Conservatism and Samuel Alito's Tenure on the Supreme Court - The Atlantic
"In the end, both Roberts and Alito are solidly conservative justices—willing to use a range of interpretative tools to push the law to the right in a number of critical areas. But there is one significant difference between the two justices, and that difference helps explain why their records have been materially different in their first decade on the Court. As we concluded after taking a year-long look at Roberts’s first decade as chief justice, Roberts is deeply concerned about the institutional legitimacy of the Court—since joining the Court, he’s repeatedly expressed the concern that the Court not be seen as an extension of the political process—and there are areas in which that concern trumps his ideology. In contrast, Alito’s record is almost always consistent with his conservative ideology."
