Samuel Alito in Newsweek

On Civil Rights: Schools cannot limit student speech insulting other students

Alito said that the policy may be "brave, futile or merely silly." But by proscribing disparaging speech about a person's "values," the speech code "strikes at the heart of moral and political discourse-the lifeblood of constitutional self-government and the core concern of the First Amendment."

Alito concluded there is "no categorical ‘harassment exception' to the First Amendment" just because of the secondary effects of certain kinds of speech with emotive impact. Such speech, although perhaps "evil and offensive, may be used to communicate ideas or emotions that nevertheless implicate First Amendment protections."

On Crime: Casinos not responsible for drunken gambling losses

Alito noted that New Jersey courts have not made servers of alcohol liable beyond injuries resulting from drunken driving or accidents or brawls in a bar. Alito saw no evidence of a legislative intent to make casinos liable for giving alcohol to gamblers. Alito also cited the lower court's opinion that making casinos liable for losses incurred by drunken gamblers "could present almost metaphysical problems of proximate causation, since sober gamblers can play well yet lose big, intoxicated gamblers can still win big, and under the prevailing rules and house odds, ‘the house will win and the gamblers will lose' anyway in the typical transaction."

On Drugs: Alcohol ads cannot be banned from school newspapers

The Pitt News is distributed free to the university's 25,000 students, two thirds of whom are old enough to drink alcohol. All the paper's revenues come from advertising, much of it from alcoholic-beverage ads. The law cost the paper $17,000 in one year, which caused the paper to shrink in size and to postpone the purchase of digital cameras and improved computers.

Alito's court opinion held that the law was an impermissible restriction on commercial speech, discouraging a form of speech because of its content. He said there was no reasonable connection between the speech restriction and the Pennsylvania government's asserted reason for it-preventing underage drinking.