Justice Samuel Alito says high-stakes Court cases have cost him old friendships and that finishing the Dobbs abortion ruling after a leak took courage.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News that major decisions have ended longtime personal ties, and that he has had to accept the fallout as part of the job. In an interview with Jan Crawford, the 76-year-old justice framed the losses as a hard but unavoidable price of serving on the nation’s highest court.
Newsweek reported his blunt assessment of what the work has cost him off the bench.
“There are cases that have resulted in the loss of old friendships,” Alito said. “That’s something you have to live with.”
Alito, appointed by President George W. Bush and now two decades into his tenure, has long been a key conservative voice on guns, executive power, and abortion. He is best known as the author of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the ruling that ended the federal constitutional right to abortion and returned the issue to the people and their elected lawmakers roughly four years ago.
A draft of that opinion leaked before the Court issued it. Alito said the justices did not know the draft would become public when they produced it, but that the leak raised the stakes of finishing the case.
"We didn't know it when we produced the draft that was leaked, but it required courage to go ahead with that because of the implications."
In the Dobbs majority, Alito wrote that the Constitution makes no reference to abortion and that no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. Authority to regulate abortion, the Court held, belongs with the people through the democratic process.
Michele Goodwin, an O’Neill professor for constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University Law Center, called Alito’s “courage” framing “a bit ironic.” She told Newsweek the Court abandoned nearly 50 years of precedent built not only on Roe v. Wade but on nearly a dozen or more later cases that had affirmed reproductive rights.
“So, it’s ironic that the justice would say that it took courage to do that, or maybe it did, in fact, take courage to overturn what had been so deeply instantiated, a precedent that was relied upon by millions upon millions of Americans,” Goodwin said.
Alito’s point was different. He treated the text of the Constitution as the measure, not the age of prior Court-made rules. That clash, written law versus long reliance on Court-created rights, still drives the fight over Dobbs.
Alito also addressed public attacks on the Court. He said the criticism has not come from one side alone.
“It’s been bipartisan,” he said. Asked about President Trump’s rhetoric toward judges, Alito replied, “He has his own way of saying things.” He then stressed balance: criticism of the Court by President Biden and his administration was “very harsh,” and President Trump “has been very harsh” as well.
Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonprofit Fix the Court, disputed that even-handed reading. He told Newsweek threats against judges and justices have spiked in recent years, and argued that “the words and actions of the Trump administration have been far more treacherous for the judiciary than those of his predecessor,” adding that no one in the Biden administration, for example, doxed judges’ families. Roth also said leaders in both parties should remember their words carry weight, and that violence and threats against judges and justices are never acceptable.
The security climate after Dobbs is not abstract for the justices. Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke in July about what the threats meant at home. Her security detail sent her home with a bulletproof vest. She told the House Appropriations Committee she did not expect the job to put her in the position of explaining to her children what a bulletproof vest was, and why she needed to wear one.
Polls cited alongside the interview show deep public distrust. A Gallup survey released September 30 found 34 percent approved of the job the Court was doing and 61 percent disapproved. A Pew Research Center survey in July 2026 found 53 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of the Court, a three-decade low.
Goodwin tied some of that discontent to rulings she said dismantled voting rights and civil rights and failed to further women’s rights. Alito’s interview did not treat popularity as the Court’s guide. He described the work as constitutional judgment under pressure, including pressure that reaches personal life.
Retirement talk has followed Alito as well. Some Republican lawmakers hoped to replace a conservative justice while Trump is in office, and reports had circulated that Alito was looking to leave. He said a justice his age has to think about every term.
He chose to stay.
"But I thought I could still continue to make a valuable contribution, which is why I became a justice and a judge in the first place."
That is a straightforward reason. He believes the seat still matters, and that he can still do the work. Friendships lost, drafts leaked, presidents angry, and approval ratings underwater do not change the oath.
The Court is not a social club, and it is not a focus group. When justices apply the Constitution as written, some old friends walk away, and the country still needs the rulings.
