Justice Samuel Alito says he thought about leaving the Supreme Court at the end of last term, then stayed because he still believed he could do the job that brought him there.
In a The Hill report on a CBS News interview, the 76-year-old justice told chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford he considered retirement when the prior term closed, and decided against it.
Alito is the court’s second-oldest justice, behind Clarence Thomas at 78. He has served a little over two decades after President George W. Bush put him on the bench. He sits with the court’s conservative majority alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch.
Asked about the choice, he did not dodge it.
He said he thought about stepping down.
"I thought about it."
He added that age forces the question every term.
"Well, it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term."
Then he explained why he stayed.
"But I thought that I could still make a valuable contribution, which is why I became a justice and a judge in the first place. So that is basically it."
Speculation around Alito did not start with the CBS sit-down. On the final opinion day of the court’s term, NPR wrongly reported that he had announced his retirement. The network later retracted the story. NPR journalist Nina Totenberg apologized to Alito in a letter.
In August, Alito shut the rumor down hard. He told the Wall Street Journal he was not leaving.
"obviously I’m here for another term."
The new interview puts a finer point on that record. He had weighed the exit. He chose the work instead.
Crawford framed the retirement question around political pressure and timing. The interview described Republicans who wanted a replacement confirmed while the GOP held the Senate. She also asked whether a future departure could risk undoing his record on the court, a comparison that invoked the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the cost of leaving at the wrong moment.
Alito would not map out a timetable. He said personal health, family reality, and national politics are all too fluid for neat forecasts.
"I think it’s too hard to predict. It’s too hard to predict, for anybody, particularly when you reach a certain age, what your situation will be a year from now, two years from now, and so forth."
He tied that uncertainty to the next president’s power over any vacancy.
"And it’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be, and what any president might do with respect to a replacement."
That is the plain math of a lifetime seat. A justice who leaves hands the next nomination to whoever holds the White House. A justice who can still do the job keeps the seat, and the jurisprudence that comes with it, where it is.
Alito did not cast retirement as a scandal or a surrender. He cast it as an annual duty for someone his age, measured against whether he can still serve. His answer was practical: the contribution is still there, so he remains.
That matters for readers who watch the court for more than gossip. Conservative majorities do not run on autopilot. They run on justices who show up, draft, vote, and stay long enough for the law to settle. Alito’s public line is that he is not finished with that work.
He also refused to turn the court into a campaign calendar. He would not promise a year. He would not game a president. He would not pretend he can see around corners on health or politics. He said he will have to think about retirement every year, and left it there.
For now, the justice who thought about leaving has chosen to keep judging, and the seat stays filled by the man who says he can still do the job.
