Samuel Alito is an American judge who has been serving as the associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since January 2006. A Yale law graduate, he was a prominent figure in the legal circuit since his university days. He later served the military and was discharged as a captain in 1980. After serving appellate judges, Alito became an assistant United States attorney of the district of New Jersey. He eventually became a district attorney and then the appellate justice for the Third Circuit in 1990. In his tenure spanning over a decade, Alito delivered several judgments based on his conservative legal theory, which became a subject of debate after President George W. Bush nominated him for the post of the associate justice of the Supreme Court. A special hearing was conducted for the nomination polls, which he ultimately won. Some of the landmark cases that Alito has judged are the McDonald v. Chicago case, the Murphy v. NCAA case, the Janus v. AFSCME case, and the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case.