Politics

Alito Talks Retirement

Plus: The Supreme Court weighs a local government’s lawsuit against oil companies over global climate change.

Damon Root | 10.6.2026 10:33 AM

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(Andrew Leyden/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom)

"Justice Alito confirms he is considering retirement."

So declared a recent attention-grabbing headline at Politico, which probably caused a blood pressure spike among those readers who got the mistaken impression that the retirement under consideration might be imminent.

The full story was rather less exciting than the headline. What happened was Justice Samuel Alito, age 76, told CBS News that retirement is "something that I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term." In other words, Alito had already thought about packing it in earlier this year and decided against it. As Alito told The Wall Street Journal back in August, "obviously I'm here for another term." By Alito's own telling, the soonest that he would consider retiring is sometime next year, after the Supreme Court's latest term—which began yesterday and doesn't end until late June or early July 2027—is over and out.

The funny thing about all this Alito retirement talk, as I've noted........

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