In the eighteen years since her family left their home in New Jersey and moved into some of Washington's most rarefied circles, Martha-Ann Alito has never sought or cultivated a particularly public identity.
As the wife of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., Mrs. Alito has described living a largely private life since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 2006 — one based on raising two children and supporting her husband through critical research and sharp criticism. pushed into politics.
On the few occasions she has stepped forward to address an audience or talk to reporters, Mrs. Alito has often spoken of herself in terms of her role within a close-knit nuclear family, which she held together by her husband's lightning , and sometimes trying, standing up within the judiciary.
“The most amazing thing is why do people care about our lives,” she said in 2006 interviewlooking back on Judge Alito's confirmation hearing, which at one point left her in tears led to discussion about the toll partisanship can take over nominees' family members.
But since The New York Times reporting raised questions about the how and why of a inverted American flag On January 6, 2021, Ms. Alito, 70, appeared outside her family's home in Alexandria, Virginia, just days after rioters at the U.S. Capitol carried the same flag on January 6, 2021. She abruptly found herself at the center of controversy. Her husband said she put it there in the middle of a neighborhood argument.
By the time the family was about to move to Washington, the Alitos' children were already in college. Ms. Alito said she welcomed the change after leaving a career as a librarian to become a full-time homemaker and mother.
But the arduous preparations and harsh reception Judge Alito encountered in Congress left a bitter memory that Mrs. Alito would publicly recall for years afterward. to sue the procedure and the media reporting surrounding it.
“For me personally, the two months leading up to it were the horrible part of our lives,” she said comments introducing her husband at an awards ceremony in April 2007. “And luckily I wasn't in Washington, so I didn't have to read the papers or look at the blogs or look at the computer, and I continued that standard – I no. reading longer, except when I choose to pick up a book.
The sharp questions Judge Alito received from the Democrats about his views abortionHis ties to a conservative Princeton alumni group and questions about whether he would defer to the court's precedents struck Ms. Alito as humiliating.
“As the world stands today, Sam is nowhere near an immediate threat to civil liberties,” she said in the 2006 interview.
Overcoming that sharp transition reflected the upheavals of her youth, which Ms. Alito has spoken about publicly. Her father, who worked as an air traffic controller in the Air Force, regularly moved the family between outposts in Texas, Florida, Maine and the Azores in Portugal. Her mother worked as a librarian at the bases where they lived.
After following her mother's path to becoming a librarian for a New Jersey public library, the U.S. attorney's office in Newark and the Justice Department, Ms. Alito built a limited public life in Washington that focused largely on apolitical projects and charity work.
When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's husband, Martin Ginsburg, died in 2010Mrs. Alito organized the publication of a cookbook as a celebration of his culinary passions. In honor of her father's service, she also spoke about her work as director of a group focused on ending homelessness among veterans.
While some associates of other Supreme Court justices – such as Jane Sullivan Roberts or Virginia Thomas — have been mired in controversy in recent years over their professional lives and political leanings, Ms. Alito has not.
Only on rare occasions have Ms. Alito's personal manners attracted attention at all: once, after she and Judge Alito shared a meal with a couple later claiming they had been told the decision on an ongoing case in advance, and again when shares And mineral interests which she inherited from her father, raised minor concerns about conflicts of interest in cases where her husband could decide.
Ms. Alito graduated from the University of Kentucky with a bachelor's degree in comparative literature in 1976 and a master's degree in library science in 1977. She met Judge Alito in the law library when he was an assistant U.S. attorney. The two married in 1985, five years after their first date, in the church where he was baptized.