Alito Bats Down Retirement Rumors: ‘obviously I’m Here For Another Term’

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that he doesn’t plan on retiring anytime soon, batting down a rumor that had circulated after NPR mistakenly reported his retirement at the end of the court’s term in June.

“Obviously I’m here for another term,” Alito, 76, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday.

NPR accidentally published an article announcing the conservative justice’s retirement in June, which it swiftly took down and apologized for. Journalist Nina Totenberg, a longtime legal affairs correspondent for NPR, later said the mistake happened because she incorrectly assumed that the court was announcing Alito’s retirement during announcements of staff retirements.

And some conservatives, mindful of the possibility Republicans may lose the Senate in November, have also quietly rooted for Alito to step aside — which would give President Donald Trump an opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court justice.

Alito also brushed aside those calls, dismissing the notion that judges are interchangeable parts, even with ideological peers.

“It’s not pleasant, in the sense that it’s a reminder of mortality,” he said. “It’s like, what are those vultures doing up there? They are flying around. But it goes with life tenure.”

The NPR incident sparked a flurry of speculation on whether the prewritten article’s accidental publication could indicate that Alito’s retirement was near. Newsrooms regularly prepare prewritten stories for the retirements and deaths of significant figures, and for other anticipated events.

Totenberg later that same day apologized to Alito, writing in a message she read on air that “it was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism.”

Alito’s remark in the Wall Street Journal was contained within an opinion piece featuring snippets of a rare interview with a sitting justice, in which he discusses his legal interpretation of the Constitution and the attacks his critics levied on him, ahead of the October book release of a collection of his speeches.