Justice Samuel Alito says Supreme Court cases have cost him old friendships, and that he still believes he can make a valuable contribution on the bench.
In a CBS News interview with Jan Crawford, the 76-year-old justice said hard votes have carried a personal price far beyond the marble and the opinions.
“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 in his 20th year on the Court, is known as a steady conservative voice on guns, executive power, and abortion. He did not name the cases that ended those friendships. He did not soften the cost either.
The exchange also returned to the decision that still defines his tenure: the majority opinion he wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion and sent the issue back to the states and the voters.
Alito told Crawford the Court did not know, when it produced the draft that later leaked, what would follow. Proceeding anyway, he said, took nerve.
“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,” he said.
In the opinion itself, 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, he wrote, returned to the people. The ruling came roughly four years ago. The draft had already spilled into public view before the Court released the final decision.
Georgetown law professor Michele Goodwin pushed back hard on the courage framing. She told Newsweek the Court abandoned nearly 50 years of precedent built not only by Roe v. Wade but by nearly a dozen or more later cases that had affirmed reproductive rights.
“Because it’s a decision wherein the court abandoned what was existing law, which was established by the court, and precedent that was nearly 50 years old, and not precedent that had been abandoned over time,” Goodwin said. She added that it was “ironic” for the justice to cast the move as courage, or that, if it did take courage, it was courage to overturn a rule “relied upon by millions upon millions of Americans.”
That clash is the real story after Dobbs. One side reads the Constitution as silent on abortion and leaves the fight to elections and legislatures. The other treats a half-century of Court-built doctrine as settled law that should not have been touched. Alito chose the first path and has lived with the fallout.
Alito also addressed the tone coming from the White House across administrations. He refused to pretend the pressure has been one-sided.
“It’s been bipartisan,” he said. Of President Trump, he added, “He has his own way of saying things.” Then he leveled the field: “But the criticism of the court, I want to be even-handed on this, criticism of the court by President Biden, and justices by President Biden and his administration was very harsh, and President Trump has been very harsh.”
Gabe Roth, executive director of the nonprofit Fix the Court, told Newsweek threats against judges and justices have spiked in recent years. He disputed Alito’s balance, arguing the Trump administration’s words and actions have been “far more treacherous for the judiciary” than Biden’s, and claiming no one in the Biden administration “doxed judges’ families.” Roth still closed on common ground: leaders in both parties should remember their words carry weight, and violence or threats against judges are never acceptable.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett has already described what that climate looks like at home. After Dobbs-related threats, her security detail sent her home with a bulletproof vest. Speaking later to the House Appropriations Committee, she said she did not know how to respond.
“I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe because I lack imagination, but I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was, and why I needed to wear one.”
Public trust numbers track the same friction. A Gallup survey released September 30 put job approval of the Court at 34 percent, with 61 percent disapproving. A Pew Research Center survey from July 2026 found 53 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of the Court, a three-decade low. Goodwin tied that anger to rulings on voting rights, civil rights, and women’s rights.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment on a Friday evening. No response appears in the reporting.
Recent reports had Alito looking toward retirement. Some Republican lawmakers hoped to lock in another conservative seat while Trump holds the White House. Alito said a justice his age has to think about every term. He chose to stay.
“Somebody at my age has to think about every term,” he said. “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 stance tracks earlier signals that Alito would serve another term rather than step aside under political pressure.
The point is duty, not drama. He weighed the calendar, weighed the docket, and decided the contribution still mattered more than the exit ramp. Prior coverage of how Alito considered retiring last term makes the latest choice clearer: he has looked at the door and closed it.
That same work ethic has shown up in other high-profile matters, including when Alito stepped aside from a Colorado climate case against oil companies rather than leave an ethics cloud over the Court.
He has also sat out major climate damages litigation tied to energy firms when recusal was the cleaner path.
And when stock-holding questions arose around a large Exxon-related dispute, reporting showed Alito stepping aside after stock-holding pressure instead of forcing a fight over appearances.
Alito’s interview does not plead for sympathy. It states a trade every serious judge already knows. Hard cases can end dinners, phone calls, and decades-old ties. The alternative is a Court that flinches when the draft leaks, when presidents unload, or when the polls tank.
He wrote that the Constitution is silent on abortion and returned the question to voters and their legislatures. He absorbed the lost friendships, the bipartisan pile-on, and the security reality Barrett described to her kids. Then he looked at retirement and said the job still needs doing.
Judges are not hired to keep their social calendars intact. They are hired to read the law, take the heat, and leave the rest to the people.
