More on Alito and the criminal docket

The Boston Globe has this article which discusses the impact a Justice Alito could have in criminal cases and explores how "Alito's strict view on law-and-order cases may be decisive on a Supreme Court that has been narrowly divided on cases involving civil liberties, the death penalty, and the rights of defendants."  The article mostly focuses on Judge Alito's Third Circuit dissent in the "strip search" case (Doe v. Grody) and the dueling interpretations of the case put forth by Alito supporters and detractors.

Of late, I have been thinking about how another new Justice, and especially one with a criminal justice background, might impact the High Court's criminal docket as well as its criminal decisions.  That is, I wonder whether a Justice Alito might be more (or less) inclined to vote to grant cert in certain types of criminal cases.  (Of course, I focus on this issue because there are so many post-Blakely and post-Booker questions that I think merit the Supreme Court's attention and because I hope not to have to keep kvetching again and again about the Court's grants of cert in so many death penalty cases.)

Related posts:

• Roberts, the cert pool, and sentencing jurisprudence
• Pondering a (cert.) pool with much splashing about
• Cert. pool filling up with Blakely cases
• The waiting is the hardest part...