Rattle wrote:

What would Samuel Alito's confirmation mean for First Amendment law? It's impossible to be sure, but his appeals court opinions give us some clues. A Justice Alito would likely take a pretty broad view of free speech protections; support religious exemptions from some generally applicable laws; uphold evenhanded benefit programs that include both religious and secular institutions; and uphold the use of religious symbolism by the government.

Eugene Volokh on Alito's First Amendment case history.

This is an old post. I found it because it shows up in google searches for a particular misspelling of volokh. I decided to respond because I don't think Alito's views on the First Amendment are "libertarian." They are somewhat originalist, which is different than conservative but not quite the same thing as libertarian. In particular, a libertarian would likely oppose to use of state funds for religious expression, whereas a conservative would support that. An originalist might be more sympathetic to it because it wasn't originally understood to be a violation of the first amendment. On the other hand, a conservative would seek a narrow construction for private speech protection, whereas both originalist and libertarian would not. Its possible, however, the Prof. Volokh did not choose this headline.

RE: Volohk: Alito is a Free Speech Libertarian