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Sam Alito Got Knighted... Just Like The Founding Fathers EXPLICITLY MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

It turns out Sam Alito hates the Constitution as much as you thought he did.

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Justice Sam Alito is the quintessential Originalist. He will write, as he did in Dobbs, that rights are contingent upon being “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition,” but this is just a hustle. In truth, he cares little about either the text or the vaunted “original public meaning” of the Constitution, casting it aside with a yawn and an eyeroll if it doesn’t match his very contemporary political preferences. Within an ivory tower somewhere, there probably lives a principled conservative law professor seeking a grand unified theory of Originalism that could be consistently applied in the 21st century, but on the ground, “Originalism” is just public relations.

The Intelligencer has a story today that actually happened several years ago but — not unlike Alito’s Upside-Down Flag nonsense — didn’t register with the public at the time. As we noted last week, Alito has been taking expensive gifts — as the conservative Supreme Court justices are wont to do! — from a right-wing German princess, but it turns out he’s been cultivating more ties to the European aristocracy.

It turns out the last time Donald Trump was president, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision setting women’s health care back a few centuries, added a knighthood to his own résumé, pledging an oath to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. The knighthood, bestowed in 2017, wasn’t widely reported at the time, but the order’s website was updated in July with Alito’s investiture on the front page.

May we present, Sir Samuel of Blackacre! We don’t know his sigil, but it’s meant to be flown upside-down.

Alito’s “An Appeal to Heaven” flag is a reference to John Locke’s argument in favor of a right to rise up against monarchists. Alito himself accepted a knighthood from an order managed by the House of Bourbon–Two Sicilies. The grand prefect of the order’s son is a pretender to the Imperial Throne of France.

Guys, I’m starting to think Alito doesn’t even understand the history he haphazardly quotes.

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Did the Framers have anything to say about the idea of European nobles granting titles to American government officials? You know, since they’d just fought a war of independence from a royal superpower on the strength of Enlightenment philosophy.

Indeed, they did! Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution reads, in relevant part:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

That’s why when you hear of some famous politician getting knighted or some other play title, it’s always after they retire.

The Supreme Court may be adamant that no branch can impose any ethical rules upon it — which is gibberish — but one would think the Constitution itself exert some influence over the institution.

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But, to be fair, this is just the “text” of the Constitution and Originalists don’t care about the text where they can conjure an “original” meaning “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.” Perhaps, despite these words, the understanding at the time of the Framing was much more friendly to the idea of high government officials taking on honorifics from foreign aristocrats. What did Alexander Hamilton think about it in the Federalist Papers?

Evils of this description ought not to be regarded as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption. An hereditary monarch, though often disposed to sacrifice his subjects to his ambition, has so great a personal interest in the government and in the external glory of the nation, that it is not easy for a foreign power to give him an equivalent for what he would sacrifice by treachery to the state. The world has accordingly been witness to few examples of this species of royal prostitution, though there have been abundant specimens of every other kind.

“Royal prostitution” more or less sums it up.

He then added a Savoy-blue wool cape (made by the pope’s tailor and retailing for a starting price of 940 euros) and a large blingy jeweled cross insignia (retail 322 euros) to his wardrobe of black vestments.

Or maybe royal pimping because that’s straight out of SuperFly.

The Intelligencer article concludes, “Justice Alito did not respond to emails or calls for comment.” No shock there. Alito has two modes when confronted with criticism or the hint of accountability: refuse to acknowledge it as someone above the law and preemptively and clumsily whine about to the Wall Street Journal. Since we’ve not seen a new WSJ opinion piece, he’s opting for the former.

While the title amounts to a constitutional violation on its face, the oath that Alito took upon induction might be worse:

We declare and promise to Almighty God, to Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the maternal protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the powerful intercession of Saint George the Martyr, to observe as true soldiers of Christ everything that is asked and recommended of us.

There’s a long history of bigotry hiding under the idea that groups bear some sort of “dual loyalty” that renders them unfit to be “real” Americans. John F. Kennedy’s election involved a nasty whisper (or not-so-much-a-whisper) campaign suggesting that as a Roman Catholic he’d take orders from the Pope over the American people. But that’s just because he was Catholic, not because he’d affirmatively sworn allegiance to the Bourbon crown in some Eyes Wide Shut ceremony.

Alito would probably say that this is no big deal because his knighthood is mostly play-acting and he’s not going to be called upon to legally bail out the Bourbons any time soon. Which is probably true but not the point. Knighthood was already a joke at the nation’s founding and the Framers still saw fit to include this language. No one was donning a suit of armor anymore, but the title still held symbolic weight. In fact, as the Hamilton passage notes, they were worried MORE about fundamentally meaningless titles because officials in a Republic can be swayed for so little. The Framers sought to protect against the idea that the nation’s democratic ideals and frontier ethic could be sold cheap even if the transaction never gave rise to some Münchenian Candidate. They just feared foreign influence bribing a vain, petty official with a fancy if meaningless title.

It took them a couple centuries, but the aristocrats definitely found their man.

Justice Alito’s Royalist Cosplay [Intelligencer]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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