In a 2004 post, I played with some ideas about what a Burkean theory of judicial review might lok like. In an essay this week, Adam White does a far better job of describing the ideal Burjean Justice, using Sam Alito as his template:
Justice Alito is uniquely attuned to the space that the Constitution preserves for local communities to defend the vulnerable and to protect traditional values. In these three new opinions, more than any others, he has emerged as the Court’s Burkean justice. ...
In November 1985, Samuel Alito ... wrote a letter laying out the roots of his conservatism:
When I first became interested in government and politics during the 1960s, the greatest influences on my views were the writings of William F. Buckley, Jr., the National Review, and Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign. In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure, the Establishment Clause, and reapportionment. I discovered the writings of Alexander Bickel advocating judicial restraint, and it was largely for this reason that I decided to go to Yale Law School.
And, Alito urged, “I believe very strongly” in “the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values.”
As a piece of advocacy, young Alito’s letter succeeded in convincing its audience. (He got the OLC job.) But 25 years later, it stands for much more, pointing the reader to at least three themes and influences that manifest themselves in Justice Alito’s opinions: government’s legitimate role in “protecting traditional values”; the thought of Yale professor Alexander Bickel, a Burkean conservative whose work was largely overshadowed by the emergence of modern “Originalist” jurisprudence; and the Warren Court’s reapportionment cases, which Alito’s father had the job of implementing in New Jersey. ...
... Alito believed then—and now, evidently—that the Constitution ultimately afforded government bodies some space to identify what their particular communities deemed to be “traditional values” and to preserve those values against the threat of outside attack. And from the rest of his letter, and his attempt to explain that letter decades later, it is clear that the government actors that Alito had in mind were, first and foremost, the state and local officials who grapple daily with difficult questions of right and duty, aggressor and victim.
Please go read the whole thing. It's a very informative and thoughtful piece.