Justice Alito isn’t going anywhere

Thirty-three years ago today, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn-in. At the Court On July 27, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on its emergency docket to clear the way for the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting. Twelve states – led by Alabama – later echoed this request in their own application. Last week, the group of 23 states and the District of Columbia challenging the order urged the court to deny these requests. The matter is now fully briefed, and the court’s ruling could come at any time. Morning Reads Justice Samuel Alito: ‘Practical Originalism’ and Its Facile Critics James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Justice Samuel Alito shared that he will not leave the court this summer. “Obviously I’m here for another term,” he said. Alito reflected on the speculation surrounding his retirement decision, including calls from conservatives for him to leave the court while Republicans control the White House and Senate. “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.” Alito also discussed critiques of his work on the court, including the claim that he is “especially vulnerable to a charge of partisanship.” “I vote in every case the way I think the case should be decided,” he said. “If that means a high correlation with what Trump wants, fine. If it means zero correlation with what Trump wants, fine as well. I think it’s wrong, it’s absolutely wrong, to say, ‘Well, you know what? I’m going to decide some cases this way and some cases the other way so that people will say, “Well, he’s objective, because sometimes he favors this side and other times he favors that side.”’” Appeals Court Upholds Block on Trump Ballroom Construction Zach Montague and Mattathias Schwartz, The New York Times On Friday, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, by a 2-1 vote, ruled that “President Trump cannot continue building the ballroom he planned as a replacement to the East Wing of the White House without explicit approval from Congress,” upholding “a lower court’s findings that no law or authority gave the president the power to raze and replace sections of the White House without congressional authorization,” according to The New York Times. The decision “dealt a blow to Mr. Trump’s efforts to press ahead with the project and drew an angry rebuke from the president, who vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.” However, construction will not stop immediately. “The judges paused their ruling for 14 days to give the administration a chance to appeal.” Conservatives meet to make birthright citizenship their long-term project Myah Ward, Politico Before President Donald Trump on Thursday “unveiled two new executive orders narrowing birthright citizenship and cracking down on ‘birth tourism’ schemes,” efforts were already underway among conservatives to energize a movement against the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling. “The president’s allies said they plan to make ending birthright citizenship a recurring topic at conferences and law schools where the next generation of lawyers will be trained,” according to Politico. “They turned birthright citizenship into the next Roe v. Wade, that we’re going to have to spend the next 50 years overturning,” said Mike Davis, the founder of Article III Project, a Trump-aligned legal organization, at a late-July event on the issue. Trump's firings of federal officials set stage for next test of presidential power Melissa Quinn, CBS News In Trump v. Slaughter on June 29, the Supreme Court “expanded presidential power” by striking “removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission, clearing the way for the president to fire members of certain independent boards and commissions at will.” In the months ahead, courts will continue to define the scope of presidential power as they consider ongoing disputes over President Donald Trump’s efforts to fire “inferior officers” serving in the executive branch, such as immigration judges, without cause, according to CBS News. “‘Inferior’ executive branch officials may be appointed by the president or the head of a department, and they’re generally supervised by principal officers, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.” Cases over their firings could “have significant implications for civil service protections that have been in place since the late 1970s and the federal workers covered by them, legal scholars say.” Supreme Court Clerk Hiring Watch: Meet The October Term 2026 SCOTUS Clerks David Lat, Original Jurisdiction In a post for his Substack, David Lat shared a “demographic analysis of the Supreme Court law clerks for October Term 2026,” highlighting, among other things, the gender breakdown and what law schools they came from. Among “the 38 clerks, 25 are men and 13 are women – 66% and 34%, respectively,” Lat wrote, noting that this group “is the least balanced [in terms of gender] since OT 2022.” The crop of OT2026 clerks is more diverse in terms of school of origin, with 14 different law schools sending graduates to the Supreme Court for the 2026-27 term, compared to 12 last year and 11 the year before that. Most of the new clerks attended Harvard (11). The next closest school on the list, Chicago, sent five. On Site Trump signs new birthright citizenship order, ballroom dispute likely headed to Supreme Court By Amy Howe President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order seeking to narrow the availability of birthright citizenship, the current guarantee of citizenship to almost everyone born in the United States. The order came just over a month after the Supreme Court struck down an earlier order that would have imposed wider restrictions on birthright citizenship. The Aug. 6 order will almost certainly be challenged in court. Trump informs Lisa Cook that he is “considering” her