Justice Samuel Alito says he still has work left for the Constitution and feels no regret over Dobbs, even after a leak that put the Court in the crosshairs.
Justice Samuel Alito returned to a New Jersey ball field outside Trenton for the first time in 60 years, sat on the bleachers where he once played second base, and delivered a rare, wide-ranging account of his life on and off the Supreme Court.
In conversations spanning several hours in his hometown and inside the Court’s formal rooms, Alito told CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford he has no plans to step down, no remorse for writing the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and no patience for the claim that he is driven by bitterness. The interview arrives as the 76-year-old justice marks two decades on the bench and releases his first book, a defense of practical originalism titled “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court and Our Country.”
Alito’s message was steady. He is staying because he believes he can still serve the Constitution and the country.
Alito walked the same high school hallways where he once served as valedictorian, student council president, newspaper editor, and a member of the debate and track teams. Down the road sat the gritty field where he and his best friend Ronnie formed a double-play combination, Alito at second, Ronnie at 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."
The lifelong Phillies fan framed loyalty as character. The team was among the worst in the majors when he was young. He never jumped ship.
“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.”
That same steadiness runs through how he describes his public image. Critics have long painted him as angry and out for score-settling. Alito called that portrait false.
"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 traced the tension inside him to his parents. His father’s high school nickname was “Silent Sam.” The elder Alito believed a man should never show emotions in public and reviewed his son’s writing assignments. His mother, Alito said, was much more hot-tempered. “So I feel these two tendencies inside me.” People have called him “Silent Sam” too.
Before the Court, he served as a federal prosecutor and argued 12 cases before the justices as a Justice Department attorney in the Reagan administration. Those years shaped a jurist who says oral argument is not theater.
“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 steers the Court toward a path he believes runs against the Constitution and harms the legal system, he challenges that lawyer “robustly.”
Alito said he weighed stepping down earlier this year. At 76, he treats the question as one every justice of his age must face each term. Some conservatives urged him to leave 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 said, “and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.”
He chose to remain. The reason was direct and institutional, not partisan theater. Readers following Alito’s decision to stay on the Court will hear the same core point he gave Crawford.
“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 listed the Court’s recent work in plain terms: standing up for freedom of speech he called endangered, protecting religious liberty, insisting the laws apply equally regardless of race or ethnic background, and trying to restore the original structure of government set out in the Constitution. “That’s an ongoing project,” he added.
His book warns that America’s constitutional system faces growing institutional and cultural strain. It defends religious liberty as part of human dignity and cautions against a “new moral code” that brands people with traditional beliefs on marriage and biological sex as bigots. He has also pointed to what he called an “alarming picture” on religious liberty at colleges and universities.
The center of the interview was Dobbs. In June 2022 the Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion, overturned Roe v. Wade, and returned the issue to the states. Since then, 13 states have enacted complete bans. Alito wrote the majority opinion after Justice Clarence Thomas, the senior justice in the majority, assigned it to him. The five who believed Roe was wrongly decided and should be overturned were Alito, Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Chief Justice John Roberts dissented from the decision to overturn Roe and urged the five not to go that far.
Alito described the drafting as deliberate, not impulsive. He thought through structure, tone, and what each colleague would accept or reject.
"I thought long and hard before I started drafting about what we should say, how it should be said, the structure, the tone, and what I thought each of my colleagues would agree with and would not want to have in the opinion."
He drew a hard line on coalition-building. Getting to five matters. Sacrificing a principle to get there does not. Liberal icon Justice William Brennan used to say the most important skill was knowing how to count to five. Alito’s answer was different.
“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,” he 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.”
Asked whether he regrets writing Dobbs, he did not hedge.
"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.” Coverage of how Alito has held firm on Dobbs and the threats that followed tracks the same refusal to walk anything back.
The cost arrived before the opinion did. In late April 2022, during a private justices’ lunch in the Court’s dining room, where the rule is no talk about cases, Roberts told the table that Politico had the draft and planned to publish it. Alito called the moment “quite a shock.” Politico published in early May and later described the draft as an “unprecedented view into the justices’ deliberations” and “plainly news of great public interest.”
Alito said the danger became obvious fast.
"But within a relatively short period of time, the thought occurred to me, and I think to the others in the majority, that this would endanger us. And it made us targets for assassination."
“His goal was to change the decision in the case. So that was quite predictable,” Alito said of the leaker’s aim. “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 a 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.” The leaker remains unknown. “The leak has cast a pall over the Court to a degree because we don’t know who was responsible for that,” Alito said. “It’s something that I don’t think we can get out of our minds.”
In June 2022, before the decision issued, a man approached Kavanaugh’s Maryland home in the middle of the night. He carried a bag with a gun, ammunition, a knife, a nail punch, duct tape, zip ties, a crowbar, burglary tools, and special shoes. Messaging boards and later prosecution accounts said he aimed to kill at least three of the conservative justices and change the outcome. He spoke to his sister on a cell phone; she talked him down. He was arrested and later convicted for the attempted assassination. “And it was very fortunate that that planned attack (on Kavanaugh) was not successful,” Alito said.
Security changed. Justices now travel with protection and have officers at their homes. Family members have been threatened. Barrett has talked about having a bulletproof vest. The Court’s work continued anyway. Last term Alito wrote the majority in Louisiana v. Callais, holding that the state’s 2024 congressional map adding a second majority-Black district was unconstitutional and limiting the practice of grouping voters by race to elect more minority candidates.
Separate Court business still moves on parallel tracks, from recusal questions to major docket fights. Recent reporting has noted when Alito stepped aside from a major climate case and how the justices continue to weigh climate suits with national reach even as older wounds from the leak linger.
Alito’s account of the years since Dobbs is not a victory lap and not an apology. It is a defense of method. Apply the Constitution as the framers set it out. Do not invent rights the text and history do not support. Keep a majority when possible without saying what you believe is false. Expect opposition when the Court returns a contested issue to voters and their legislatures.
He has now said publicly what earlier retirement speculation only guessed at: he considered leaving, measured the moment, and concluded the work is not finished. The political calendar, he made clear, does not set his clock.
The same justice who once turned double plays on a New Jersey field now describes the Court’s project as unfinished restoration, speech, religious liberty, equal application of the laws, and the original design of the government. He calls writing Dobbs a privilege. He calls the leak a lasting shadow. He calls the assassination attempt on a colleague a foreseeable result of publishing a stolen draft. And he says he remains because the Constitution still needs justices willing to say what it means and live with the consequences.
Lawful self-government depends on judges who read the Constitution as law, not as a blank check, and who refuse to quit the field when the crowd gets loud.
