Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told Bloomberg News that he won’t retire during the lame-duck session of Congress later this year, even if the Democrats win the Senate in November’s midterm elections.
That window probably would be the last chance for President Donald Trump to get a conservative successor to the 76-year-old justice confirmed by the Senate if Democrats take the upper chamber.
Conservatives currently outnumber liberals on the high court 6-3. Alito, who is one of the court’s staunchest conservatives, has frequently voted in alignment with Trump’s agenda in major cases.
“I intend to stick around through this term,” Alito said in the interview last week before the Supreme Court’s new term began Monday. “I made that decision many months ago.”
Polls show Democrats are favored to win the House of Representatives in November, but the Senate is too close to call.
Alito has been giving media interviews timed around the Tuesday publication of his first book, “So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country,” which expounds on his judicial philosophy, the nation and Alito’s Italian American roots.
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