opinions or an opinion I joined," Alito said in a statement, USA Today reported in chronicling his career.
Alito even predicted in the speech his words would be "twisted" by partisan critics.
"I was not surprised by the reaction," he added.
Alito called out the "growing hostility to the expression of unfashionable views" in American society. He also rebuked the "things you can't say" lists growing in the age of political correctness and censorship.
Critics derided his speech as "nakedly partisan" with their own partisan opinions on what he stated.
"He's not afraid to be alone on things," former Alito clerk Adam Ciongoli told USA Today. "Justice Alito is a shy person but he does not shy from controversy because, in my experience, he has a very clear sense of what his role is and what is right and wrong.
"I don't see him changing. What I do see is the landscape of the debate shifting in a way that very interestingly puts his philosophy and his personality and orientation as a figure in the middle of that debate."
At his core, Alito is a "textualist" conservative unwilling to bend the words on the Constitution to fit modern views.
"The court's opinion is like a pirate ship," Alito once wrote in a case dissent. "It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice [Antonin] Scalia excoriated – the theory that courts should 'update' old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society."