removal By Amy Howe President Donald Trump has renewed his effort to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. The Supreme Court on June 29 temporarily thwarted Trump’s initial effort to remove Cook, emphasizing the need for the Federal Reserve to remain free of political influence. In a letter dated Aug. 5, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino notified Cook that Trump was “considering” whether to remove her from the Board of Governors. Scavino gave Cook 21 days to respond to the White House’s allegations that she committed mortgage fraud in 2021, before she joined the Fed. The Supreme Court of Japan By Zachary Shemtob For SCOTUSblog’s series on different supreme courts around the world, Zach spoke with David S. Law, a law professor at the University of Virginia, about the Supreme Court of Japan. Pete Buttigieg, the Supreme Court, and the Fourth Amendment By Jordan Lorence In a column for SCOTUSblog, Jordan Lorence focused on a June incident in which 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was asked to separate himself from his children as Child Protective Services investigated an anonymous complaint. Lorence contended that, “based on Supreme Court authority on the Fourth Amendment, this all could have been avoided.” Congress Weighs SCOTUS Legislation When Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan testified before the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees in July to request an increase in the court’s security budget, some members of Congress had other topics front of mind, such as ethics codes, the emergency docket, prediction markets, and scientific evidence. These discussions came against the backdrop of proposed congressional legislation that would reshape how the court operates. On July 22, a quartet of Democratic Senators re-introduced the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act. The authors announced that the bill would establish 18-year terms for justices to participate in all Supreme Court cases, after which they would only adjudicate on original jurisdiction cases (that is, cases the court is constitutionally empowered to hear) – which usually make up about one-to-five cases per term. However, the bill’s text actually makes no mention of 18-year terms. Rather, it directs the president to nominate a new justice within the first 120 days of the first and third year of their term. It then stipulates that the nine most recently appointed justices would preside over appellate jurisdiction cases (the vast majority of the court’s docket). That means the 18-year tagline may be a slight misnomer. If a vacancy occurs among the nine appellate jurisdiction justices, the least senior previously active justice could slide back down to the appellate bench until the next scheduled appointment. Alternatively, if a vacancy brings the total number of justices below nine, the president is directed to fill that seat, regardless of the appointment timeline. Article III of the constitution states that judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” which has historically been interpreted as implying lifetime tenure. Some argue that clause precludes Congress from establishing term limits absent a constitutional amendment, but term limit advocates say proposals like the recently introduced bill bypass this issue by technically maintaining lifetime appointments, even as some justices lose their ability to vote on most cases. In May, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, introduced a separate trio of bills his office said would “bolster accountability.” The SHADOW Act targets the court’s emergency docket decisions, requiring it to “state why it ruled the way it did, what factors it considered, and what the decision does.” Raskin’s SCOTUS Act overhauls the process by which the court grants review of cases. Currently, four justices need to vote for a case to be heard on the merits docket. The bill strips the power to grant certiorari from the court entirely, instead establishing a panel of 13 randomly selected appeals court judges – one from each circuit – to review petitions under a four-vote standard. The Federal Funding Protection Act clarifies that federal district courts can hear individual claims to vacate the termination of a grant by a federal agency, if that termination was part of a broader agency policy that is also being challenged. Another court-reform bill on the table is the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, introduced in 2025 by Democratic lawmakers in both chambers. The bill requires the court to issue a publicly accessible code of conduct, violations of which would be submitted to a panel of five circuit chief judges. It also commands the court to adopt gift disclosure standards that are at least as thorough as those which Congress abides by and tightens the requirements for justices to recuse themselves from cases due to conflicts of interest. On the Republican side of the aisle, SCOTUS-related legislation has primarily centered on the proposal of a constitutional amendment to cap the bench at nine justices. These efforts come as several Democrats have pledged to add seats to the Supreme Court should the party gain control of the presidency and Congress. The constitution does not specify how many justices sit on the court, though there have not been more than nine since 1866. SCOTUS Quote "The appearance of impartiality is an essential manifestation of its reality." — Justice Felix Frankfurter in Dennis v. United States (1950) Kelsey Dallas is SCOTUSblog's managing editor and the primary author of the SCOTUStoday newsletter. Eli Kronenberg is a Dispatch intern and a rising senior at Northwestern University. Recommended Citation: Kelsey Dallas & Eli Kronenberg, Justice Alito isn’t going anywhere , SCOTUSblog (Aug. 10, 2026, 9:00 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/08/justice-alito-isnt-going-anywhere/