Justice Samuel Alito has no regrets writing the Dobbs opinion that ended Roe v. Wade, despite death threats and a plot to kill a fellow justice.
In a rare television interview spanning several hours, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sat down with CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford at a New Jersey ball field near his hometown and later at the Court itself. He discussed his new book, his originalist approach, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the leak that followed, and why he is not stepping down.
At 76, after two decades on the bench, Alito is in many ways the conservative leader of what is often called the Roberts Court. His opinions on abortion, religious liberty, free speech, and equal application of the laws now shape the country. He makes no apology for that record.
Crawford found Alito on the bleachers of a gritty ball field outside Trenton, in the Hamilton Township area where he grew up. It was the first time in 60 years he had returned to the surface where he once played second base.
His best friend Ronnie played shortstop. “I played second base. And my best friend Ronnie played shortstop. He had a stronger arm, so we were the double-play combination,” Alito said. “In my fantasy, we did it all the time. But maybe we did it once or twice.”
He remains a lifelong Phillies fan. The team was among the worst in the majors when he was a boy. He stuck with them anyway. “It’s a sign of bad character if you abandon your team just because they’re having a bad streak,” he said. “Some people would think I could be quite stubborn, but I’ve stuck with the Phillies through thick and thin. Hope springs eternal.”
Just down the road sits his old high school. He was valedictorian, student council president, editor of the student newspaper, and a key member of the debate and track teams. Walking the hallways again, he said it “seems familiar” and “also seems somewhat different.”
The popular caricature of Alito as an angry man nursing old grievances gets a flat rejection. “The idea that I’m angry and that I’m bitter and that I’m trying to get revenge for something that I experienced at an earlier point in my life is a caricature,” he told Crawford.
His father, nicknamed “Silent Sam” in high school, taught him never to show emotion in public. His mother was more hot-tempered. “So I feel these two tendencies inside me,” Alito said. People have called him Silent Sam too.
Alito wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the June 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. The 5-4 decision held that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion and returned the issue to the states. Justice Clarence Thomas, the senior justice in the majority, assigned him the opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented and urged the five not to overturn Roe.
Since that ruling, 13 states have enacted complete abortion bans. Alito lost friends over it. He still calls the assignment a privilege.
Crawford asked whether he regretted writing it given the fallout. Alito answered without hesitation.
"No, not at all. It was a privilege to be able to write it. And I don’t regret it, despite what it led to."
“I don’t think I anticipated the particulars of what it led to. I did anticipate that there would be strong opposition,” he added. He thought long and hard about structure, tone, and what each colleague would accept before he started drafting.
“The most important thing to know is to be true to the Constitution. Getting to five is important. But you should not try to get a majority opinion if that means sacrificing something that is important,” Alito said. “I will never adopt a legal rule that I think is wrong, or say something that I think is wrong. But without doing that, there are ways of trying to keep a majority together.”
In late April 2022, Politico notified the Court it had a copy of the draft Dobbs opinion and planned to publish. The justices were at lunch in their private dining room, where they talk about anything except cases, when Chief Justice Roberts told them. Alito called it “quite a shock.”
Within a short time the majority understood the danger. “This would endanger us. And it made us targets for assassination,” Alito said. Politico published in early May, describing the draft as an “unprecedented view into the justices’ deliberations” and “plainly news of great public interest.”
Alito was blunt about the consequences. “His goal was to change the decision in the case. So that was quite predictable,” he said of the later would-be attacker. “And whoever leaked it knew or had good reason to know that that would be the consequence of leaking it. And Politico knew, or should’ve known, that that would be the consequence of their decision to publish it.”
He dismissed the idea that any justice in the majority leaked it. “It’s implausible that any of us would have done that for exactly the reason I’ve mentioned, because this pinned a target on our backs.”
In June 2022, in the middle of the night, a man approached Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home while the family slept. He carried a gun, ammunition, a knife, a nail punch, duct tape, zip ties, a crowbar, burglary tools, and special shoes to silence his footsteps. His aim was to kill at least three of the conservative justices and change the outcome in Dobbs. He spoke to his sister by phone; she talked him out of it. He was arrested and later convicted. “And it was very fortunate that that planned attack (on Kavanaugh) was not successful,” Alito said.
Security ramped up across the Court. Justices now travel with protection and have officers at their homes. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has spoken of wearing a bulletproof vest. Family members received threats. The leak, Alito said, “has cast a pall over the Court to a degree because we don’t know who was responsible for that. It’s something that I don’t think we can get out of our minds.”
Earlier this year Alito thought about retirement. At his age, he said, “it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term.” Some conservatives urged him to step aside while Republicans hold the Senate so President Trump could name a successor. Alito said that was not a factor.
“It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be,” he explained, “and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.”
He is staying. “I think I can still make a contribution,” Alito said. “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.”
He refuses to discuss legacy. No justice should, in his view.
Alito’s book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court and Our Country,” collects his speeches and defends what he calls a practical originalist approach. He warns that the constitutional system faces growing institutional and cultural strain. Religious liberty, he writes, is part of human dignity. He sees a “new moral code” that treats people with traditional beliefs on marriage and biological sex as bigots. He points to an “alarming picture” at colleges and universities.
Asked to sum up the Court’s work in his time, Alito listed the priorities plainly.
"We have stood up for freedom of speech, which is endangered. We have done a lot to protect religious liberty. We have vindicated the principle that the laws should be applied equally to everybody, regardless of race or ethnic background. We have tried to restore the original structure of the government as it was set out in the Constitution, but that’s an ongoing project."
Last term he wrote the majority opinion in Louisiana v. Callais. The Court held that the state’s 2024 congressional map, which added a second majority-Black district, was unconstitutional. The decision restricts states from grouping voters by race when drawing legislative districts to produce more minority officeholders. Earlier Alito opinions had set the stage for that result.
At oral argument he does not perform. “At oral argument, I am not trying to put on a show. The purpose of oral argument is to help the decision making process,” he said. If a lawyer pushes a path he believes contradicts the Constitution and would harm the legal system and the country, “then I will challenge the lawyer. And I will do it robustly.” He used to argue cases himself, 12 of them before the Court as a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, and welcomed hard questions.
Before that he served as a federal prosecutor. The habits stuck. He builds majorities by finding common ground without surrendering core principles. Getting to five matters. Sacrificing the Constitution to get there does not.
Crawford’s conversations ranged from the ball field to a formal Court conference room lined with gilded portraits of former chief justices. Alito appeared in a polo shirt and khakis on the New Jersey visit and spoke with the same directness in both settings. He is not running for anything. He is not polishing an image. He is explaining why he reads the Constitution as the Framers wrote it and why he will keep doing that work.
The left wanted a different Court and a different Constitution. Alito is still here, still writing, and still unmoved.
