Will the real Sam Alito

... please stand up... (please stand up, please stand up):

Marsha Levy-Warren, who graduated from Princeton a year after Alito in 1973 and was part of the university's first coed class, says he was known to be conservative but not noisy about it. While Princeton was not as restive as some other universities at the time, she says, anti-war and liberal sentiments nonetheless were strong, and students such as Alito who "stood kind of in the opposite camp were known."

As unrest mounted, the university set up a special committee of faculty, students and administrators to study how the school was governed. Stanley Kelley, the professor who chaired the committee, selected Alito as his staff assistant.

Kelley, now retired, said that in a highly charged environment, Alito didn't align himself with extreme views on either side.

"He chose to associate himself with the middle," said Kelley.

Alito himself painted a much sharper and conservative political self-portrait in completing a 1985 application for a job in the Reagan Justice Department. He wrote of being most influenced in the 1960s by the writings of William F. Buckley, the National Review and Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign. He also cited his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative alumni group known for its opposition to opening the school to women and bringing in more minorities.

"That's all certainly news to me," says Dwyer. "I would remember if Sam had ever said anything pro-Goldwater."

Levy-Warren, a New York psychologist and psychoanalyst, said she finds Alito's disclosure of membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton "distressing" and "painful," remembering CAP as a polarizing group that felt the school was moving in the "wrong direction" by welcoming women and minorities.

Alito now says he has no recollection of being a member of the group or participating in its activities.

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As documents from Alito's past have trickled out, the judge's strongly conservative paper trail sometimes seems to clash with his more measured public comments.

He has been working to reassure senators that he maintains an open mind, despite pronouncements like those on the job application stating that he was "particularly proud" of his work on cases arguing that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion and opposing racial and ethnic quotas.

"The idea that Alito maintains an open mind on reproductive rights is simply not credible," says Ralph Neas, president of the liberal People for the American Way. Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, sees "a series of mounting inconsistent statements and evasions."

Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said the seeming contradictions mean that Alito will have "an especially heavy burden at the hearings in January to explain the growing number of discrepancies between his current statements and his past actions."