Text of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's opening statement Monday

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's opening statement Monday to the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am deeply honored to appear before you.

I am deeply honored to have been nominated for a position on the Supreme Court. And I am humbled to have been nominated for the seat that is now held by Justice O'Connor.

Justice O'Connor has been a pioneer, and her dedicated service on the Supreme Court will never be forgotten. And the people of the country certainly owe her a great debt for the service that she has provided.

I'm very thankful to the president for nominating me, and I'm also thankful to the members of this committee and many other senators who took time from their busy schedules to meet with me. That was a great honor for me, and I appreciate all of the courtesies that were extended to me during those visits.

And I want to thank the Senator Lautenberg and Governor Whitman for coming here today and for their kind introductions.

During the previous weeks, an old story about a lawyer who argued a case before the Supreme Court has come to my mind, and I thought I might begin this afternoon by sharing that story.

The story goes as follows.

This was a lawyer who had never argued a case before the court before. And when the argument began, one of the justices said, How did you get here? — meaning how had his case worked its way up through the court system. But the lawyer was rather nervous and he took the question literally and he said — and this was some years ago — he said, I came here on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

This story has come to my mind in recent weeks because I have often asked myself, How in the world did I get here? And I want to try to answer that today and not by saying that I came here on I-95 or on Amtrak.

I am who I am, in the first place, because of my parents and because of the things that they taught me.

And I know from my own experience as a parent that parents probably teach most powerfully not through their words but through their deeds. And my parents taught me through the stories of their lives. And I don't take any credit for the things that they did or the things that they experienced, but they made a great impression on me.

My father was brought to this country as an infant. He lost his mother as a teenager. He grew up in poverty.