POLITICO (“Justice Alito confirms he is considering retirement“):
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has confirmed that he is considering retirement, leaving open the possibility that he could leave after next year’s term and hand another nomination to President Donald Trump.
Alito said in excerpts of a CBS News interview released Friday that he thought about retiring this year and will do so again in 2027.
“It’s something that I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term,” the 76-year-old said in the interview scheduled to air Monday. “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.”
Alito’s interview, the first in a number of expected appearances to coincide with the release of a book about his judicial philosophy, raises the possibility that Trump, whose judicial picks shifted the Supreme Court to the right, may get an opportunity to nominate a fourth justice.
The president, who expressed regret in a recent interview about several nominees who ruled against his administration on some issues, would have a harder time getting a fourth pick through the Senate if Democrats win control in the midterms.
Alito, in the CBS interview, pushed back on concerns that the timing of his retirement and his replacement could potentially unravel his work on the bench.
“It’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be and what any president might do with respect to a replacement,” he said.
Alito, of course, has the right to stay on the job as long as he feels able to do it. And I’m sure there are many Justices who regret having retired as early as they did. There are fewer jobs that are more rewarding.
Still, Alito seems to be the most nakedly partisan of the nine justices. With Democrats taking control of the Senate after the midterms now looking likely, there’s no way they would allow a vote on a Trump appointee. Like it or not, the Merrick Garland precedent exists.
Alito is right that predicting the results of the 2026—much less the 2028—election is risky. But it Democrats retake the Senate in January and retake the White House two years thereafter, Alito will have to make it to at least 83 to avoid dying or retiring under a Democratic president.
In an ideal world, of course, Justices would be nonpartisan and not concern themselves with such a thing. We do not live in that world.
