US: Samuel Alito has been confirmed as a supreme court justice, helping President George Bush to put his conservative stamp on America's highest court.
The US Senate voted 58 to 42 to confirm Mr Alito, with all but one Republican senator voting in favour and all but four Democrats voting against.
Mr Alito, who will be sworn in at the White House today, was expected to attend Mr Bush's State of the Union address last night, alongside the president's other nominee to the court, chief justice John Roberts.
Senate majority leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, described Mr Alito as a nominee who meets the highest standards of excellence.
"Today, you will become the 110th justice to serve on the court throughout America's history. It is a seat that is reserved for few - but that impacts millions," Mr Frist said in a message to the new supreme court justice.
Democrats acknowledged that the confirmation represented a boost for the president ahead of last night's address, but New York's Charles Schumer accused Mr Bush of dividing the US with Mr Alito's nomination.
"I must say that I wish the president was in a position to do more than claim a partisan victory tonight. The union would be better and stronger and more unified if we were confirming a different nominee, a nominee who could have united us more than divided us," he said.
Mr Alito's confirmation became certain on Monday when 19 Democrats joined the Republican majority to vote 72 to 25 to end the Senate debate on his nomination and allow yesterday's roll-call vote. This meant that Mr Alito's supporters had well above the 60 votes they needed to block a Democratic filibuster, which would have allowed debate on the nomination to continue indefinitely.
Mr Alito's record as an appellate court judge over the past 15 years suggests he will be among the most conservative justices in the supreme court. His impact will be magnified by the fact that he replaces Sandra Day O'Conner, a moderate conservative who cast the deciding vote in a liberal direction in numerous cases.
The son of Italian immigrants, Mr Alito becomes the fifth Catholic supreme court justice, creating a Catholic majority in the court for the first time.
Samuel Alito could tip the supreme court balance on a number of high-profile cases .
Presidential war powers: Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, claims his trial before a military tribunal is unlawful because it has not been authorized by a statute or the constitution.
Abortion: The supreme court will soon decide whether it should hear a case on the constitutionality of a 2003 federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure known by critics as "partial-birth abortion".
Voting rights: On March 1st, the court will hear arguments against a 2003 congressional redistricting plan in Texas that produced the state's first-ever majority-Republican congressional delegation in the following year's election. Opponents say it was a gerrymander.