Samuel Alito, 76, admits he weighed quitting Supreme Court this year amid conservative pleas to retire

DAILYMAIL.COM • 12h ago

By BREANNE DEPPISCH, US SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER 16:38 05 Oct 2026, updated 17:23 05 Oct 2026

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says he considered retiring from the high court earlier this year, but declined to do so because he believes he can still make a contribution.

Alito acknowledged as much in a wide-ranging interview with CBS News -where he fielded questions ranging to his ‘legacy’ (Alito refuses to consider it while on the bench), the flurry of emergency docket rulings, and the number of cases in which he has ruled in favor of President Donald Trump.

On the issue of retirement, the 76-year-old Alito said he briefly weighed stepping down – citing the two decades he’s spent the high court, and his age.

Retirement is ‘something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,’ he told CBS News’ Jan Crawford.

The thought among some had been that Alito’s retirement would give Trump room to nominate another justice to the Supreme Court – though the justice rejected that notion outright.

Politics, he told CBS, was not a factor in his thinking.

Rather, Alito said, ‘I think I can still make a contribution.’ ‘And it’s hard to give up the opportunity to do something that I think will be good for the Constitution and good for the country as long as I’m able to do it.’

Alito also brushed aside questions as to whether he’d factored in his own role and influence on the court in deciding to stay.

‘It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be,’ he said, ‘and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.’

Alito also addressed a recent Wall Street Journal report that showed he has sided with Trump more than any other justice on the high court.

Asked by CBS News whether he would have ruled in the same way whether Trump was not in office, Alito insisted that he would.

‘I absolutely sincerely believe that I would,’ Alito said in the interview.

‘I’m not trying to decide cases to help President Trump,’ he added. ‘And I have not decided cases in the past to help or hurt any other president or presidential administration.’

Alito was nominated by President George W Bush and confirmed by the Senate 58-42 in January 2006, replacing Sandra Day O’Connor.

He is best known as the author of the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion, in which he wrote that Roe was ‘egregiously wrong from the start.’

He also made headlines in 2010 when cameras caught him mouthing ‘not true’ as President Obama criticized the court’s Citizens United ruling during the State of the Union.

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