Justice Samuel Alito says he is not pleased with Trump administration rhetoric about the Supreme Court, calling the tone offensive and different from 15 years ago.
Daily Mail reporting on a rare Associated Press interview shows the longtime conservative justice drawing a hard line between tough criticism of rulings and the kind of language now aimed at the court, its decisions, and sometimes the justices themselves.
Alito spoke as he released his first book and as the court prepared to open its October term. He did not hide his view of the present climate.
“The terms used by presidents and by members of their administration, Cabinet officers, other high-ranking officers in describing the Supreme Court and their decisions, and sometimes individual justices, is far different from what we saw 15 years ago,” Alito told the AP.
"I personally am not pleased with that,"
he said of the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration.
Alito made clear he is not asking anyone to stay quiet. He said the public, and presidents, have every right to tear into the substance of what the court does.
"Everybody in this country has the right to criticize what we do. The substance of their criticism can be quite harsh. If we deserve it, then that’s fine."
“But rhetoric is a different story,” he added. “It’s offensive.”
That distinction matters. A justice can accept blistering argument about a holding and still reject language that treats the court like a political prop. Alito put himself in the first camp and said the second has gone too far.
The comments came with the publication, on Tuesday, of “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of The Constitution, The Court and Our Country.” The volume gathers Alito’s public remarks from two decades on the bench.
He did not launch a multi-city tour or a string of fireside chats. He gave interviews to only a few outlets, including the AP, and timed the release to the start of the October term so he could stay focused on the court’s work rather than the talk-show circuit.
President George W. Bush put Alito on the high court in 2006. He has been a reliable originalist vote ever since. He has also sided with President Donald Trump in a majority of the cases the court has heard, and he rejected any claim that his opinions are “MAGA” products rather than legal ones.
Trump has cheered him on social media as one of the “Greatest of All Time.” In the same posts, Trump went after the three justices he nominated, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, for rulings that cut against him, including fights over an emergency powers law used for sweeping global tariffs and an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship.
Alito’s answer to pressure from any White House was blunt. He said personal politics do not drive the vote.
"I honestly try to decide every single case on the merits, every single application on the merit. And that’s true whether the president is Donald Trump or Joe Biden or Barack Obama or anybody else."
That is the standard conservatives have long demanded from the bench: read the law, apply the Constitution, ignore the partisan weather. Alito stated it without apology.
He also addressed the sharp rise in the court’s emergency docket, the fast track for urgent applications that cannot wait for a full, ordinary briefing schedule. Presidents, Trump included, have leaned on executive orders when Congress moves slowly, and those fights land quickly at the court.
“An application is something that I think we have to rule on,” Alito said. He did not sound optimistic about a slowdown. “Unless something changes there, and I don't foresee it right now, I'm afraid this is going to continue.”
In other words, the institutional strain is real. The court still has to answer. Alito’s position is that it should answer on the law, not on the volume of the noise around it.
Independent judging on the merits is not disloyalty. It is the job description the Constitution wrote down.
