HAVING waited more than a decade for a showdown over the future of the US Supreme Court, activists roared into battle yesterday after President Bush’s nomination of the conservative judge Samuel Alito.

Backed by huge war chests amassed over many years, liberal and conservative pressure groups unleashed a blizzard of television advertisements, e-mails and briefing papers in an attempt to influence Mr Alito’s confirmation process.

“This is going to be Armageddon,” declared Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican senator from Utah and a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Prepare for a slugfest,” said Jay Sekulow, a White House adviser.

Referring to Mr Alito’s 15-year “paper trail” of rulings and opinions as a federal appeals judge in Philadelphia, Mr Sekulow said that the judge had expressed opinions on “every hot-button issue” in American society, making him a lightning rod for both sides.

Mr Alito was nominated by Mr Bush to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate and a swing vote on many controversial issues such as abortion and affirmative action.

Conservatives have waited a generation to tip the nine-member Supreme Court decisively to the right on contentious issues such as abortion, gay marriage, civil rights and the separation of Church and State. In Mr Alito they believe they have their man.

Liberals fear that a rightward lurch would lead to the court overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that gave women a constitutional right to abortion.

They seized on a 1991 case in which Mr Alito argued that a woman should notify her husband before she seeks an abortion, a stance later rejected by the Supreme Court.

Although that 1991 dissenting opinion included several safeguards for women, and was far more cautious than liberals claim, it nevertheless thrust abortion, the most bitterly contested issue in America’s culture wars, to the front line in the battle over Mr Alito.

It is not known if Mr Alito would oppose Roe. Indeed, he told Arlen Specter, a pro-abortion Republican moderate and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he believes there is a constitutional right to privacy, the foundation for Roe. He added that Roe, as a 32-year-old decision, held weight as a precedent.

But liberals pounced on a statement by Mr Alito’s 91-year-old mother, Rose, who said that, as a Roman Catholic “of course he’s against abortion”, a stance that does not mean he would rule as such as a judge.

Within hours of his nomination, People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, e-mailed hundreds of thousands of supporters and vowed to mobilise its 750,000 members to “wage a national effort” to defeat the nomination.

“The President has laid down the gauntlet and the battle is now wide open,” said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice. Naral, a pro-abortion group, sent alerts to 35,000 “rapid responders” urging them to contact senators, and send e-mails to 400,000 activists. Labour unions and liberal groups such as the Alliance for Justice, MoveOn.org and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights also vowed to spend millions of dollars on campaigns opposing Mr Alito.

The Right’s response was equally aggressive. Progress for America, with close ties to the White House, began a $425,000 television advertising campaign supporting the judge. Attention also focused on a group of 14 centrist senators — seven Republicans, seven Democrats — who may hold Mr Alito’s fate in their hands. Senate Democrats lack the votes to defeat the confirmation, but may have enough to block it by filibuster.

Under a deal in May, the “Gang of 14” centrists reached a compromise that halted a Republican threat to abolish the right of judicial filibuster, the “nuclear option”.

Without the support of the seven Republican moderates, Democrats will not be able to prevent the Republicans using their Senate majority to force through a rule change that would abolish the right to filibuster.

Several of the seven Republican moderates have indicated that they would side with Mr Alito and oppose a Democrat filibuster.

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