(page 3 of 7 ) Overall, the opinions Alito wrote are largely devoid of impassioned rhetoric or broad philosophical assertions. He grounds his views in close readings of legal precedents, statutes and government regulations. Of the cases The Post examined, Alito upheld the rulings of a lower court about half the time, which is typical of appeals judges nationally. Routinely, he defers to government officials and others in positions of authority. He sometimes chastises his fellow judges for what he regards as overstepping their authority by imposing their own judgments, rather than merely assessing the legality of actions by prison guards, defense lawyers and immigration officials being challenged -- actions he often upholds. His written opinions often are "very thoughtful, well constructed and well argued," said Martin H. Redish, a constitutional scholar at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago who reviewed several cases in the Post analysis. At the same time, he said, Alito is "clearly tough-minded . . . having very little sympathy for those asserting rights against the government." As Alito's confirmation hearings approach, the debate over his nomination has escalated to a political brawl. At the core of the partisan fight is a pair of memos he wrote two decades ago, when he was a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration. In them he made clear that he opposed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. There were two abortion cases in the analysis. Alito voted to restrict abortion rights in one -- the well-known Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, in which the Supreme Court later disagreed with him -- and voted to protect such rights in the other. Alito's place in the nation's decades-old abortion wars, the analysis shows, is not what most defines him as a judge. In the summer of 1991, Kourtney Kauffman was released against his doctors' advice after a five-day stay at a psychiatric center in Harrisburg, Pa. Two days before he was hospitalized, five guns were stolen from a nearby house. Five days after he got out, Kauffman was arrested while trying to sell four of the weapons to a firearms dealer.         PREVIOUS PAGE RETURN TO BIO NEXT PAGE