Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr., left, and his wife Martha-Ann Alito, pay their respects at the casket of Reverend Billy Graham at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, Feb. 28, 2018.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has “thought about” retiring after the high court’s last term but decided against it, believing he could still make “a valuable contribution,” he said in an interview with CBS News.
Alito, 76, is the second-oldest justice on the bench, and speculation had swirled that he would retire while Republicans control the Senate and the White House — when the chances of swiftly confirming a GOP-backed candidate to the bench would be high.
The possibility that the Senate could flip to Democrats after November’s midterm election may make confirmation of any potential nominee of President Donald Trump more difficult or impossible if Democrats control the Senate.
“I’ve been bemused by the retirement speculation; it’s not too pleasant to look up and see the vultures circling,” Alito said in a separate interview with “Fox News Sunday.” “I don’t have a calculation for it … I think it would be foolhardy to make a calculation [that] I’m going to serve for a certain number of additional years.”
Alito’s status as one of the court’s most conservative justices has sparked the speculation that he would retire ahead of the midterms — a decision the justice ultimately has not made. Should Democrats take control of the Senate, they would effectively have veto power over a Supreme Court nomination.
Justice Clarence Thomas, 78 — the court’s oldest justice and a member of its conservative bloc — has also been on retirement watch.
The politics and timing of Supreme Court vacancies have been closely watched since Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to take up President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court until after the 2016 presidential election, allowing Trump the time to nominate and confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Then, after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, McConnell moved quickly to confirm Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, just over a week before the 2020 presidential election.
The Court is now controlled by a 6-3 conservative majority.
Democrats currently hold an edge in national House polling and in the CBS News Battleground Tracker model, which estimates a narrow Democratic majority after the midterm election, which looms just 30 days away. The Senate is also now in play, with Republicans locked in unexpectedly tight races across the country amid voter ire over prices and the economy.
Democrats need to net at least four seats while defending all the seats they currently have to win a Senate majority.
