Alito: ‘I thought about’ retiring at end of last term

Justice Samuel Alito said he “thought about” retiring from the Supreme Court at the end of his last term following speculation about his potential retirement this year.

In an interview with CBS News , chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford asked Alito if he considered retiring in the face of “some pretty intense pressure from Republicans” who wanted to confirm his replacement while the GOP maintained control of the Senate.

“I thought about it,” Alito said. “Well, it’s something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term.”

“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,” he continued.

Alito added that he would “have to” continue to think about retirement every year.

Crawford also asked whether his potential future retirement would “risk undoing all the work that you have done here at the court,” drawing a comparison to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“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,” Alito said. “And it’s too hard to predict what the political situation will be, and what any president might do with respect to a replacement.”

Alito, 76, has been on the Supreme Court for a little over two decades after President George W. Bush nominated him for the role, and is the court’s second-oldest justice, behind Justice Clarence Thomas, 78.

He is part of the court’s conservative bloc, alongside Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

He shut down any notion of his retirement in August, telling the Wall Street Journal , “obviously I’m here for another term.”

Alito’s remarks followed NPR erroneously reporting that he had announced his retirement on the final opinion day of the court’s term. The report was retracted and NPR journalist Nina Totenberg apologized to Alito in a letter.